Tina Louise’s instant stardom reached its peak when she started to work in the television show Gilligan’s Island as a Ginger. The native of New York became a great star as well as a singer and model. She got praise for her looks more than her acting on screen.
Louise is only the cast member of Gilligan’s Island who is still alive. The TV show totally changed her life and the talented actor didn’t rely on acting only. She is now as strong as it is really hard to believe that she isn’t a few decades younger!
Tina Louise was born on 11 February 1934 in New York. Her father ran a candy store and her mother was a fashion model. Tina started her screen career at a very early age. She started her work in an ad for her father’s candy store when she was only 2 years old.
When she was 4 years old her parents divorced, the wrong decision of her parents made her childhood very difficult.
“My path was very unusual. I lived with a lot of different cousins and aunts and strangers and so forth and so on, sort of a gypsy kind of childhood,” she told Authority Magazine in 2019.
Tina was not too interested in joining the Show Biz but sometime before when she went to Miami University, a decision totally changed everything.
“I saw a friend of mine who had gotten a part in a play on Broadway and he was the same age as me and I was very impressed,” Tina Louise told Authority Magazine.
“My mother took me backstage and I just really enjoyed it,” she added. “And the very fact that my friend was in it gave me a little push to just proceed. I told my mother that I wanted to leave the University because the drama department wasn’t sufficient for me.”
Tina’s mother realized that her daughter was ambitious about her acting career, in the drama department, and she appreciated her devotion. She started to go to the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan, New York, which she said “was, and still is, a wonderful school. “
During her studies of craft at Neighbourhood Play House School of Theater she also started modeling.
At a nightclub, she was also a singer. Her first appearance was in the Bette Davis musical Two’s Company captivated the people and finally she came into sight in Playboy Magazine.
Her first music album ”It’s Time for Tina” was released in 1957, she worked in theaters, and after that, she was able to get smaller parts in movies.
However, her life took a twist in 1958.
Griselda Walden in the drama film God’s Little Acre made her a Hollywood star
Movie reviews were outstanding and Tina won the Golden Globe Award for the New Star of the Year.
“It was incredible,” she told Forbes. “The movie ended up in the Venice Film Festival. I went abroad. There were all these people around taking care of me. I didn’t have to worry about anything. We sat in the theater, and I got bright red roses [laughs]. I’m saying, ‘Why did you give me roses? You should give them to the writer, the director – somebody else.’”
Tina Louise never chooses the typical way of Hollywood. She made her own way. She concentrated on her Broadway work and also started work in some Italian movies.
On her return to Europe, she started studying with the American greatest Director and actor, Lee Strasberg at the Actor’s Studio.
“Everything Lee Strasberg said was important. He’d pick up your arm and see if—and how — it would drop to determine the level of relaxation in your body and spirit,” Louise told Esquire. “He’d say, ‘Make a sound.’ Some people would start to laugh and that would sometimes turn to tears. You didn’t have to be sad — it all came from deep relaxation.”
She added, “I learned a lot from Lee about deep relaxation to get at something you were working toward. And then I found myself on Gilligan’s Island, where somebody’s telling you, ‘Go to the right.’ ‘Go to the left.’ That was an adjustment.”
Gilligan’s Island made her high profile in Hollywood. Before her arrival on Gilligan’s Island, she was performing musical comedy Fade Out-Fade In with Carol Burnett on Broadway.
Firstly her role ”Ginger” was played by Kit Smythe. But they choose Tina Louise for this bolt from the blue.
“I always had fun with the show. Ginger flirted. Flirting is fun! Flirting is good;” Louise told the NY Post.
Tina hung on with CBS for all three seasons which consisted of 98 episodes.
You must be amazed to hear that fans had admired her for decades such a beautiful character as a ginger. They even sent her letters of appreciation.
“I get letters every day at my house. I appreciate the fact that they love the series. I once had somebody come up to me in a restaurant, she said she was sorry to interrupt, but that her husband was dying of cancer and liked to look at the show every single day,” Tina Louise said.
When the series became too popular among people she had to make a decision;
“The writers didn’t want us to get off the Island,” Louise explained. “The show was in the Top 10 or 20 when it ended. The [network] president wasn’t happy [with the 1967] schedule. He wanted Gunsmoke to come back on. So they took our show off,” she added. “In syndication, it just went on and on and on … and on and on and on.
“When it did end I just got back to what I was doing. Which was more dramatic roles,” she added.
She continued her acting and her passion for music. She performed in Kojak in 1974, the 1975 movie The Stepford Wives, in the 1987 comedy OC and Stiggs, and in the rockabilly satire film Johnny Sue in 1992, starring Brad Pitt.
She never stopped herself at the age of retirement and also performed in a spiritual drama ”Tapestry” in 2014.
She wrote many books. Her children’s book When I Grow Up in 2007 was very special, and she developed some literacy programs.
But sadly, over the passing years, she saw many of her co-actors die before her eyes.
Tina Louise is the last surviving member of Gilligan’s Island. In 2020, her castmate and friend in Gilligan’s Island, Dawn Wells, died from Covid-19.
“Dawn was a very wonderful person. I want people to remember her as someone who always had a smile on her face,” Louise told the New York Post.
Tina married a very famous late TV talk show host Les Crane. The marriage lasted only 4 years and they divorced in 1971. Caprice Crane is their only daughter who’s moved on to become a producer, screenwriter, and novelist. Today, Tina has two grandchildren,” whom she calls “my two beautiful babies.”
she said about her age;
“I’m open. I’m open. I’m open to life,” Louise said. “These days, I’m still not going out very far. If I go out with a friend, it’s once in two weeks.”
Meanwhile, she didn’t want to give her age when interviewed by the New York Post in 2021.
Now Louise is 90 years old and she looks as beautiful today as she was on Gilligan’s Island.