Initial Reactions To Gilligan's Island Were Quite Brutal
Opening TV theme songs have tragically become a lost art. On one level, it makes sense. As the line between television and film has grown increasingly blurry in the 21st century, opening titles have become more and more cinematic. The mix of simple earworms and dialogue-free visuals in the opening titles of shows like "Mad Men" are eloquent works of art in and of themselves. It just wouldn't have the same effect if, instead of David Carbonara's haunting suite accompanied by minimalistic animation of an ad man's world literally falling apart, you had someone singing about that ol' scoundrel Don Draper and how his dastardly, womanizing ways are coming back to bite him (as amazing as that sounds).
Of course, things were different when Sherwood Schwartz created "Gilligan's Island." The show required a tad more exposition than your run-of-the-mill sitcom at the time (as did Schwartz's other '60s-born sensation, "The Brady Bunch"). Whereas series like "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" could lay out their premises in roughly 30 seconds of wordless animation (magical, mischievous women cause trouble for the besotted men in their lives), the setup for "Gilligan's Island" was relatively convoluted. Who were all these wildly different people and how did they end up on a small ship in the middle of a sea storm? It's not exactly "3 Body Problem," but it is something that immediately has you asking questions.
Schwartz found that out the hard way when it came time to pitch the show. He would win over the doubters eventually, though, thanks in part to that (almost annoyingly) catchy theme song.
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...
Speaking to the Archive of American Television in 1997 (via Entertainment Weekly), Schwartz recalled his longtime agent telling him, "Sherwood, you're out of your f***in' mind. Who the hell is gonna watch the same goddamn seven people on the same goddamn island every week?" (Somewhere, the creators of "Lost" are laughing their asses off right now.) Not to be dissuaded, Schwartz got himself another agent, only to receive the same reaction. By that point, however, he had fleshed out his ideas for at least 31 episodes, which was enough to convince his new rep to try and strike a deal with CBS.
Mind you, Schwartz's woes weren't over yet. Having convinced the network the show could potentially sustain itself beyond a single season, he also had to ensure that casual viewers would be able to tune in on a random week and understand what was going on. This was a particular concern for CBS' head of programming; sitcoms were expected to be largely episodic in that era, with limited room for overarching storytelling or character development. This is where the theme song came in, Schwartz assured them, spelling out everything audiences would need to know on any given week.
Opening theme songs would continue to serve that function over the decades that followed, although they gradually evolved to be less expository and speak more to the substance of the shows around them (see also: the lyrics to the confusingly-named "Goof Troop," which are all about the series' themes of family and friendship and not how Goofy came to find himself in the suburbs). Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that they would fade out of fashion as the medium continued to change.
But I still wanna hear that Don Draper ditty.