gilligan's island

20th post!

The question popped into my head the other night: "Do "Gilligan's Island" characters have last names?". Of all the things going through my brain at any given moment, I choose to write about if The Skipper actually has a name. I know already of Thurston Howell III of course. Side note: as a kid I dropped out of Brownies for a period of time because they met at a time when I wanted to watch the show (which was reruns at this time, circa 1987-88?). I don't know how long I quit or even if it was official, but when the group went to the swimming pool, I know I was on board for Brownies once again!

Finding this information out was actually pretty easy, and I think that maybe at some point in my life I knew the answer to some of these questions. According to Wikipedia's character list for the show, some Metafilter message board:

Gilligan: Gilligan was never really given another name, and whether Gilligan was his first or last name, who knows. It says that in early scripts Sherwood Shwartz may have named him Willy Gilligan. And that in the pilot episode Mrs Howell refers to him as 'steward' which some people say could have been Stewart, but I  mean, who knows. I'm also now well informed that he stole his red shirt from his big brother, and is possibly Irish-American.

The Skipper too: Mr Jonas Grumby! Captain of the SS Minnow, lover of hats.

The Millionare: Thurston Howell III. Living it up in the middle of nowhere. He owned a diamond mine, a coconut plantation, a railroad, an oil well, and 40,000 acres of land in Colorado that included all of downtown Denver - ha!

And his wife: known as Lovey Howell. I read that in one episode on a radio announcment on the show, it called her Lovey at one point, but also referred to her as Eunice at another time! Also her maiden name was Wentworth.

The movie star: Ginger Grant. Her measurments are known for some reason: 36-25-36. Nice!

The professor: Roy Hinkley! He was a high school teacher.

Mary Ann: Mary Ann Sommers, maker of coconut cream pies.

And there you have it! Mystery solved.

-AMB