‘Gilligan,’ ‘Brady’ creator dies at 94
Shows became part of American culture
LOS ANGELES – Sherwood Schwartz, writer-creator of two of the best-remembered TV series of the 1960s and 1970s, “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” has died at age 94.
Schwartz died Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was being treated for an intestinal infection and underwent several surgeries.
Success was the hallmark of Sherwood Schwartz’s career. Neither “Gilligan” nor “Brady” pleased the critics, but both managed to reverberate in viewers’ heads through the years as few such series did, lingering in the language and inspiring parodies, spinoffs and countless standup comedy jokes.
Schwartz had given up a career in medical science to write jokes for Bob Hope’s radio show. He went on to write for other radio and TV shows.
He dreamed up “Gilligan’s Island” in 1964. It was a Robinson Crusoe story about seven disparate travelers who are marooned on a deserted Pacific Island after their small boat wrecks in a storm.
TV critics hooted at “Gilligan’s Island.” Audiences adored its far-out comedy. Schwartz insisted that the show had social meaning along with the laughs: “I knew that by assembling seven different people and forcing them to live together, the show would have great philosophical implications.”
TV writers usually looked upon “The Brady Bunch” as a sugarcoated view of American family life.
The series lasted from 1969 to 1974, but it had an amazing afterlife. It was followed by three one-season spinoffs. “The Brady Bunch Movie” was a surprise box-office hit in 1995.