{"id":49605,"date":"2020-12-30T15:43:08","date_gmt":"2020-12-30T22:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dawn-wells-wholesome-castaway-on-gilligans-island-dies-of-covid-19-at-82\/"},"modified":"2020-12-30T22:43:08","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T22:43:08","slug":"dawn-wells-wholesome-castaway-on-gilligans-island-dies-of-covid-19-at-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/dawn-wells-wholesome-castaway-on-gilligans-island-dies-of-covid-19-at-82\/","title":{"rendered":"Dawn Wells, wholesome castaway on \u2018Gilligan\u2019s Island,\u2019 dies of COVID-19 at 82"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The cast of \u201cGilligan\u2019s Island\u201d in 1978: from left, Russell Johnson, as the professor; Jim Backus as Thurston Howell III; Natalie Schafer, as Mrs. Howell III; Alan Hale Jr., as the skipper; Bob Denver, as Gilligan; Judith Baldwin replacing original cast member Tina Louise, as Ginger, and Dawn Wells, as Mary Ann. Wells died Wednesday of causes related to COVID-19, her publicist said.<\/span>Wally Fong\/Associated Press file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The cause was complications from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, said a spokesman, Harlan Boll.<\/p>\n

A drama major who was crowned Miss Nevada in 1959, Wells parlayed her pageant success into a show business career. She made scores of screen and stage appearances over five decades, but none as memorable as her role as Mary Ann on the CBS show about a motley group of tour-boat passengers marooned on an uncharted South Pacific island.<\/p>\n

\u201cGilligan\u2019s Island,\u201d which aired from 1964 to 1967, claimed an enduring place \u2013 as inexplicable as it was irrefutable \u2013 in pop culture. The show was dismissed by reviewers and even some network executives as escapist filler on the TV schedule, lowbrow and slapstick. But it became one of the most popular programs ever in reruns, spawning occasional TV movies that reunited most of the original cast.<\/p>\n

Every week, viewers followed the misadventures of the goofy first mate Gilligan (Bob Denver) and his buffoonish Skipper (Alan Hale Jr.); the haughty millionaire couple Thurston and Lovey Howell (Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer); a scientist known as the Professor (Russell Johnson); a sultry movie star named Ginger (Tina Louise); and Mary Ann Summers, the girl-next-door whose wardrobe of choice was short shorts and midriff tops.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not my ego talking, but Mary Ann wasn\u2019t just a silly and sweet ing\u00e9nue,\u201d Wells observed in her 2014 self-help book, \u201cWhat Would Mary Ann Do?: A Guide to Life,\u201d written with Steve Stinson. \u201cShe was bright, fair-minded and reasonable, and I like to think that\u2019s what I brought to her. \u2026 Sherwood Schwartz, the show\u2019s producer and creator, was smart enough to put her in short shorts so you wouldn\u2019t think of her as your bossy sister.\u201d<\/p>\n

The presence of Ginger and Mary Ann \u2013 the first a sexpot, the second a wholesome beauty \u2013 gave rise to an ongoing debate about who on the show best represented the male fantasy of womanhood. Wells embraced the rivalry.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a matter of fact, I\u2019ve got a T-shirt that\u2019s a ballot that says \u2018Ginger or Mary Ann, the ultimate dilemma,\u2019 \u201c she told the Vancouver Sun<\/em> in 2014. \u201cYou can go anywhere and say \u2018Ginger or Mary Ann?\u2019 You don\u2019t have to say what show it is. Everybody gets it. And I always win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dawn Elberta Wells was born in Reno, Nevada, on Oct. 18, 1938. She attended the all-women\u2019s Stephens College in Missouri with plans to study chemistry but developed an interest in the arts and transferred to the University of Washington in Seattle.<\/p>\n

She graduated in 1960, was Nevada\u2019s representative in the 1960 Miss America contest and gave herself two years to make a mark as an actress \u2013 or otherwise return to college for medical-school training.<\/p>\n

After small roles on TV series such as \u201c77 Sunset Strip,\u201d \u201cSurfside 6\u201d and \u201cHawaiian Eye,\u201d Wells found herself up against another obscure actress for the role of Mary Ann. \u201cThat\u2019s the only time I could beat Raquel Welch out of anything,\u201d she later quipped to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

She married and divorced her agent, Larry Rosen, in the 1960s and had no immediate survivors.<\/p>\n

Struggling to find challenging work after \u201cGilligan\u2019s Island,\u201d Wells turned to stage productions, often appearing in Neil Simon plays. She also had a featured role in the serial-killer movie thriller \u201cThe Town That Dreaded Sundown\u201d (1976).<\/p>\n

She told The New York Times<\/em> that certain doors were closed to her, one of them being a staging of the Eve Ensler play \u201cThe Vagina Monologues.\u201d \u201cAre you out of your mind?\u201d she recalled producers asking. \u201cMary Ann?\u201d (She was hired for a touring production.)<\/p>\n

In the late 1980s, Wells created a now-defunct clothing line for the elderly and disabled called Wishing Wells. For a time, she lived in Idaho and served as chief executive of the nonprofit Idaho Film and Television Institute, an actor\u2019s workshop that shuttered in 2009.<\/p>\n

She did not distance herself too much from her signature TV part, lending her name to \u201cMary Ann\u2019s Gilligan\u2019s Island Cookbook\u201d (1993). She also starred in a short film, \u201cShe\u2019s Still on That Freakin\u2019 Island\u201d (2015), but sporting jeans rather than her earlier skin-baring look.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually have a pair of the original shorts from the show,\u201d she told writer Nick Thomas, \u201cbut I\u2019m not sure if they would fit me now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

cast of \u201cGilligan\u2019s Island\u201d in 1978: from left, Russell Johnson, as the professor; Jim Backus as Thurston Howell III; Natalie Schafer, as Mrs. Howell III; Alan Hale Jr., as the skipper; Bob Denver, as Gilligan; Judith Baldwin replacing original cast member Tina Louise, as Ginger, and Dawn Wells, as Mary Ann. Wells died Wednesday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2482,337],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-49605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-celebrity","tag-television"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49605"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=49605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}