02/12/2025
Tina Louise ( February 11, 1934) is 91 years old today! She is best known for her role as the movie star Ginger Grant on the situation comedy, Gilligan's Island (1964–1967).
In 1964, she left the Broadway musical Fade Out – Fade In to portray movie star Ginger Grant on the situation comedy Gilligan's Island, after the part was turned down by Jayne Mansfield. However, she was unhappy with the role and worried that it would typecast her. The role did make Louise a pop icon of the era, and in 2005 an episode of TV Land Top Ten ranked her as second only to Heather Locklear as the greatest of television's all-time s*x symbols.
After the series ended in 1967, Louise continued to work in film and made numerous guest appearances in various television series. She appeared in the Matt Helm spy spoof The Wrecking Crew (1969) with Dean Martin. Louise played a doomed suburban housewife in the original The Stepford Wives (1975), and both the film and her performance were well received.
She attempted to shed her comedic image by assaying grittier roles, including a guest appearance as a pathetic he**in addict in a 1974 Kojak episode, as well as a co-starring role as an evil Southern prison guard in the 1976 ABC-TV Movie Nightmare in Badham County. Her other television films of the period included Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976), SST: Death Flight (1977), Friendships, Secrets and Lies (1979), and in the prime-time soap opera Dallas, during the 1978–79 seasons, as J.R. Ewing's secretary, Julie Grey, a semi-regular character. Her character was finally killed off. In the fall of 1984, she replaced Jo Ann Pflug as Taylor Chapin on the syndicated soap opera Rituals after Pflug refused to do love scenes with co-star George Lazenby due to her religious beliefs. After a few months, however, Louise did not renew her own contract and the character was written out. She later made cameo appearances on the network daytime soaps Santa Barbara and All My Children.
The question "Ginger or Mary Ann?" is considered a classic pop-psychological question when given to American men of a certain age as an insight into their characters, or at least their desires as regarding certain female stereotypes. With the January 2014 death of Gilligan's Island co-star Russell Johnson, Louise is the only surviving cast member of the original sitcom. Louise is quoted as saying, "The best movie you'll ever be in is your own life because that's what matters in the end."
Louise declined to participate in any of three reunion television films for Gilligan's Island. Despite maintaining an adequate career after the show's run, she kept claiming that the show actually ruined her career. The role of Ginger was recast with Judith Baldwin and Constance Forslund. Although she did not appear in these television movies, she made brief walk-on appearances on a few talk shows and specials for Gilligan's Island reunions, including Good Morning America (1982), The Late Show (1988) and the 2004 TV Land award show with the other surviving cast members. In the 1990s, she was reunited with costars Bob Denver, Dawn Wells, and Russell Johnson in an episode of Roseanne. She did not reunite with them for the television film Surviving Gilligan's Island (2001), co-produced by Wells. She was portrayed by Kristen Dalton in the television film. Her relations with series star Denver were rumored to be strained, but in 2005, she wrote a brief, affectionate memorial to him in the year-end "farewell" issue of Entertainment Weekly. Later film roles included a co-starring appearance in the Robert Altman comedy O.C. and Stiggs (1987) as well as the independently made satire Johnny Suede (1992) starring Brad Pitt. She appeared in Married... with Children as Miss Beck in episode "Kelly Bounces Back" (1990).
As of 2014, Louise has returned to the acting world in the upcoming spiritual drama, Tapestry and the horror film Late Phases.