Gilligan's Island's Creator Made A Short-Lived Sitcom Based On A Hit '70s Movie

Sherwood Schwartz is sitcom royalty. This is, after all, the man responsible for "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch." But even someone as well-versed in the genre as Schwartz made a few missteps — just take a look at the time the "Gilligan's Island" creator teamed up with Bob Denver for the sci-fi comedy pilot "The Invisible Woman". Thankfully, Schwartz's early-1980s sitcom "Harper Valley PTA" wasn't quite as big a mistake and was nowhere near as well-known as his bigger shows.

Sitcom theme songs are often as beloved as the shows to which they belong. That's almost certainly the case with the "Gilligan's Island" theme song, which not only managed to succinctly sum up the show's premise but became engrained in the collective memory of multiple generations. That's just as well considering recording that theme song was as slapstick as the show itself, with Schwartz having to capture the ditty in a hurry during a charity event at producer Mel Shavelson's home. One of Schwartz's follow-up sitcoms, "Harper Valley PTA," didn't have quite as fraught a theme song journey, but it did grow out of a song.

In 1968, country singer Jeannie C. Riley released her single "Harper Valley PTA," which told the story of the widowed Mrs. Johnson, whose teenage daughter came home from school one day with a note from the PTA. "Mrs. Johnson, you're wearin' your dresses way too high," read the note. "It's reported you've been drinking and a-running 'round with men and goin' wild." The song ends with Mrs. Johnson attending a PTA meeting and revealing the members' dirty little secrets. Evidently, this was enough material to spawn a film and TV show, and it was Schwartz's job to shepherd the latter.

Jeannie C. Riley's "Harper Valley PTA" was a major hit in 1968, and according to AFI, the film rights to the song were bought by April Fools Productions in 1977. Executive producer Phil Borack then raised $3.5 million and lured "I Dream of Jeannie" star Barbara Eden to play the lead role of widowed cosmetics salesperson Stella Johnson in the film. "Harper Valley PTA" received a small but successful theatrical run before being aired on NBC in 1978. (Conflicting reports claim that it made either $8 million or $25 million; with a budget of only $1 million, it was a hit either way.) Audience response was positive and NBC began developing a show.

This was where Sherwood Schwartz and his son, Lloyd J. Schwartz, came in. The "Gilligan's Island" creator and his scion were surely glad to be paired with Eden, who reprised the role of Stella Johnson for the show. From the sound of it, however, the elder Schwartz wasn't thrilled to be involved with the TV version of "Harper Valley PTA" overall. In fact, though he's often listed as the creator, it seems he was really there to produce at the behest of Universal Television.

As Schwartz told RetroCrush during a 2003 interview, "I just came in as a favor to Universal, 'cause I was doing 'The Brady Brides' at the same time. But I really didn't want to do this other one. They were floundering around. They wanted me to do it." While Schwartz went on to praise the show's performers as "very good" and refer to Barbara Eden as "a wonderful lady," he ultimately saw the series as "kind of a dead-end show." That assessment would mostly be borne out by its two-season run. Though, clearly, there was enough to "Harper Valley PTA" to keep it from becoming one of many shows that were canceled after just one season.

"Harper Valley PTA" the series once again focuses on Barbara Eden's Stella Johnson, a widowed single mother to her teenaged daughter Dee Johnson (Jenn Thompson). The pair live in the fictional town of Harper Valley, Ohio, where it seems the Harper dynasty, from whom the town gets its name, along with the rest of the residents, haven't taken too kindly to the free-spirited Stella and her daughter's arrival. Otis Harper, Jr. (George Gobel) is the town mayor, and during the show's first season, Stella clashes with her fellow PTA members and the stuck-up Reilly family, made up of matriarch Flora (Anne Francine), her daughter Wanda Reilly (Bridget Hanley), husband Bobby Reilly, (Rod McCary), and their daughter Scarlett Reilly (Suzi Dean).

For its second season, "Harper Valley PTA" underwent a few changes. The PTA aspect was dropped, as was Sherwood Schwartz. As Eden herself remembered it during a Television Academy interview, "It was Sherwood Schwarz and his son [who produced the show] and they did a fabulous job. I don't know who was unhappy with them but somebody was and so the second year I think we had three different producers, so it was constantly zigging and zagging, going in different directions." Knowing how Schwartz felt about being drafted in to try to save Universal's "floundering" show, he may have wiggled his way out of the project.

Ultimately, "Harper Valley PTA" ran for two seasons between January 1981 and August 1982 before being cancelled and relegated to TV history. It sounds as though Schwartz would rather not have been associated with the show, but it remains an interesting entry on his filmography — much like the time he made an even shorter-lived sitcom that used "Gilligan's Island" props and sets.