Missouri Bicentennial: Dawn Wells

There is a little know connection between landlocked Missouri and a magical, tropical island—specifically Gilligan’s Island. Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on the show, is a graduate of Stephens College in Columbia.

Wells was born in Reno, Nevada, on October 18, 1938. Her parents were Joe Wells, a real estate developer and business owner, and Evelyn Steinbrenner. The couple divorce when she was four years old, but both were active in raising her, though Joe Wells moved to Los Vegas and was married a total of four times.

Wells entered Stephens as a pre-med student majoring in chemistry. Dislocated knees prevented from taking physical education classes—and ended a childhood dream of being a ballerina—so she enrolled in a drama class instead. She loved acting. She continued to perform at Stephens until she finished an associate degree and transferred to the University of Washington, where she studied theater arts and design. She took some time off from college in 1959 and 1960 to win Miss Nevada and compete in the Miss America pageant.

After school, she started working professionally as an actress. She had many television appearances in the 1960s including Maverick, Wagon Train, Cheyenne, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Surfside Six and The Joey Bishop Show. She met a lot of other actors, casting managers and others in television during her many auditions at Desilu Studios. She was type cast as the sweet ingénue on television, but there were a lot of guest roles for that type, so she found work regularly. She found more variety of roles touring in the theatre.

Wells married talent agent Larry Rosen in 1962. They divorced in 1967.

She landed the role of Mary Ann Summers on Gilligan’s Island in 1964. For better or worse, it is what she has been known for ever since. The show only ran for three seasons—the first filmed in black and white—but it has been broadcast in syndication ever since. The popularity of the show prompted three television movies that brought Wells and her castmates back to play the castaways: Rescue From Gilligan’s Island in 1978, The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island the next year and The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island in 1981. Two animated versions of the show aired, The New Adventures of Gilligan in the 1970s and Gilligan’s Planet in the 1980s (I remember seeing this show), with Wells providing the voice of Mary Ann for both series and also voicing Ginger Grant for Planet.

In spite of the popularity of the show in syndication, the cast made very little money from it. Their residual payments were small and they ended only a few years after the original run.

After the original Gilligan’s Island was cancelled, she continued to act in television and film. She appeared on episodes of The Wild Wild West, Columbo, Vega$, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Rosanne, ALF, Baywatch, Growing Pains, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants (as the voice of Gumbalina Toothington) and other shows—more than 150 in total. Some of these were Gilligan’s Island-themed episodes in which she reprised Mary Ann. She was in a few motion pictures: Winterhawk, The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Return to Boggy Creek, Super Sucker, The New Interns, Palm Springs Weekend, It’s Our Time, Lover’s Knot, Soul Mates, Forever For Now and Silent But Deadly. She ran a production company and founded the Idaho Film and Television Institute. She also organized the film festival SpudFest, which promoted Idaho potatoes.

Wells had a long career performing on stage, appearing in more than 60 production on and off Broadway. Some of these plays were Chapter Two, They’re Playing Our Song, Fatal Attraction, The Odd Couple, Steel Magnolias and The Vagina Monologues. Her first role after the end of Gilligan’s Island was as a prostitute in The Owl and the Pussycat, greatly different from the innocent girl next door Mary Ann.

Even with her varied stage roles, Mary Ann become something of a brand for Wells. In addition to revisiting the character for television, she published a themed cookbook, Mary Ann's Gilligan's Island Cookbook.

She returned to Stephens in 2013 to film segments for “50 Years of Mary Ann.” A tribute for the 50th anniversary of Gilligan’s Island, it was released in September 2014. While she was there, she toured the campus and met theater students and faculty. For the 55th anniversary of the show in 2019, she released a revised edition of her book What Would Mary Ann Do?: A Guide to Life, originally published in 2014.

Wells died from COVID-19 on December 30, 2020, in Los Angeles at the age of 82. She also had dementia. She was survived by her stepsister Weslee Wells. The only member of the Gilligan’s Island cast remaining alive is Tina Louise.

I'm running a little late on my schedule for these articles. I should catch up soon and finish out 52 articles I planned at the start of this Missouri statehood bicentennial year.

Coming Soon: Dick Van Dyke