What Happened To Dawn Wells After Gilligan's Island?

Who do you think of when you hear the term "girl next door"? For the millions of people who grew up watching "Gilligan's Island," the answer is no doubt Dawn Wells. Wells played down-to-earth bombshell Mary Ann Summers for all three seasons of the 1960s sitcom, then continued to reprise the role in various projects for years to come.

Unlike some stars of classic TV shows, she never seemed to have a problem with being best-known for one role, and gave interviews about her time on "Gilligan's Island" for the rest of her life. According to series creator Sherwood Schwartz's book "Inside Gilligan's Island," young girls came to Wells for life advice even decades after the show had ended. "I'm still Mary Ann, I guess," he recalled her telling him.

Wells earned her role on "Gilligan's Island" around 1964, after a failed pilot the year before had conceived of a similar character named "Bunny." Schwartz wrote that her casting was a no-brainer, especially after Tina Louise had been cast as a character who would often be seen as her opposite: the movie star Ginger. "[Wells'] energetic, pretty girl-next-door look made a wonderful contrast with the tall, glamorous, sexy Tina Louise," he wrote, making the same comparison that countless fans would make for years to come.

Immediately following the end of "Gilligan's Island" (which Wells herself once said was due to the un-cancelation of "Gunsmoke"), Wells made moves to stop herself from being typecast. She took a role as a sex worker in the 1970 Buck Henry-penned film "The Owl and the Pussycat," a move that she later told Smashing Interviews was meant to break her free of the America's sweetheart mold. "Mary Ann was a good girl. She was polite. She was a hard worker. She would be your best friend. [...] But the first thing you want to do is break that character and go do something else," Wells explained. She also helped shake off the Mary Ann image with a decades-long stage career, which included appearances in plays like "They're Playing Our Song" and "Love, Loss, and What I Wore."

Other post-"Gilligan's Island" entries into Wells' filmography included the 1970 serial killer shocker "The Town That Dreaded Sundown," the teen comedy "High School U.S.A.," and the Bigfoot movie "Return to Boggy Creek." On television, she took guest star spots (sometimes recurring ones) on shows including "Bonanza," "The Love Boat," and "Growing Pains," and she (somehow) played Mary Ann again on "ALF," "Baywatch," and other shows. She reprised her role for three "Gilligan's Island" TV movies, as well as the animated sci-fi spinoff series "Gilligan's Planet," which saw the original castaways crash-landed in space.

Wells stayed busy even when she wasn't acting. She executive produced five projects in her lifetime, and was even once credited for providing wardrobe for the 2012 horror-comedy "Silent But Deadly." She authored several books in her lifetime, including a "Gilligan's Island" themed cookbook, a hybrid self-help-memoir titled "What Would Mary Ann Do?" and a Betty and Veronica comic (the two characters are, after all, the Mary Ann and Ginger of the Archieverse). She also worked as a marketing ambassador for classic sitcom channel MeTV, hosting their series "The Summer of Me" and appearing regularly in ads on the network.

Wells was famously charitable and made headlines for over the years for giving back to the community. In the early '90s, the LA Times reported that Wells was launching an accessible clothing line tailored to the elderly and disabled. "Why shouldn't the elderly, who have no one, be treated as the young people they were 30 years ago?" Wells reasoned, noting that self-esteem and style go a long way for people as they age. The project continued on for years under the name Wishing Wells Collections, and it was just one of Wells' humanitarian efforts. According to the Idaho Statesman, Wells lived in Idaho for years and founded the nonprofit Idaho Film and Television Institute. She served on the Idaho Film Industry Advisory Committee and taught acting classes, too.

Wells' charity support continued through the end of her life. She passed away in December 2020 from the COVID-19 virus, and her obituary in Variety invited remembrance donations to be made to the Tennessee elephant refuge Elephant Sanctuary, Reno, Nevada's science center and discovery museum, and the Shambala Preserve in California. A few years before her death, Wells was hospitalized with an infection, but expressed some guilt when a friend made her a GoFundMe for medical bills. "I can handle it! I can get a job and go to work," she told Inside Edition, but she also admitted that facing a medical crisis in her later years wasn't easy. "It is scary," she told the outlet, echoing her own words from decades earlier. "If you don't have a family or a husband or anybody that's got a bankroll for you, it's expensive."

After her passing, Wells was memorialized by those who knew her, including "Gilligan's Island" co-star Louise and Drema Denver, wife to the series' late star, Bob Denver. Denver spoke highly of Wells in an interview with Inside Edition, saying, "She was a really fun, inquisitive, curious, wonderful person." It's no wonder Wells ultimately embraced her legacy as Mary Ann; she clearly shared the same open-hearted nature as the character who made her a classic TV icon.