The three-hour tour is officially over

This just in: Gilligan has left the island.



Comic actor Bob Denver, best known to three generations of TV viewers as twerpy sailor Gilligan on the 1960s sitcom Gilligan's Island, is dead at the age of 70.

I guess now we'll never know for sure whether he and Mary Ann had a thing on the side.

Denver first made his mark in television playing beatnik Maynard G. Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in the early '60s. Post-Gilligan, he starred in the less successful The Good Guys (the theme song from which is lodged in my skull every bit as firmly as the one from Gilligan's Island) and Dusty's Trail, as well as the Saturday morning cult favorite Far Out Space Nuts.

Incidentally, Gilligan's first name was Willie. The character was always addressed by his last name (or as "Little Buddy") on the show, but his given name appeared in the pilot episode script.

And for the one or two of you sitting there thinking, "I thought Bob Denver died in 1997," that was John Denver. Or maybe Denver Pyle. (But not Gomer Pyle. He's still alive.)