RIP Dawn Wells (from Covid)

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Kevin M.

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Dec 30, 2020, 2:36:34 PM12/30/20
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Stupid 2020.


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Kevin M. (RPCV)

Steve Timko

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Dec 30, 2020, 2:54:36 PM12/30/20
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She was Miss Reno and Miss Nevada before going to Hollywood. Her family had several businesses here. Wells Avenue is named after her uncle. For a couple of years in the mid 1960s, right about the time Gilligan's Island had its first TV run, a young Tom Hanks lived in a duplex on Mill Street a couple of doors down from Wells Avenue while his father was a casino cook.
I have talked to her surviving relatives. A couple of them. They hate her.

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Tom Wolper

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Dec 30, 2020, 3:19:27 PM12/30/20
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On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 2:54 PM Steve Timko <steve...@gmail.com> wrote:
She was Miss Reno and Miss Nevada before going to Hollywood. Her family had several businesses here. Wells Avenue is named after her uncle. For a couple of years in the mid 1960s, right about the time Gilligan's Island had its first TV run, a young Tom Hanks lived in a duplex on Mill Street a couple of doors down from Wells Avenue while his father was a casino cook.
I have talked to her surviving relatives. A couple of them. They hate her.

Did her relatives hate her before she became famous?

The Deadline report says she kept working after Gilligan's Island and that she was active with a northern Nevada charity. Steve, was she part of the community there?

Steve Timko

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Dec 30, 2020, 4:19:36 PM12/30/20
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She made token appearances but she wasn't part of the fabric of the community. The Terry Lee Wells Discovery Museum is named for her cousin. I don't think she ever did anything to promote it, but I could be wrong. The Discovery Museum is way cool and worth checking out.
I get the sense she cut her ties to Reno when she left for Hollywood.

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Kevin M.

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Dec 30, 2020, 4:25:04 PM12/30/20
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Last time I saw her in person was at Santa Anita (three or four years ago) where she was being honored for some equestrian charity work she had done. I met her during my intern days at CNBC, and I recall her doing a skit on Leno’s Tonight Show. In all encounters she was friendly and funny. 

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Brad Beam

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Dec 30, 2020, 4:30:31 PM12/30/20
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Tina Louise (b.1934) wins Gilligan’s Tontine.

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 30, 2020, at 14:36, Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:


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PGage

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Dec 30, 2020, 4:45:02 PM12/30/20
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And I was always a Mary Ann guy...

When I was a kid most boys my age were strongly Ginger, then sometime in my 20s the tide shifted toward Mary Ann. I was never sure if that was a developmental (guys gradually maturing out of a sex pot obsession) or cultural (tide turning away from the more artificial, manufactured persona towards a putatively more natural and honest appeal) effect.

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Tom Wolper

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Dec 31, 2020, 10:59:08 AM12/31/20
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On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 4:45 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
And I was always a Mary Ann guy...

When I was a kid most boys my age were strongly Ginger, then sometime in my 20s the tide shifted toward Mary Ann. I was never sure if that was a developmental (guys gradually maturing out of a sex pot obsession) or cultural (tide turning away from the more artificial, manufactured persona towards a putatively more natural and honest appeal) effect.

I'm surprised there was a pro-Ginger faction. I always thought the Ginger vs Mary Ann question was extremely biased toward Mary Ann because Ginger was aloof, self centered, and high maintenance. Mary Ann was independent and accessible.

I also Ginger vs Mary Ann came at the end of a singular White cultural phenomenon. From watching movies from the decades preceding the 1950s we see diversity in what was seen as sexy in White women. When Marilyn Monroe emerged it's like she generated a gravity field around her. For the culture her persona defined sexiness and women were seen as sexy when trying to be like her. That template didn't break until the mid-60s when youth culture promoted other looks as sexy. Ginger was Monroe style and Mary Ann was closer to the new sensibility.

Brad Beam

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Dec 31, 2020, 11:06:51 AM12/31/20
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From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tom Wolper

>I'm surprised there was a pro-Ginger faction. I always thought the Ginger vs Mary Ann question was extremely biased toward Mary Ann because Ginger was aloof, self centered, and high maintenance. Mary Ann was independent and accessible.

 

When Dad remarried after Mom’s death, he got the best of both worlds – a redhead named Mary Ann.

 _   _

|_>|_>  Brad Beam- Belle WV

|_>|_>  http://www.facebook.com/74bmw

 

Jim Ellwanger

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Dec 31, 2020, 11:39:13 AM12/31/20
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I actually would agree with PGage's "developmental" supposition. Back In the mid-1980s when I was a pre-teen watching "Gilligan's Island" reruns in the afternoon on a local independent station, I was more attracted to Ginger -- she was the more obviously sexy of the two, so she was easier for my still-developing brain to latch onto.

As I got older, the scales fell from my eyes, and I could see the considerable charms of Mary Ann. (And it seems so obvious now: Gilligan, the pies she keeps making you are supposed to be a signal!)


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Doug Eastick

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Dec 31, 2020, 11:48:47 AM12/31/20
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(and the ladies on the list are sitting back, rolling their eyes at the men in the list talking of Ginger vs Mary Anne.

They will have their time to gush when David or Sean Cassidy pass on.
)



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PGage

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Dec 31, 2020, 12:09:11 PM12/31/20
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For 13 year old boys in the early mid 1970s, who had zero actual experience in what makes women desirable, we were completely dependent on cultural signifiers. There was a naughty Farmer’s Daughter context for Mary Anne’s sexuality, but for the relatively sheltered early teens I ran with that was less accessible than Ginger’s Marilyn Monroe story, which even pre-pubescent boys were familiar with.

 My preference for Mary Ann had more to do with a family culture which had always been somewhat condescending to the Monroe persona.

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Mark Jeffries

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Dec 31, 2020, 1:42:13 PM12/31/20
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In episode 2 of the Australian docuseries "Love on the Spectrum" (currently on Netflix--I'll use the "docu" term because it was on the pubcaster ABC instead of one of the commercial networks), one of the people on the autistic spectrum the series is about has brought his spectrum girl friend to a con, but she already knows that his real reason for being there is to meet Dawn Wells and get her autograph on a book about "Gilligan," so she's off cosplaying elsewhere in the hall while he meets Mary Ann in person.  She does not disappoint him and seems as charming as she always was in public.

Mark Jeffries
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Karen Owen

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Dec 31, 2020, 3:36:57 PM12/31/20
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On 12/31/2020 11:48 AM, Doug Eastick wrote:
> (and the ladies on the list are sitting back, rolling their eyes at
> the men in the list talking of Ginger vs Mary Anne.
>
> They will have their time to gush when David or Sean Cassidy pass on.
> )
>
>
David Cassidy did pass on November 21, 2017.  Shawn

Cassidy is still around at age 62.

Relating to Dawn Wells, another on-line news source said

that she had early stage Alzheimers or other health

issue causing dementia and had gone into an assisted living

or nursing home type place to receive more care.  The

videos that were released with her holiday messages for

Thanksgiving, and Christmas were recorded earlier in the year.


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Steve Timko

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Dec 31, 2020, 7:40:42 PM12/31/20
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I trace a preference for redheads to early crushes on Ginger and Ann Margret, but I liked both Ginger and Mary Ann. Especially when Mary Ann wore Daisy Dukes.


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Stan S

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Jan 1, 2021, 3:53:14 PM1/1/21
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Technically, Daisy Duke wore MaryAnns. 

-Stan 

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