Gilligan's Island Put Potential Skipper Actors Through A 'Merciless' Test Scene

One needn't recount the premise of "Gilligan's Island." One only needs to listen to the theme song.

When Sherwood Schwartz was first casting his sitcom "Gilligan's Island" back in 1964, he knew that finding the right actor to play the Skipper — Jonas Grumby, the captain of the S.S. Minnow — was going to be a challenge. He had envisioned the title character as a shrimpy, thin man, and he knew that he wanted Bob Denver, previously the star of "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," in the role. To provide a physical contrast, Shwartz wanted the Skipper to be large, imposing, and capable of yelling in rage. But, and this was key, the Skipper also had to be lovable. In an interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Schwartz was explicit in saying he wanted a teddy bear of a man. Someone who was big and round, but also imminently cuddly.

Luckily, Schwartz found Alan Hale, Jr., a reliable character actor whose career stretched back to the early 1930s. Hale's comic performance was spot on, infusing the Skipper with both comedic wrath and cuddly approachability.

It wasn't easy for Hale to land the part, though. Because Schwartz had such exacting standards for the character, every actor who auditioned for the part had to undergo a special test. It seems that Schwartz wrote a scene — not intended for use on the show — wherein the Skipper had to behave like a repellant bastard. If an actor could come across as lovable after such a scene, Schwartz knew he had a finalist. He details his struggles in his invaluable book "Inside Gilligan's Island: From Creation to Syndication."

In the book, Schwartz reiterated his struggles with casting the Skipper, writing:

"Instinctively, I knew the Skipper would be the hardest character to cast. Very often, when you believe something is going to be the most difficult, it turns out to be the easiest. Not in this case. The Skipper was, without doubt, the toughest casting job in 'Gilligan's Island.' The Skipper had to combine the gruff, forceful strength of a lion with the gentleness and warmth of a pussycat. You had to love the Skipper, even while he was bawling out the sympathetic, well-meaning Gilligan for some blunder."

There is a fine line between comedic cruelty and slapstick comedy, and Schwartz knew he had to walk it. It's funny when Oliver Hardy gets mad at Stan Laurel because you sense that both men are equally harmless. It's less funny when a wrathful man merely beats up a helpless schlub. Hence, Schwartz needed his special test scene to gauge an actor's cuddliness. He wanted someone, in his words, who could be as evil as Attila the Hun while still feeling like Edmund Gwenn from "Miracle on 34th Street." Schwartz continued: 

"I wrote a special test scene between the Skipper and Gillian. It wasn't in the script. It was a scene that made the Skipper as angry, unforgiving, and unsympathetic as possible. This uncompromisingly merciless scene was designed to make you hate the Skipper, no matter which actor played the part." 

It seems that Bob Denver and Alan Hale understood the chemistry that their roles required, and they were experienced enough comedians to provide it. It helped that Hale was, in real life, a very good-natured guy.

But the process took a long, long time. Schwartz doesn't relate exactly how many people auditioned for the Skipper, but he did recognize some actors who would go on to bigger and better things:

"Time after time, we videotaped that scene with one character actor after another. Many of them were well-known names who went on to become stars of other TV series. Like Carroll O'Connor, for example, who, I'm sure, is delighted the role of the Skipper escaped him."

O'Connor, of course, would go on to play Archie Bunker in the hit sitcom "All in the Family" in 1971. While O'Connor is a funny man, his "angry" shtick appeared to be based in real rage and disappointment. That wasn't what Schwartz was looking for in a near-slapstick comedy series like "Gilligan's Island."

Hale appeared in all 98 episode of "Gilligan's Island" and continued to work steadily on TV before retiring in 1988. He reprised his role as the Skipper in the 1974 animated series "The New Adventures of Gilligan" and in the surreal sci-fi spinoff "Gilligan's Planet" in 1982. He even made a cameo as the Skipper as late as 1987, appearing in a dream sequence on the sci-fi sitcom "ALF." It seems that Hale was not only good-natured and funny, but also very game.