Actor Bob Denver Passes Beloved Gilligan's Island star was 70

Actor Bob Denver

Winston-Salem, NC – Bob Denver, best known for his endearingly befuddled portrayal of first mate Willie Gilligan on the 1960s television comedy Gilligan’s Island, died Friday, his agent confirmed today. The veteran actor was 70. 

Denver, who underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery earlier this year, died at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Carolina, where he was being treated for cancer, his agent, Mike Eisenstadt, told the Associated Press.

 In a statement released by Eisenstadt, Denver’s wife, Dreama, who was with the actor and his children Patrick, Megan, Emily and Colin when he passed, said, “Bob is the finest human being I have ever known. He was my everything, and I will love him forever.” 

As its jaunty theme song memorably recounted, Gilligan’s Island was the story of five passengers and two crew members whose “three-hour tour” on a tiny boat called the Minnow was struck by foul weather, leaving them stranded on a remote island with no means of communication. As Gilligan, the beleaguered recipient of endless abuse from the gruff Skipper, played by Alan Hale, Jr., Denver found his most enduring role.

Bob Denver as beloved "Gilligan" of the perennial Gilligan's Island series.

Indeed, although Gilligan’s Island was only on the air from 1964-1967, endless reruns of its 98 episodes made it arguably one of the most famous TV series of all time. Denver, who never shed the association with the slow-witted seaman. appeared in various live-action and animated permutations of the series over the ensuing years.

By the time he was cast as Gilligan, however, Denver was already well-known to television audiences thanks to his performance as Maynard G. Krebs, the goateed beatnik friend of Dwayne Hickman’s Dobie in the The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which aired from 1959 to 1963. The blithely indolent Maynard, a caricature of the era’s beret-wearing, bongo-playing hipsters, claimed to be allergic to work.

Although Denver also appeared in feature films and on stage (he succeeded Woody Allen as the lead in the Broadway production of Allen’s play Play It Again, Sam), it was on television that he made his greatest impact. After Gilligan’s Island, he starred in the sitcoms The Good Guys and Dusty’s Trail, as well as the Saturday morning children’s show, Far Out Space Nuts.

Born Jan. 9, 1935, in New Rochelle, N.Y., Denver attended high school in Texas and was studying pre-law at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles when he became interested in acting. Before achieving success as a performer, he worked as a mail carrier and schoolteacher. 

Denver was married three times. With his third wife, Dreama, he hosted a syndicated radio show, Weekend with Denver and Denver, on which the couple provided comedic accompaniment to a playlist of rock ’n’ roll oldies.