For Tina Louise, Escape, Finally, From ‘Gilligan’s Island’

The green-eyed TV star with the sweetness mark on her cheek reveals up at a faculty on the Higher East Aspect of Manhattan each Wednesday. For an hour, Ms. Tina, as the scholars and academics name her, devotes herself to a pair of 7-year-olds who’re fighting studying. They’ll undergo no matter books the instructor offers her, like “All Aboard!” or “How to Catch a Witch.” When her time is up, she’ll head dwelling.

Not one of the kids may have any concept that Ginger from “Gilligan’s Island” — in actual life, the actress Tina Louise — simply spent one of the best 60 minutes of her week with them.

Ms. Louise doesn’t like to speak concerning the tv present that made her a family identify. She has no need to revisit the years between 1964 and 1967, when she was marooned with six oddballs and a trunk stuffed with slinky, sequined robes.

By means of its run of 98 episodes, “Gilligan’s Island” was a prime-time success and have become a Gen X touchstone in reruns. (The query of “Ginger or Mary Ann?” can nonetheless evoke passionate debate amongst males of a sure age.) As for Ms. Louise, she will be able to barely utter the identify of this system, referring to it as “G.I.” or “The Series.”

It’s not that she regrets it, though she and the solid by no means obtained residuals. “I’m very grateful for all the things that have happened to me and the opportunities that I’ve had,” she mentioned in a current dialog from her modest one-bedroom condominium in Manhattan. She is the present’s final dwelling solid member, and he or she not too long ago celebrated a birthday she’d desire to not focus on. (“I’m 29,” she mentioned coyly.) She nonetheless has the signature magnificence that made her well-known, now on show in denims and a black T-shirt as an alternative of fancy robes.

There have been few indicators that her condominium was the house of a TV icon. There have been three work of her from her “Island” days and a glamorous shot at her wedding ceremony to the radio announcer and TV host Les Crane (they divorced in 1971, and he died in 2008). However the cabinets had been primarily lined with photographs of her daughter, the novelist Caprice Crane, and twin grandchildren.

She frequently receives fan mail, which she appreciates, and he or she’s usually acknowledged on the road. Nonetheless, she refuses to be outlined by her Marilyn-Monroe-meets-Lucille-Ball-meets-Jessica-Rabbit position. “I’d like to be known for other things,” she mentioned.

These different issues embody a job within the 1958 drama “God’s Little Acre,” for which she received a Golden Globe; a solo album, “It’s Time for Tina,” through which she breathily sang classics like “I’m in the Mood for Love” and “Embraceable You”; learning with Lee Strasberg as a member of the Actors Studio; 5 Broadway performs, together with “Fade Out — Fade In,” with Carol Burnett (which Ms. Louise left to hitch “The Series” in 1964).

Submit-“Gilligan,” she appeared within the unique “The Stepford Wives” in 1975, and later wrote two kids’s books. She additionally printed a memoir, “Sunday,” in 1997. (The audiobook model, which she learn, got here out in 2023.)

It’s not a gossipy dish on life in Hollywood; she’s not serious about that. “You can write whatever you want about me when I’m dead,” she mentioned.

As a substitute, “Sunday” covers three very sad years a woman named Tina Blacker spent within the Ardsley Heights Country School and Camp for Girls, a boarding college in Ardsley, N.Y.

The place appears Dickensian at finest. When Tina is caught speaking with a buddy late at evening, a instructor makes her stand alone in a darkish rest room with spiders crawling on the ceiling. Her closest pals often is the caterpillars she hides in a field beneath her mattress. She recounts the time one other pupil stabbed her within the wrist with a pencil, leaving a faint scar she nonetheless has.

“We were just little angry girls that were put in this place, and nobody wanted to be there,” she mentioned.

Her mom, Sylvia Horn, was 18 when Tina was born; her father, Joseph Blacker, was 10 years older. By the point Tina was 4, her dad and mom had divorced. Unable to take care of her, her mom despatched her to Ardsley. Sunday, visiting day, was the one vibrant spot, however her dad and mom didn’t at all times come. As soon as, they arrived on the identical day and a vicious struggle ensued. Tina’s loneliness was palpable. “I didn’t have hugs,” she mentioned. “I didn’t have loving situations.”

She left Ardsley at 9 and moved in along with her father and his new spouse. She was joyful. It was her first actual dwelling, and he or she longed to remain there. However when Tina was 11, her mom, who by that point had married a rich physician — the third of her 4 husbands — needed her to dwell with them of their fancy townhouse on the Higher East Aspect.

“It was like going from ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ to ‘Eloise at the Plaza,’” mentioned Ms. Louise, including that she had no reminiscence of dwelling along with her mom earlier than that time. As soon as she settled in, her mom had her name her father and inform him that it was finest that they not get collectively anymore. Tina didn’t see him once more till “God’s Little Acre” got here out, by which period she was now Tina Louise, a starlet on the verge.

She by no means forgave her father for not preventing for her. “I was mad at him because he didn’t go to court,” she mentioned.

She has a greater understanding of her mom, whose personal mom died when she was 3. “She didn’t have the loving that she needed,” she mentioned. “She always needed a man to lean on.” Her mom by no means needed to speak about what occurred to her at Ardsley. For years, Ms. Louise mentioned, she felt as if she was gagged. However her time at Ardsley has additionally fueled her assist for literacy and studying with kids.

In 1996, after seeing an article a few drop in college students’ capacity to learn, Ms. Louise joined Studying Leaders, a nonprofit that educated volunteers to tutor public college college students all through the 5 boroughs. For the following twenty years Ms. Louise diligently labored with college students, encouraging them in a mellifluous voice.

Among the academics had been conversant in her pedigree, however the college students weren’t. Ms. Louise recalled the younger boy who raised his hand when the instructor requested if anybody knew who she was.

“She’s the lady who talks to us and reads to us,” he mentioned.

“I loved it, being anonymous, just being the person who read to the children,” Ms. Louise mentioned. “That was very important to me because nobody ever read to me.”

After the group misplaced its funding a couple of years in the past, Ms. Louise reached out to the principal of the college the place she attended seventh and eighth grade to see if there was any approach she might assistance on her personal.

Ms. Louise goes to the college rain or shine. “I love being in their presence for an hour. It’s better than vitamins,” she mentioned. “I can’t get back what I went through, but outside of being with my family, doing this is my special thing.”

Her work with the kids additionally impressed her to jot down two books: “When I Grow Up” and “What Does a Bee Do?” The bee e-book got here after a dialog with some college students.

“I asked them, ‘Do you know what the bees do?’ And everybody said, ‘Sting!’ And then I said: ‘No, no, they don’t. It’s the wasp that stings. The honeybees don’t do that. They feed us. They give us all these vegetables and fruits,’” she mentioned.

Unknowingly, Ms. Louise had drawn a hyperlink between her outdated and new lives. On an episode of “Gilligan’s Island,” Ginger, Mary Ann and Mrs. Howell formed a pop group referred to as the Honeybees. Reminded of this, Ms. Louise was silent for a second, then she giggled.

“That’s funny,” she mentioned. “I forgot about that.”