A couple of weeks ago I featured Tina Louise, the actress who played Ginger Grant on "Gilligan's Island." Today, in the spirit of equal time, I present the artist formerly known as Mary Ann Summers. :-)
Dawn Wells had appeared in a few television shows in the early sixties before accepting the role that made her famous in "Gilligan's Island." As the Kansas farm girl Mary Ann, she provided a down-to-earth sweetness in contrast to the Hollywood glamour of Tina Louise's Ginger.
She went on to have a very successful stage career in the seventies and the eighties, but she has remained a keeper of the "Gilligan's Island" flame, defending the sitcom against criticism and hosting a 2001 TV special on the series that was part biopic, part documentary.
In the forty-odd years that "Gilligan's Island" has been in syndication, male fans have always divided over whom they liked better - Ginger or Mary Ann. Where do I come down on that controversial question? Oh ho, you're not going to get an answer out of me on that! :-D Civil wars have been started over more trivial issues.
Fun fact: Wells, born and raised in Reno, Nevada, represented Nevada at the 1960 Miss America pageant. Today, she's more famous than Lynda Lee Mead, the woman who actually won that year. (I looked it up.)
Dawn Wells had appeared in a few television shows in the early sixties before accepting the role that made her famous in "Gilligan's Island." As the Kansas farm girl Mary Ann, she provided a down-to-earth sweetness in contrast to the Hollywood glamour of Tina Louise's Ginger.
She went on to have a very successful stage career in the seventies and the eighties, but she has remained a keeper of the "Gilligan's Island" flame, defending the sitcom against criticism and hosting a 2001 TV special on the series that was part biopic, part documentary.
In the forty-odd years that "Gilligan's Island" has been in syndication, male fans have always divided over whom they liked better - Ginger or Mary Ann. Where do I come down on that controversial question? Oh ho, you're not going to get an answer out of me on that! :-D Civil wars have been started over more trivial issues.
Fun fact: Wells, born and raised in Reno, Nevada, represented Nevada at the 1960 Miss America pageant. Today, she's more famous than Lynda Lee Mead, the woman who actually won that year. (I looked it up.)
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