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Ginger Grant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ginger Grant was a character in the 1960s television sitcom Gilligan's Island. Grant was a movie star, and would casually mention names of some of the biggest movie stars of the day, as co-stars or acquaintances, suggesting that she too was a great star.
Ginger Grant was portrayed by actress Tina Louise on the original television series and Judith Baldwin in the later TV-movies. The character name was taken from two stars of Hollywood's "Golden Era", Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant.
Louise has stated that the character as originally written was somewhat abrasive and sarcastic, however she argued that such a character would be out of place. She suggested the final characterisation which she described as a blend of Marilyn Monroe and Lucille Ball, and with a visual style inspired by Myrna Loy.
Ginger appeared in several episodes to be the desire of The Skipper (Alan Hale, Jr.) but as this was 1960s series television, the "relationship" was never allowed to develop beyond a mild flirtation. The Skipper chose Ginger as his preferred contestant in the "Miss Castaway Pageant" held on the island.
Ginger Grant, due to many prior film roles in Hollywood, spent her time on the island occasionally taking on the roles of chanteuse, fortune-teller, lab assistant, and psychoanalyst - as well as fronting the hastily-formed island musical trio: The Honeybees.
Ginger's fellow single female on the island and hence companion and rival was Mary Ann Summers (Dawn Wells), a simple, innocent farm girl from Kansas who was in many ways her opposite. The question "Ginger or Mary Ann?" is regarded to be a classic pop-psychological question when given to American men of a certain age as an insight into their characters, or at least their desires as regarding certain female stereotypes.
Tina Louise, for many years, regarded her casting as Ginger Grant as having adversely affected her subsequent career through typecasting her solely as a retro glamour queen. She refused to take part in the subsequent Gilligan's Island movies Rescue From Gilligan's Island (1978) and The Castaways on Gilligan's Island (1979) and was replaced by 12-years younger Judith Baldwin as Ginger.