Survivor

From TeeVeePedia, the Internet TV Encyclopedia.

Survivor (1961 - 1964) was a landmark CBS series, and one of the first popular reality television shows.

Under the guise of a three-hour scenic pleasure cruise, producers marooned a diverse cast of contestants on a seculded desert island and forced them to work together in a contest to see how quickly they could escape. The original contestants included:

• Jonas "Skipper" Grumby, a double-dutch champion turned tour boat captain.
• Wealthy industrialists Thurston and Lovey Howell.
• Model Ginger Grant, winner of CBS's "Ralston-Purina Fresh Face of 1963" contest.
• Roy Hinckley, a Bell Labs engineer quickly nicknamed "The Professor"
• His lab assistant, MIT grad student Mary Ann Summers
• And last but not least, unemployed dockworker Leslie "Little Buddy" Gilligan, who would become the show's most popular and notorious figure.

Initially, it seemed like the castaways might manage to escape from the island in a matter of weeks. The CBS camera crews filming the action had promised not to interfere, and had supplied the island with a variety of useful tools and an inordinate number of coconuts. However, Gilligan quickly became obsessed with the notion that he was now famous and on television. The camera crews surreptitiously filmed him sneaking off at night to sabotage the other castaways' various attempts at escape, and viewers tuned in by the millions as a simple six-episode experiment was extended to an extraordinary three seasons.

In the course of the series, viewers were also treated to Skipper's bizarre habit of skinny-dipping in full view of the cameras, increasing tensions between Mary Ann and Ginger, and the dramatic near-death of Thurston Howell following a coconut-related head injury. Producers were forced to end the series in 1967 after Ginger caught Gilligan hacking apart the ropes that held together a makeshift palm-tree raft. Gilligan's subsequent attempt to murder Ginger, and the castaways near-lynching of him when they discovered his role in the sabotage, caused producers to step in and end the series, awarding each castaway $1 million in exchange for a binding agreement not to sue the network.

CBS launched a sitcom version of the series, Gilligan's Island, in 1964, watering down the harsher elements of the original series, and transforming the Gilligan character into a lovable bumbler instead of a scheming sociopath. The series was notable for being actress Charlotte Rae's first TV appearance.

Leslie Gilligan drowned in a boating accident in 1969, in an apparent attempt to return to the island and regain his rapidly lost fame.

CBS attempted to launch a revival of Survivor in the summer of 2000, but it lasted only six episodes.