What Happened To Natalie Schafer After Gilligan's Island?

Prior to "Gilligan's Island," Natalie Schafer had a professional acting career that lasted for decades. When she was still in her 20s, Schafer began appearing in numerous Broadway productions, often in smaller roles, and rarely in a play that ran for a very long time. She was an expert in playing a certain kind of high-society bourgeoisie biddy, and tended to play comedically clueless archetypes. Beginning in the 1940s, Schafer started to appear in films as well, appearing in multiple features a year. In the 1950s, she stretched into television, and was soon playing guest characters on many of the hottest anthology shows of the day.

At some point along the way, Shafer began telling people that she was 12 years younger than she actually was, likely hoping to avoid a stubborn, unjust stigma in Hollywood against older women. She had a stipulation in her contract that she receive no extreme closeups, and that she not be asked to do anything too physically strenuous, largely to cover her age. In 1964, Schafer auditioned for the sitcom "Gilligan's Island," intending only to score a free Hawaiian vacation. Schafer was reportedly upset when "Gilligan's Island" was picked up, as now she had to commit to a show she felt was a little dumb.

Fortunately for her, "Gilligan's Island" became her best-known gig, and her character, Lovey Howell, became the new standard for the rich ladies she had spent the bulk of her career playing. The show proved to be incredibly lucrative, and her resentments naturally began to dissipate. 

After three seasons, "Gilligan's Island" was canceled, although it did continue periodically in the form of TV movies and animated shows until the early 1980s. Schafer appears in all of those, too. She also had a healthy, continuous career after 1967.

Schafer's career wasn't interrupted by "Gilligan's Island," and she continued to find work, mostly in singular episodes of popular TV shows. After leaving the island, she almost immediately appeared in an episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies," as well as "Mayberry, RFD," "Mannix," and "Love, American Style." She was in "The Brady Bunch," "Holmes and Yoyo," and "The Love Boat." She would do anything, continuing a career pattern that she had stuck to for decades. Sometimes her auditions would lead her to small jobs, sometimes to larger ones. She was in the 1975 feature film "The Day of the Locust." 

And Schafer continued on the same TV track well into the 1980s, turning up in that decade's hit shows as well. She took gigs in "Three's Company," "CHiPs," and "Simon & Simon." She was in the comedy film "Beverly Hills Brats" in 1989. Her final acting gig was in the bonkers horror movie "I'm Dangerous Tonight," a Tobe Hooper film about a woman who wears a haunted dress (!). 

Schafer passed away that same year due to liver cancer. It was only when she died that many of her friends learned that she was 90 years old, and not 78 like she claimed. Friends also learned after her death that she had once wrestled with a bout of breast cancer. She beat the disease at the time, and told no one she was ever sick. Schafer willed over $1.5 million to the Lillian Booth Actors Home, an assisted living facility in New Jersey. It was thereafter named after her. Schafer's ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean, a similar burial as her "Gilligan's Island" co-star, Alan Hale, who died the same year. 

Hollywood couldn't survive without hard-working, dedicated character actors like Natalie Schafer. Some actors are pros at playing very particular types of characters, and Schafer was the "rich lady" for generations. Well done.