TV Executives Worried ‘Gilligan’s Island’ Might Be Too Highbrow
For a goofy sitcom on which a Professor could make a lie detector out of bamboo and coconuts, yet couldn’t figure out a way to patch a hole in a boat, Gilligan’s Island creator Sherwood Schwartz sure had some highfalutin ideas about the show’s core concept.
“There’s a great deal of sociological implication in Gilligan’s Island,” Schwartz explained in The Unofficial Gilligan’s Island Handbook. “It takes a group of very carefully selected people who represent many different parts of our society and shows how in a circumstance — being shipwrecked together — they have to learn to get along with each other. I mean, none of these people had anything in common with each other, and that’s quite deliberate.”
That’s the reason why the show’s opening theme song describes the characters in such broad : a Skipper, a Millionaire, a Movie Star, a Professor. They weren’t individuals so much as stand-ins for society at large.
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Schwartz really got fancy when he rolled out his concept to CBS executives, pitching Gilligan’s Island as a “social microcosm.”
Network head William Paley wasn’t impressed. “I thought this was a comedy show,” he replied.
Schwartz countered quickly. “It’s a funny microcosm!”
“There was a hasty shuffling of seats and a tentative clearing of executive throats,” Schwartz told the Portland Press Herald, as reported by MeTV. “A microcosm? ‘Mmmmm,’ said one. ‘Isn’t that too lofty?’”
Schwartz almost lost the show with his microcosm pitch. “I have since learned that when you’re describing a comedy show,” Schwartz said, “you do not use a literate phrase.”
The irony was that critics never described the actual sitcom as “literate” or “lofty.” UPI critics wrote that “it is impossible that a more inept, moronic or humorless show has ever appeared on the home tube.” The San Francisco Chronicle agreed: “It is difficult to believe that Gilligan’s Island was written, directed and filmed by adults.” The New York Times called it “the most preposterous situation comedy of the season.”
Someone else who piled on">. “I was ashamed when I saw the first show,” she told TV Guide. “The show is like a cartoon.”
In the end, it didn’t matter if the show was too highbrow, too moronic or something in between. Audiences ate it up, and Schwartz had a hit. The lousy reviews still made him angry, however, and he predicted that critics would come around to his original concept once they recognized the show’s success.
“Next year, the intellectual critics will probably take another look at Gilligan's Island,” Schwartz complained to the Press Herald. “Then they’ll write treatises on our ‘social satire on many levels.’ Maybe the professors will look for deeper satire.”
