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Name that former celebrity!

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prestokeys

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I shoot. I was too hasty here. This is actually the brother, but he looks a lot like him.

(Hey. That could be a new game: Name that celebrity's brother/sister!")
 
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thirdcup

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homerjsimpson said:
After seeing Tina Louise there, I went to IMDB to check out where some of the other actors were. Most of them are dead, in fact. But Dawn Wells (Mary Ann) is still going strong! She's performed in over 100 theater productions in her lifetime and still doing them. That's a lot!

Here's an interesting blurb from her bio on IMDB:

It has long been stated that the entire cast of Gilligan's Island never received residuals beyond the first four reruns of each episode. This was true for the entire cast except Dawn Wells. When the show was picked up by CBS and Dawn was cast to replace Nancy McCarthy, she was married to her agent at the time. In her original contract she was to be paid $1200 per week plus the residual contract the 6 other castaways received. Her husband/agent said that should the show become successful Dawn would not benefit from receiving such a limited residual option. Believing the show would flop, the CBS executives humored Dawn and her husband and put a clause in her contract giving her long-term residuals should the show ever syndicate. As a result from that clause Dawn has made literally millions of dollars as the years have gone by from syndication of Gilligan's Island. This was never public knowledge. Dawn and series creator Sherwood Schwartz are the only individuals to profit long-term from the series.
Click to expand...
Like the old saying goes, 'You don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate."
How much effort did it take for Dawn and her hubby to negotiate that one small change in her contract? And look at the upside. I would hope that other actors and their agents have wised up since then.

A similar thing happened with Don Adams, AKA Maxwell Smart. Before the show launched, he was asked if he wanted to be paid a salary or a percentage of what the show earned. He chose percentage. I don't know how well he did with that decision but I'll bet anything he did better than a salary would have done.

I don't think these people were especially clever, or that they could foretell the future. Full salary now or an unknown amount of future earnings later? They gambled and they won. There was nothing at the time to guarantee they were making a the right choice.

By the way, who bought Microsoft back in '86 when it went public? I know I didn't, and I knew about the company.

Gilligan's Island is still one of the stupidest shows ever made. And saying that 40+ years after the fact sure says something.

Hindsight is always 20/20.
 
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