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The Love Boat Sails Again

Writer: goldenstateservicesj
goldenstateservicesj
Oct 25, 2024
3 min read
Yes, that is Lillian Gish

We have multiple reasons for today’s addendum to our previous 2018 post on The Love Boat. One is that, once again, it is Lauren Tewes’ birthday. She gets the honors because she alone among the other principals on the show is exclusively associated with her Love Boat role. Gavin MacLeod, Bernie Kopel, Fred Grandy, and Ted Lange had all been on other shows previously. So there’s the significance of the day. And there’s the fact that Jack Jones, singer of the Love Boat theme, died a few days ago. Wherever he has gone to, I do hope he has encountered an “open smile on a friendly shore”. Thirdly, we have been avidly watching the new Ryan Murphy show Doctor Odyssey, which is basically a reboot of The Love Boat told from the point of view of Doc (or, more aptly, Doctor McCoy of the Starship Enterprise, because no cruise ship on earth has a sick bay like the one in Doctor Odyssey. It’s quite a fantasy.)

So that’s why a new post now. As for why a new post at all? Well, a couple of years after I wrote my last Love Boat piece, the Covid lockdown hit, so we wound up binge-watching the show. We didn’t get through the whole run; maybe about eight seasons. But one main takeaway from the experience was that many, many episodes featured late performances (in many cases, the last performance) of many of the vintage stars that are the Travalanche stock in trade. Some real old timers were still around then, and The Love Boat’s bookers very sagely hired many of them for the show for the enjoyment of older folks. Believe me, as a kid at the time I was usually bored and even embarrassed by the older guest stars! But nowadays, it strikes me as a valuable record of some of the last work of some pretty important 20th century performers.

So just as a point of interest, I thought I’d list a bunch of them here in case it inspires you to go back and watch the show. Now, this is not a database. I’m not going to make some chart that tells you who’s in what episode or whatever. There’s plenty of suchlike elsewhere on the internet. But this’ll give you an idea of some of them, then you can look them up on IMDB or Wiki or wherever you prefer to do your television obsessing. Note well: EVERYONE who was on The Love Boat is old NOW (if they’re alive), including that latch key child who ran around spying on people’s lovemaking (Vicki was the character’s name, played by Jill Whalen, she’s about my age). But this list is just some of the very oldest Love Boat guest stars, mostly ones who had become popular prior to the 1950s, who’d been in vaudeville, silents, early talkies, radio, and up through the ’40s. The others were just middle-aged or young. A list for another time.

Lillian Gish has got to be winner for star of oldest standing: her film debut had been in 1912. And she kept acting until 1987! Some stars much younger than she seemed in much worse shape. Allan Jones seemed to slur all his words. You can see Van Johnson’s scars and the big dent in his head that the movie studios used to cover up. Saddest of all was Jim Backus, who appeared on the show following a stroke, and was given no lines to speak. He just sits in a deck chair vaguely nodding. Sometimes (this was actually pretty frequent) the older stars could be mortifying by trying to seem hip, as when Ginger Rogers performed Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together”.

These folks have all been gone for decades now. It was very enjoyable to see so many of them on parade in rapid succession a few months ago, all seemingly sprung back to life. It was a comforting solace during a difficult time. God Forbid, we may need such a thing again in the near future. For more onThe Love Boat see our original post here.

 
 
 

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