What Happened to Mary Ann From Gilligans Island
Extra Dawn Wells, the former dazzler queen who became America's sweetheart past playing the daughter-next-door castaway Mary Ann on the Goggle box series "Gilligan'due south Island," has died. She was 82.
Wells died Wednesday of complications from COVID-19, her publicist Harlan Boll said in a argument to The Times. She had been in an assisted-living facility in Los Angeles.
"America's favorite castaway, Dawn Wells, passed peacefully this morning, in no pain every bit a upshot of complications due to Covid," Boll said.
The Reno native, who competed as Miss Nevada in the 1959 Miss America pageant, became synonymous with the castaway during the CBS sitcom's run betwixt 1964 and 1967. She too appeared in "77 Sunset Strip," "Maverick," "Bonanza," "The Joey Bishop Show" and "Hawaiian Eye."
Mary Ann was modeled after Dorothy from "The Wizard of Oz," a Kansas subcontract girl with pigtails and gingham dresses. Wells reportedly shell out 350 prospective actress, including Raquel Welch, for the function. CBS paid her $700 a week when she started.
Playing the bright, fair-minded and reasonable castaway, she was often the foil to the harebrained antics of the show's other characters.
"It's amazing to meet what the 45-twelvemonth-old man who is now raising children is saying to me," Wells told The Times in 2014. "'You were my fantasy. You were the girl I would accept to the prom. Yous were the girl who understood my problems.'"
Dawn Wells at her Valley Village dwelling house, left, and every bit a member of the "Gilligan's Island" cast.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times; CBS-TV)
Despite her popularity — and the infamous rivalry with "the moving picture star" castaway, Ginger (played past Tina Louise, the show's last surviving bandage member) — her character, and the kokosnoot-loving Professor, weren't mentioned in the series' catchy theme vocal until costar Bob Denver (Gilligan) insisted on it.
"Dawn would say that Mary Ann fits today just as she fit three generations ago, because she is timeless," Boll said. "In a world where the industry and society has been celebrating their 'Bad girls,' Mary Ann continues to be, for many, the breathe [sic] of fresh air as the 'Good Girl.'"
Wells' gingham dress and famous abdomen button-covering shorts from the serial are currently on display in the entrance hall of the Hollywood Museum, Boll said.
Born in Reno, Nev., on Oct. 18, 1938, Wells told The Times that her mother raised her with "Mary Ann values" amid the gambling and prostitution rampant in the Silverish State. Wells' parents divorced when she was young, and they shared custody of her with "no conflict." Her male parent, who was married four times, lived in Las Vegas. Wells attended the all-girls Stephens Higher in Missouri and the University of Washington in Seattle, where she earned her caste in theater arts.
She came to Los Angeles and began working in theater, Telly and in such films as 1963'due south "Palm Springs Weekend." She would continue to star in more than 150 TV shows and vii films. Often typecast as Mary Ann, Wells worked primarily in theater subsequently "Gilligan'southward Island" went off the air. She appeared in more than than 60 theatrical productions, including the 1981 staging of "They're Playing Our Vocal" on Broadway.
"The first affair I did [after 'Gilligan'] was 'The Owl and the Pussycat,' where I played a hooker," she told The Times. "But information technology took me two years to get bandage in 'The Vagina Monologues.' I retrieve they recall of you lot as a film actor who doesn't do stage, then they don't know your range."
More recently, Wells played Annie Hughes in the web series "Life Interrupted" and the web serial shorts "She'south Nevertheless on That Freaking Isle" with Terry Ray. She voiced Gumbalina Toothington in the animated series "The Ballsy Tales of Captain Underpants."
She besides racked upward credits as a producer, author, journalist, motivational speaker and humanitarian. She chaired the Terry Lee Wells Foundation, which focuses on women and children in northern Nevada, and ran her Picture Actors Boot Camp for seven years in Idaho.
Reflecting on her career, she told KTLA in 2019 that she would have liked to announced in more movies and play against type.
"I oasis't done as much film as I'd like. I'd like to play a real nasty person, 'cause you always dear Mary Ann, and I'd like to play the opposite of what I do most of the time," she said. "But I hope I'm working until I drop expressionless."
No services are scheduled at this time, and in lieu of flowers, donations are requested to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum or the Shambala Preserve.
Actors William Shatner, Jane Lynch and Jon Cryer were amid the celebrities mourning the star Wednesday. Here are some of their reactions:
Source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2020-12-30/dawn-wells-dead-gilligans-island-mary-ann
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