She was incredulous when she learned the identity of her leading man in a stage production of Play It Again, Sam. “I said, ‘Gilligan, really?’ ” recalls Dreama Perry Denver to Closer. “Seriously, I’m going to do love scenes with Gilligan?”
His starring role on zany Gilligan’s Island, the beloved castaways sitcom, made Bob Denver a household name; but Dreama, Bob’s wife of 26 years, says there was a whole lot more to this actor, patriot and family man. “Bob was actually very serious, low-key and highly intelligent,” says Dreama, who shares her memories, memorabilia and family photos in Island to Icon: The Many Lives of Bob Denver, a new book.
Despite her initial reservations, Dreama admits that it was love at first sight when she finally met Bob. “The minute we shook hands,” she says, “each of us thought: ‘Ah, there you are!’ We never stopped being appreciative of what we had.”
Together, the couple created a warm, blended family that included Bob’s three older children from his earlier relationships and their own son, Colin, who arrived in 1984. “Bob was a great dad who adored his kids,” says Dreama, who relates how his older children took trips with them over their summer breaks. “We went into the Rocky Mountains and Hawaii,” she says. “We made many beautiful memories.”
Hawaii, where the pilot for Gilligan’s Island was filmed in 1963, always had a special place in the couple’s hearts. “One time, we went out on the beach and the sky was full of rainbows,” she recalls of a special Christmas on the island of Kauai. Dreama and Bob jumped into the ocean together. “We were just playing in the rainbows!”
Another Christmas, Bob took out a full page ad in the newspaper expressing how much he loved Dreama. “He was very romantic, very attentive and very sexy.”
He was also very much a family man. At age 2, the couple’s son, Colin, was diagnosed with severe autism. “What most people don’t know about Bob is that he spent the last 20 years of his life with me providing full-time care to our son,” says Dreama, who notes that Bob largely dropped out of the spotlight to be there for his family. “He loved his son and he loved me. We did it together.”
Gilligan’s Island was in first-run from 1964 through 1967. And while Bob sometimes railed against being typecast as the show’s goofy “little buddy,” he also understood how much that character meant to people. “In 1968, Bob, at his own expense, went to Vietnam to see our soldiers and bring them a little taste of home,” says Dreama. “There was a young soldier who was so blown away to be sitting next to Gilligan! Bob was there for six weeks, not with the USO, but on his own. He was very proud of that.”
In the late 1960s and 1970s, Bob starred in three other sitcoms, but First Mate Willy Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island and beatnik Maynard G. Krebs, whom Bob played on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis from 1959 to 1963, would remain his best loved characters. “Bob felt very blessed that he had that kind of success twice,” says Dreama, who notes that Gilligan’s Island remains popular a whopping 60 years after its premiere. “When the cast did the show, they hoped it would last a couple of seasons. They had no idea it would go on and on.”
