Gilligan's Island Has A Harmonious Connection To Star Wars And Jurassic Park

The first episode of "Gilligan's Island," called "Two on a Raft," aired on September 26, 1964, kicking off what would prove to be an intergenerational phenomenon. Show creator Sherwood Schwartz, nor anyone really, could have predicted that "Gilligan's Island" would prove to be so popular. Less so, could we have predicted that the series would enter seemingly eternal syndication, allowing multiple decades to enjoy the series in reruns? 

And by now, everyone knows the cast of "Gilligan's Island," and the archetypal roles they played. The names of Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Tina Louise, Russell Johnson, and Dawn Wells are all burned into our brains, as are Gilligan, the Skipper, the millionaire, his wife, the movie star, the Professor, and Mary Ann. More than anything, we remember the show's theme song, composed by Schwartz and George Wyle. The theme sounds like a sea shanty and does a perfect job of explaining the show's premise, introducing the characters, and being one of the most persistent earworms in musical history. We have gone into detail about the "Gilligan's Island" theme song multiple times in the pages of /Film. 

This perfection, of course, couldn't have been realized without some fine-tuning. In 1992, CBS finally aired the original "Gilligan's Island" pilot episode, titled "Marooned," and many changes had been made. Notably, Johnson, Wells, and Louise weren't yet part of the cast (their roles occupied by John Gabriel, Kit Smythe, and Nancy McCarthy instead). 

More notably, the theme song was entirely different. The old theme was a calypso ditty that isn't nearly as catchy as the shanty that was eventually used. A fun piece of trivia: the original "Gilligan's Island" theme song was composed by one John Williams, the Oscar-winning film composer behind "Star Wars" and dozens of others.

The original John Williams "Gilligan's Island" theme is available online, and one can hear for themselves that it's actually kind of the inferior version. Sherwood Schwartz sings the lyrics, although you would be forgiven for thinking that it was cartoon voice maestro Mel Blanc. It was meant to sound like the then-popular calypso musician Sir Lancelot, though that's an artist even your parents have forgotten about. The original theme wasn't quite in line with what Schwartz wanted, so he wrote the sea shanty version we all know and love today. It was (in the first season) performed by a band called The Wellingtons. 

John Williams was well into his professional composing career by the time he wrote the "Gilligan's Island" theme in 1963. Williams "attended" Juilliard beginning in 1955, taking piano lessons there without ever properly enrolling. By the mid-1950s, he was racking up credits on jazz records, and in 1957, he released "The Johnny Williams Orchestra Plays Sounds from Screen Spectaculars." His first feature film credit was on the 1958 stinker "Daddy-O." He wrote the scores for several low-budget flicks for the late '50s and early '60s, including "I Passed for White," "The Secret Ways," and "Gidget Goes to Rome." 

On TV, Williams was equally prolific, scoring episodes of "Wagon Train" (among others), and writing the theme songs to "Checkmate," "The Wide Country," and, of course, "Gilligan's Island." He would also famously write the theme music for the first season of "Lost in Space" and for "The Time Tunnel." In 1968, he received his first Oscar nomination for the score for "Valley of the Dolls." It was the first of 54 nominations. He remains the most-nominated living person in the world. He graduated past "Gilligan's Island" pretty quickly. 

John Williams' theme for "Gilligan's Island" was ultimately not used, but he did return periodically to write incidental scores for multiple episodes. He is credited as "Johnny Williams" for many of them, although the credits-writers couldn't seem to get it right, so he kept going back and forth between "John" and "Johnny." Williams' name appears in 19 episodes of the show's first season. It was only the incidental music, and he often shared credits with other composers. 

Williams, of course, is such a talented composer that one cannot make an aural link between "Gilligan's Island" and his better-known movie scores. Just to do my sue diligence, I'll be sure to mention that Williams composed the scores for many Steven Spielberg-directed blockbusters, such as "Jaws," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "1941," "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (and its sequels), "E.T. the Extra Terrestrial," "Empire of the Sun," "Always," "Hook," "Jurassic Park," "Schindler's List" ... okay, he's the Spielberg guy. We all knew this.

He also composed the scores for the "Star Wars" saga, "Superman," "Home Alone," the first three "Harry Potter" movies, and "Stepmom." There is nothing he can't do. Williams recently turned 94, and he has shrunk his output in recent years. The last feature-length movie he scored that wasn't a Steven Spielberg movie or a "Star Wars" project was "The Book Thief" in 2013. Of course, after all those Oscar nominations and dozens of credits, he deserves to do whatever the heck he wants with his career. There aren't too many other people associated with "Gilligan's Island" who went on to be nominated for multiple Oscars.

Unless Bob Denver has a secret tech-awards history I don't know about.