MovieChat Forums > Gilligan's Island (1964) Discussion > Misconceptions and beliefs from the show...

Misconceptions and beliefs from the show?

posted 8 years ago by crockett_john
7 replies | jump to latest

When I was around six or seven years old, I would watch this show religiously. I think it came on before and after school where I lived. This was the mid 1970s. At some point, I came to have the belief that all of the scientific information provided on the show by the Professor was completely true. I remember seeing something where the actor had said something like that, but I must have missed the sarcasm and went on to believe that they were reporting actual, factual scientific information on the show, including all the information about voodoo, headhunters, giant spiders, and so on.

I'm wondering what other misconceptions or unusual beliefs other viewers had.

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I blame autocorrect.

You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.

[–] ElRaisuli 8 years ago

Like a lot of people, I totally believed that Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer were about the same age, but he was 12.25 years younger. When the show premiered, Natalie was nearly 64-years old, but Jim was only 51 years and 7 months old.

I would have guessed that they were both in their late 50's, so Jim's youth is actually more surprising to me than Natalie's age.

The other thing I can never keep straight in my mind is that the show began in 1964 and not 1965. '64 just seems too early.

[–] crockett_john 8 years ago

Yeah, that one surprised me, too. In the last few years, I saw or read something that said Natalie Schafer ended up having a double mastectomy later in life. Also, somewhere I heard she had it in her contract that she wouldn't have any close-ups.

I think the original pilot was filmed in 1963. The only reason I know that is that the flag was flying at half mast due to the Kennedy Assassination (flown for 30 days following the death of a President).

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I blame autocorrect.

You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.

[–] Videoguy7579 8 years ago

Some people have thought that it was filmed on location in Hawaii. The PILOT was filmed there, but everything else was a set in LA. The season 1 opening was filmed in a Honolulu harbor, but the color seasons' openings were filmed at a marina in Newport Beach, CA.

[–] millsey72 (10363) 2 years ago

The giant spider was obviously far fetched. For one, spiders don't swim so there is no explanation how a spider came to live on the land. Secondly, even if the spider did swim to the island, what did it eat to have grown to be that size? The voodoo and headhunter plots were realistic though. Tribes did live in those remote Pacific islands at the time and all of them practiced voodoo and other forms of black magic

[–] whitecaps (40) 2 years ago

That's true about tribes in the South Pacific and especially true about tribes in the Caribbean, but they were in the North Pacific, about 500 miles from Hawaii.

One other thing, not that the show should be taken seriously. But, it's highly unlikely there would have been any uncharted islands between Hawaii and Japan as the U.S Navy did a complete survey of all the islands in and around those areas and everywhere in between during World War II.

[–] liscarkat (18541) 5 months ago

There are spiders on islands.

[–] davebuffalo (3496) a year ago

We were led to believe that quicksand was something we really had to worry about!