When did Gilligan’s Island start being photographed in color?

Although it only aired for three seasons from 1964 to 1967, all 98 episodes of “Gilligan’s Island” ran in syndication for years, gaining the sitcom a loyal following across generations. But if you belong to the generation that watched the series when it first aired, you may remember the first season debuting in black and white.

A decade before “Gilligan’s Island” hit the airwaves, NBC became the first American network to carry a coast-to-coast color broadcast, broadcasting the Tournament of Roses show in Pasadena, California nationwide on New Year’s Day 1954. But The network that CBS would later host “Gilligan’s Island” beat NBC when it reached the first-ever color broadcast in the United States, although it was not a coast-to-coast broadcast like the show had been. Tournament of Roses in 1954, and CBS’s broadcast of the musical variety special “Premier Show” in 1951 was the first commercial color program to be shown in American broadcasting over a network of five stations on the East Coast, and the program may have been somewhat premature as it had not One therefore needed a television set to watch the CBS network’s sequential field color television system at the time.

By the end of the 1950s, color televisions were a little more widespread, but even then the majority of American households still watched in black and white. By the early 1960s, NBC was regularly broadcasting in color, but other networks stuck to monochrome, with CBS only broadcasting individual programs in color. It would take until the late 1960s for prime-time networks to switch to mostly color transmissions, and until the mid-1970s for nearly half of American households to own color televisions.

So, as “Gilligan’s Island” aired from 1964 to 1967, it was drawn into an increasing shift toward color, moving from monochrome to color photography after its first season. But if most homes in the United States still had black and white televisions at that time, why did they do so? CBS – who wanted to get rid of the titular island from “Gilligan’s Island” – Make the switch?

Although it was later in color when shown in syndication, the 36-episode first season of “Gilligan’s Island” aired in monochrome in 1964. But when the second season debuted in September 1965, things changed. Firstly, while the first season’s theme song, “Gilligan’s Island”, was sung by a folk group The Wellingtons (who later portrayed the fictional band The Mosquitos In the series), Season 2 debuted with a brand new theme song. Perhaps most importantly, it marks a shift in the series from black-and-white photography to color.

Subsequently, the third season of the series was also filmed in color, as were the three TV movies: 1978’s “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island”, its 1979 sequel, “The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island”, and 1981’s “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island”. “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island” (which had an almost entirely different basketball team). But what prompted CBS and series creator Sherwood Schwartz to switch to color in 1965, especially when America, despite the growing popularity of color television, was still in the black-and-white era?

There seem to be several stories about why “Gilligan’s Island” was shot in black and white in its first season. According to A a fana special feature included with the DVD box set of the show features series creator Sherwood Schwartz noting that it was only due to the fact that “there was nothing in color on TV.” At the same time, however, actor Professor Russell Johnson said “colour photography was very expensive”.

In a way, both shots are fairly accurate. At the time “Gilligan’s Island” aired, color was the general direction television was heading anyway. On September 24, 1961, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color debuted on NBC, introducing color to a new generation and convincing more people to go out and buy color televisions. This trend continued throughout the 1960s and both ABC and CBS decided to switch to color in 1965, adding “color” bumpers to the ends of their programs’ title cards. This, of course, was the same year that Season 2 of “Gilligan’s Island” aired, so it seems that the series simply ended along the line between the old standard and the new.

At the same time, as one Redditor He also noted that attempts to colorize the monochrome opening season left much to be desired, with many commentators noting how important color was to the show once the switch was made and lamenting the desaturated look of the colored episodes. until Sherwood Schwartz himself takes credit for the success of “Gilligan’s Island.” to the visual style of the characters, which is clearly defined by their different colored uniforms. Unfortunately, Schwartz’s show found itself airing just a year before each season was scheduled to be filmed in color.