Why Jayne Mansfield Didn’t Play Ginger Grant On Gilligan’s Island

Fans of “Gilligan’s Island” are likely intimately familiar with the show’s original pilot, which was shot in 1963, but not aired to the public until 1992. The pilot, called “Marooned,” featured Bob Denver, Alan Hale, Jim Backus, and Natalie Schafer (as Gilligan, the Skipper, Mr. Howell, and Mrs. Howell respectively), but also starred three rudimentary characters that didn’t carry over into the completed series. The Professor was originally a high school teacher played by John Gabriel. The Mary Ann character was a secretary named Bunny (Nancy McCarthy), and Ginger was still named Ginger but was … another secretary. She was played by Kit Smythe.

Eventually, the show was reworked, and creator Sherwood Schwartz wrote a tighter, better pilot with the Professor (Russell Johnson), Mary Ann (Dawn Wells), and Ginger (Tina Louise) that we all know and love today. 

In Schwartz’s biography “Inside Gilligan’s Island: From Creation to Syndication,” he mentioned that Louise was a little difficult to get along with off-camera, as she had assumed she was hired to be the star of the show, and not a member of a seven-person ensemble. Louise also objected to Schwartz’s version of “the movie star” Ginger Grant, as she was envisioned to be a more insidious seductress. Louise insisted that Ginger be made more into a glamour hound, modeled after Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield. It was the right choice. Ginger is a better character when she’s helpful and fame-obsessed. 

As it so happened, modeling Ginger after Jayne Mansfield was apropos. In 1963, Mansfield was starring in a long-running production of the play “Bus Stop,” and was experiencing a wild shift in her personal life when she was offered the role of Ginger on “Gilligan’s Island.” Taking the (perhaps bad) advice of her new husband, Mansfield turned the role down. This was all detailed on the website Rewind the ’50s. 

Mansfield came to fame in the early 1950s on the stage and TV for her bubbly sense of humor and her dazzling good looks. The actress was best known for playing “dumb blonde” characters and came to help invent a certain kind of cinematic archetype. Mansfield was also known for being a model, and appeared nude in a 1955 issue of Playboy, bringing both her and the magazine into the public view. She is often described as a sex symbol. 

In January of 1964, Mansfield was appearing in a long-running production of “Bus Stop” with her then-husband, Mickey Hargitay. The pair had just welcomed a baby daughter, Mariska, but their marriage was famously on the rocks. Mansfield had fallen in love with her “Bus Stop” co-star Matt Cimber, and she hastily divorced Hargitay in August, to marry Comber almost immediately thereafter. It was a whirlwind of a time for Mansfield, whose career was experiencing a high. 

Mansfield, however, was concerned about her public image. She had played sexbombs and “dumb blondes” so often that she felt pigeonholed, and wanted to branch out as an actress. When CBS reached out to her about playing Ginger on “Gilligan’s Island,” she was reluctant. Ginger, to her eyes, was too similar to the seductresses she had spent the last decade playing. The story goes that Cimber, listening to her pleas for career diversity, advised her to turn down the role. She did. 

Tina Louise got the part instead, and the rest is history. 

Of course, it’s easy to imagine a parallel world where Mansfield did take the job, and was in Los Angeles in 1967 while “Gilligan’s Island” was in its third season. That way, she shouldn’t have been on that Louisiana road in 1967 to experience her fatal car accident. Mansfield and Louise both, however, have lengthy legacies and firm places in the pop culture firmament. They are both immortal.