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Tina Louise
Louise in 1964
Born	Tina Louise Blacker (1934-02-11) February 11, 1934 (age 85) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, singer, author
Years active	1952–2004, 2014–present
Spouse(s)	Les Crane (m. 1966; div. 1971)
Children	Caprice Crane

Tina Louise (born February 11, 1934) is an American actress best known for playing movie star Ginger Grant in the CBS television situation comedy Gilligan's Island. She began her career on stage during the mid-1950s, before landing her breakthrough role in 1958 drama film God's Little Acre for which she received Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.

Louise had starring roles in a number of Hollywood movies, including The Trap, The Hangman, Day of the Outlaw, and For Those Who Think Young. Louise later returned to film, appearing in The Wrecking Crew, The Happy Ending, and The Stepford Wives (1975).

Early life

Tina Blacker was born in New York City. By the time she was four years of age, her parents had divorced.^[1]

An only child, she was raised by her mother, Sylvia Horn (née Myers) Blacker (1916–2011), a fashion model. Tina's father, Joseph Blacker, was a candy store owner in Brooklyn^[2][1] and later an accountant.^[3] The name "Louise" was allegedly added during her senior year in high school when she mentioned to her drama teacher that she was the only girl in the class without a middle name. He selected the name "Louise" and it stuck.^[1] She attended Miami University in Ohio.^[4]

Career

Early work

At the early age of just two years, Tina got her first role, after being seen in an ad for her father's candy store. She played numerous roles until she decided it was best to focus on school work. By the age of 17, Louise began studying acting, singing and dancing. She studied acting under Sanford Meisner at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan. During her early acting years, she was offered modeling jobs, including as a rising starlet, who along with Jayne Mansfield, was a product advocate in the 1958 Frederick's of Hollywood catalog, and appeared on the cover of several pinup magazines such as Adam, Sir! and Modern Man. Her later pictorials for Playboy (May 1958; April 1959) were arranged by Columbia Pictures studio in an effort to further promote the young actress.^{[citation needed]}

Louise with Gene Barry from the television series Burke's Law (1964).

Her acting debut came in 1952 in the Bette Davis musical revue Two's Company,^[4] followed by roles in other Broadway productions, such as John Murray Anderson's Almanac, The Fifth Season, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? She appeared in such early live television dramas as Studio One, Producers' Showcase, and Appointment with Adventure. In 1957, she appeared on Broadway in the hit musical Li'l Abner. Her album, It's Time for Tina, was released that year, with songs such as "Embraceable You" and "I'm in the Mood for Love".^{[citation needed]}

Hollywood and Gilligan's Island

Louise made her Hollywood film debut in 1958 in God's Little Acre. That same year, the National Art Council named her the "World's Most Beautiful Redhead."^[5] The next year she starred in Day of the Outlaw, with Robert Ryan. She became an in-demand leading lady for major stars like Robert Taylor and Richard Widmark, often playing somber roles quite unlike the glamorous pinup photographs and Playboy pictorials she had become famous for in the late 1950s. She turned down roles in Li'l Abner and Operation Petticoat^[6] taking roles on Broadway and in Italian cinema and Hollywood. Among her more notable Italian film credits was the historical epic Garibaldi (1960), directed by Roberto Rossellini, that concerned Garibaldi's efforts to unify the Italian states in 1860. When Louise returned to the United States, she began studying with Lee Strasberg^[7] and eventually became a member of the Actors Studio.^[8][9] In 1962, she guest-starred on the sitcom The Real McCoys, portraying a country girl from West Virginia in an episode titled "Grandpa Pygmalion". Two years later, prior to the development of Gilligan's Island, she appeared with Bob Denver in the beach party film For Those Who Think Young.

In 1964, she left the Broadway musical Fade Out – Fade In to portray movie star Ginger Grant on the situation comedy Gilligan's Island, after the part was turned down by Jayne Mansfield. Over time she became unhappy with the role and worried that it would typecast her. The role did make Louise a pop icon of the era, and in 2005 an episode of TV Land Top Ten ranked her as second only to Heather Locklear as the greatest of television's all-time sex symbols.^{[citation needed]}. After the series ended in 1967, Louise continued to work in film and made numerous guest appearances in various television series. She did not appear in the 1978 movie Rescue from Gilligan's Island nor on another cast reunion film, The Castaways on Gilligan's Island and The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island, the only original cast member to decline reprising the role (which was played by Judith Baldwin and Connie Forslund in the later film).

She appeared in the Matt Helm spy spoof The Wrecking Crew (1969) with Dean Martin. Louise played a doomed suburban housewife in the original The Stepford Wives (1975), and both the film and her performance were well received.

She attempted to shed her comedic image by assaying grittier roles, including a guest appearance as a heroin addict in a 1974 Kojak episode, as well as a co-starring role as a Southern prison guard in the 1976 ABC television movie Nightmare in Badham County. Her other television films of the period included Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976), SST: Death Flight (1977), Friendships, Secrets and Lies (1979), and in the prime-time soap opera Dallas, during the 1978–1979 seasons, as J.R. Ewing's secretary, Julie Grey, a semi-regular character. Her character was finally killed off. In the fall of 1984, she replaced Jo Ann Pflug as Taylor Chapin on the syndicated soap opera Rituals after Pflug refused to do love scenes with co-star George Lazenby because of her religious beliefs. After a few months, however, Louise did not renew her own contract and the character was written out. She later made cameo appearances on the network daytime soaps Santa Barbara and All My Children.^{[citation needed]}

The question "Ginger or Mary Ann?" is considered 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. With the January 2014 death of Gilligan's Island co-star Russell Johnson, Louise and actress Dawn Wells are the only two surviving cast members of the original sitcom.

Later work

Louise declined to participate in any of three reunion television films for Gilligan's Island. Despite maintaining an active career after the show's run, she maintained that the show actually ruined her career. The role of Ginger was recast with Judith Baldwin and Constance Forslund. Although she did not appear in these television movies, she made brief walk-on appearances on a few talk shows and specials for Gilligan's Island reunions, including Good Morning America (1982), The Late Show (1988) and the 2004 TV Land award show with the other surviving cast members. In the 1990s, she was reunited with costars Bob Denver, Dawn Wells, and Russell Johnson in an episode of Roseanne.^[4] She did not reunite with them for the television film Surviving Gilligan's Island (2001), co-produced by Wells. She was portrayed by Kristen Dalton in the television film.^[10] Her relations with series star Denver were rumored to be strained, but in 2005, she wrote a brief, affectionate memorial to him in the year-end "farewell" issue of Entertainment Weekly.^[11]

Later film roles included a co-starring appearance in the Robert Altman comedy O.C. and Stiggs (1987) as well as the independently made satire Johnny Suede (1992) starring Brad Pitt. She appeared in Married... with Children as Miss Beck in episode "Kelly Bounces Back" (1990). In 2014 Louise starred in the spiritual drama, Tapestry and the horror film Late Phases.^[12][13]

Louise In The Happy Ending (1969)

Music

Louise made one record album, It's Time for Tina, which was released originally on Concert Hall in 1957 (Concert Hall 1521), and later reissued on Urania Records (1958 and 1959 respectively).^[14] With arrangements by Jim Timmens and Buddy Weed's Orchestra, 12 tracks include "Tonight Is the Night" and "I'm in the Mood for Love." Coleman Hawkins is featured on tenor sax. The album has been reissued on CD twice, most recently on the UK label Harkit Records.^[15] The album was released on iTunes in 2012. She also recorded for United Artists Records^[16] but recorded just one single for that label in 1958.^[17]

Personal life

From 1966 to 1971, Louise was married to radio and TV announcer/interviewer Les Crane, with whom she has one daughter, Caprice Crane (born 1970), who became an MTV producer and a novelist. Crane's first novel, Stupid and Contagious, was published in 2006, and was dedicated to her mother.^{[citation needed]}

Louise now resides in New York City. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a lifetime member of the Actors Studio.^[18] Louise has been a vocal advocate for improving child literacy. She donated a portion of the proceeds of her 2007 book, When I Grow Up, to literacy programs and said in a 2013 interview that she had been volunteering at local public schools since 1996.^[18][19] She has written three books including Sunday: A Memoir (1997) and When I Grow Up (2007).^[4] The latter is a children's book that inspires children to believe they can become whatever they choose through creative and humorous comparisons of animal kingdom achievements.^{[citation needed]} She also published a second children's book titled What Does a Bee Do? in 2009.^[20]

Louise is quoted as saying, "The best movie you'll ever be in is your own life because that's what matters in the end."^[21]

A Democrat, she campaigned for John F. Kennedy during the 1960 presidential election^[22].

Filmography

Film

Television

Stage work

• 
  Two's Company (1952)


• 
  The Fifth Season (1953)


• 
  John Murray Anderson's Almanac (1953)


• 
  Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955)


• 
  Li'l Abner (1956)


• 
  Fade Out – Fade In (1964)

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tina Louise.

• 
  Tina Louise on IMDb


• 
  Tina Louise at the Internet Broadway Database
  


• 
  Tina Louise at the TCM Movie Database
  


• 
  Tina Louise at AllMovie