Move over, Mr. And Mrs. Howell! You may have had the most money on the island, but sweet small town Kansas girl Mary Ann was the castaway with the really big bucks in the long run. In fact, Mary Ann Summers, a.k.a. Dawn Wells was the only castaway to make millions of dollars off the syndication rights for the popular television show Gilligan's Island which aired for only three seasons on CBS but filmed and aired a total of 99 episodes. In syndication, it has created generations of fans. It has also made Dawn Wells a millionaire.
Why was she the only castaway to score such a deal? Well, the original pilot had no Mary Ann. Instead, it had a character by the name of Bunny played by Nancy McCarthy, whose character was a stereotypical dumb blonde. When Wells was hired, her original contract offered to pay her $1200 per week plus the same residual contract offered to the other cast members (payment for the first four re-runs). Wells, however, was married to her agent, Larry Rosen, who insisted that she would make virtually no money on that “deal” should the show become a hit. He pushed for more residuals. Thinking that the show would probably flop anyway, CBS executives humored Wells and her husband/manager, giving her a portion of the profits of the show well into the future, beyond what they ever dreamed possible.
Consequently, Dawn Wells and Sherwood Schwartz, the show’s creator, are the only people to profit long-term from the series. The show aired until it was replaced for the 1967-68 television season at the last minute by a little show called Gunsmoke. Wells’ marriage to Rosen also lasted only that long as well. The two divorced in 1967.
