Before launching into 2015, we at Murray’s Review are reviewing our 2014 notebooks for stories we didn’t have time to cover this year.

Sherwood Schwartz receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 2008 ~ Credit: Nicolj

We all (or those of us of a certain age) know the story of “Gilligan’s Island,” which ran on U.S. TV from 1964 to 1967.

A chartered boat tour in the Hawaiian islands, given by a blustery captain and his hapless first mate on the S. S. Minnow, ran into a typhoon and was shipwrecked on an uncharted island. The tour group consisted of a millionaire couple, a sexy female movie star, a farm girl and a science professor. The show followed their efforts to live on the island while trying to be rescued from it. Hilarity ensues.

But there was more to it than that, according to a new book on sitcoms. In Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to Community, Saul Austerlitz writes that Sherwood Schwartz, the show’s creator, wanted to find a scenario that would force disparate characters together and unable to leave. “All my shows, actually, are how do people learn to get along with each other?” he quotes Schwartz as saying.
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