Production
Filming of the show took place at the CBS Radford Studios complex in Studio City, Los Angeles California. The same stage was later used by Mary Tyler Moore and Roseanne (which featured Gilligan's Island prominently on one episode). The lagoon was drained and used as a parking lot during the show's off-season and was the last surviving element of the show when it was demolished in 1997 as part of an expansion project.
Cave scenes were shot in Newport Beach, California, across from the southern tip of the Balboa Peninsula, in a park just off Ocean Boulevard. The rock jetties at the entrance of Newport Bay can be seen during the opening theme during the line "A 3-Hour Tour" as the Minnow heads out to sea. Also, the marina shown in the opening shot is the Alamitos Bay Marina in Long Beach, California.
Four different boats played the part of the S.S. Minnow. One was used in the opening credits and rented in Ala Wai Yacht Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. Another boat, the Bluejacket, was used in the opening credits shown during the second and third seasons and eventually turned up for sale on Vancouver Island in August 2006, after running aground on a reef in the Hecate Strait on the way south from Alaska. One boat was used for beach scenes after being towed to Kauai in Hawaii. The fourth Minnow was built on the CBS Studios set in the second season. The Minnow was named in reference to Newton Minow, chairman of the U.S. FCC, who was most famous for describing television as "a vast wasteland".
The final day of filming of the scenes of the pilot episode was Friday, November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The cast and crew found out about the assassination late that morning, Hawaii time. Between the filming of scenes, they crowded around a radio, listening to news bulletins. A reminder of the tragedy appears in the opening sequence of the show's first season, when the theme song is played. As the Minnow is leaving the harbor and heading out to sea, an American flag flying at half staff can be seen briefly in the background.
The United States Coast Guard occasionally received telegrams from concerned citizens, who apparently did not realize it was a scripted show, pleading for them to rescue the people on the deserted island. The Coast Guard would simply forward these telegrams to producer Sherwood Schwartz.
Read more about this topic: Gilligan's Island
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—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
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—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
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—Karl Marx (1818–1883)