Facts You Never Knew About Gilligan’s Island

It was a well-known fact that Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of the show, hated Newton Minow, who was the head of the Federal Communications Commission at the time. Schwartz named the shipwrecked ship the S.S Minnow as a form of joking jab on Minow. Don’t think Newton ever caught on though!

The cups the characters used to drink out of were made out of real coconuts during the filming of the first season. But because coconut shells are actually porous in nature and therefore easily ruined, the characters used ceramic cups that looked like coconuts thereafter.

Because the show originally aired in the 1960s, most of the actors from the original cast of the show have since passed away, including the show’s creator, Sherwood Schwartz. The only ones remaining are Dawn Wells and Tina Louise, both of them well into their 70s and 80s.

One of the biggest secrets that were kept during the whole show was about Natalie Schafer’s age. She played Mr. Lovey Howell’s wife and never told anyone her real age. Schafer was actually 13 years older than her on TV husband played by Jim Backus!

But it didn’t end there! Not only was her age kept a secret, Schafer’s contract clearly stated that “there were to be no close-ups of her” so as to make sure no one would see a single wrinkle and the 13-year-old age gap between her and her husband would not be noticeable.

The radio on which the characters used to receive their long-distance messages was via their Packard Bell AM radio. An additional telescoping antenna was there to make it more believable that the castaways would actually get long distance messages. However, the actual model had neither an antenna nor a handle.