Mrs. Howell on ‘Gilligan’s Island’ Only Took Job for the Free Hawaiian Vacation
For some actors, landing a role on a long-running sitcom would be a dream come true. But that wasn’t the case when Natalie Schafer won the part of the obscenely rich Lovey Howell on Gilligan’s Island. “I didn’t even want to be in Gilligan when I tested,” she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via MeTV. “I cried when I got the role.”
Bob Denver, the comic actor who played Gilligan, told a slightly different version of the story. In a CJAD interview with Peter Anthony Holder, Denver said Schafer didn’t have to test for the role at all. An accomplished film, television and theater actress, she worked constantly, and Gilligan producers offered her the part without requiring an audition.
It took some convincing, but Schafer agreed to film the pilot — mainly because she wanted a free Hawaiian holiday. “My agent called me, saying, ‘Listen, Natalie, we can get you good money, and you can go to Hawaii where you’ve never been,’” she explained in The Unofficial Gilligan’s Island Handbook. “This will never sell. You don’t have to worry about it.”
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Gilligan’s Island sold. Cue the crying.
Denver confirms Schafer’s story that she shed tears when she learned that Lovey Howell would be an ongoing role. “Her story was that she was in Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta, one of those cities in Mexico on a vacation. At the time her mother was ill in Los Angeles and a telegram came to her table at dinner,” he said. “She read it and burst into tears. All of her friends with her on vacation said, ‘Oh Natalie, is it your mother? Is something wrong?’ And she said, ‘No, the pilot sold!’”
To make matters worse for Schafer, only the pilot was shot in exotic Hawaii. Once Gilligan’s Island became a series, it was filmed on soundstages in California.
But Schafer quickly got over her disappointment, said Denver. “After we started shooting, she really got into it. She was really a great lady.”
Schafer’s biggest concern about landing a role on a popular sitcom was typecasting, something that her castmates like Denver and Tina Louise complained about over the years. While Schafer landed the role of a sadistic lesbian in The Killing of Sister George soon after Gilligan ended, garnering great reviews, she had trouble finding subsequent work. “When I was up for a different part, the new network kids said, ‘We can’t put Natalie Schafer in another kind of part at five o’clock, and at six o’clock Gilligan’s Island goes on. It wouldn’t be believable,’” she complained. “I don’t agree. I think audiences would be fascinated by people who change their personality and play something else.”
Schafer eventually found success working in a new field: voice acting. As it turned out, staying off camera wasn’t all bad. “I love doing voice-overs for film and commercials,” she decided, “because you don’t have to hold your stomach in.”
