Television creator Sherwood Schwartz died 12 July 2011. Born in Passaic, New Jersey, on 14 November 1916, he’ll be remembered for creating both Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch. He shared an Emmy Award in 1961 for writing The Red Skelton Hour, and was nominated for another in 1962. He earned his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008.
His son and producing partner Lloyd J. Schwartz (reported by the Associated Press, said “He had a lot of favorite projects and a lot of favorite shows, and his favorite one was always the next one. He didn’t really die. He just ran out of time to do things.” At the time of his death, the Schwartzes were working on the upcoming Warner Bros film adaptation of Gilligan’s Island.
Schwartz studied pre-med at New York University, and got his writing start on The Bob Hope Radio Show in 1939. He wrote for Armed Forces Radio for four years, and then for The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet on the radio. Then he moved into television, and later said he worked on more than 700 shows. In 1963, he created Gilligan’s Island, which the AP says “would become a TV staple and provide a classic setup for shows as diverse as Lost and Survivor: A group of diverse people are trapped on an island, trying to live as comfortably as possible and perhaps one day go home.
“Whether it’s North Korean and South Korean, or whether it’s Arabs and Jews… or blacks and whites, you know, everybody’s a human being,” he once told an interviewer. “And that’s at the basis of most of my thinking. All my shows, actually, are how do people learn to get along with one another?”
Schwartz was also a composer, co-writing the themes for both Gilligan and Brady.
His genre work includes: The Invisible Woman (1983), Big John, Little John (1976), It’s About Time (1967), My Favorite Martian (1963-64). His work also was heard on the soundtracks of The Blair Witch Project (1999), Jumanji (1995), Addams Family Values (1993), and The Running Man (1987).
He is survived by his wife, Mildred Seidman, whom he married in December 1941, and their four children.