
His agent, Michael Eisenstadt, confirmed the death.
“Gilligan’s Island,†which was seen on CBS from 1964 to 1967 and still lives on in reruns, starred Bob Denver as Gilligan, the witless first mate of the S.S. Minnow, a small touring boat that runs aground on an uncharted island after a storm.
Besides Gilligan and the Professor, five others were on board: the Skipper (Alan Hale Jr.); Ginger, a va-va-voom movie star (Tina Louise); the snobbish wealthy couple Thurston Howell III (Jim Backus) and his wife, known as Lovey (Natalie Schafer); and Mary Ann, a girl-next-door type (Dawn Wells).
In the show’s first season, Mr. Johnson and Ms. Wells were left out of the opening credits and their characters were ignored in the theme song, which named the other castaways but dismissed the two of them with the phrase “and the rest.†The snub was rectified for the second season, at the same time that the show went from black-and-white to color.
The Professor was a good-looking but nerdy academic, an exaggerated stereotype of the man of capacious intelligence with little or no social awareness. Occasionally approached romantically by Ginger (and guest stars, including Zsa Zsa Gabor), he remained chaste and unaffected.
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Ms. Louise and Ms. Wells are the only surviving “Gilligan’s Island†cast members.
After “Gilligan’s Island,†Mr. Johnson made a career guest-starring in television series, including the dramas “Mannix,†“Cannon†and “Lou Grant†and the comedies “Bosom Buddies†and “The Jeffersons,†usually as an upright character with smarts.
He also reprised the Professor role in the 1970s and 1980s in the cartoon series “The New Adventures of Gilligan†and “Gilligan’s Planet†and in three made-for-television “Gilligan†movies.
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