Actress Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on the classic TV sitcom “Gilligan’s Island”, died on Wednesday at the age of 82, according to her publicist.
Wells died in Los Angeles due to complications from COVID-19, publicist Harlan Boll said in a Facebook post announcing his death.
Wells was one of the last surviving members of the show’s cast that featured three women and four men stranded on a desert island after the sinking of SS Minnow.
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Wells “passed peacefully (Wednesday) in the morning, painlessly, as a result of complications due to COVID,” said Boll in a Facebook post. In the post, Boll referred to her as America’s favorite castaway.
“With more than 540,000 fans on her Facebook page and fan clubs in the United States, her followers have remained loyal, ‘” Boll wrote. In a world where industry and society have celebrated their ‘bad girls’, Mary Ann remains, for many, the breath of fresh air as the ‘good girl’. “
Dawn would say that Mary Ann fits in today as she did three generations ago, because she is timeless.
Harlan Boll
He also described his life as much more than his role on ‘Gilligan’s Island’. Wells also had many acting credits in film and theater, and was a teacher and motivational speaker, said Boll.
Born in Reno, Wells was Miss Nevada at the 1959 Miss America pageant before moving to Hollywood and starting appearing on a number of shows, including “Bonanza”, “Maverick” and “77 Sunset Strip”.
Actress Dawn Wells appears with a promotional poster for “Gilligan’s Island”. Bill Down photo courtesy of The Hollywood Museum.
But she is best known as the healthy Kansas farmer, Mary Ann Summers, in Sherwood Schwartz’s “Gilligan’s Island”, the story of seven castaways and their series of comic accidents on an unknown island. The program was shown from 1964 to 1967, but has lived for generations through distribution and continues to air on MeTV. The show was also transformed into a series of films made for TV.
Her wardrobe on the show, including a wool dress and high-waisted shorts, are both on display in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Museum.
Tina Louise – who played the star Ginger – is the only survivor of the original cast. The sitcom also starred Bob Denver, such as Gilligan, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer and Russell Johnson.
Instead of flowers, donations can be made on behalf of the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee, the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum or the Shambala Reserve, said Boll.