Gilligan and Rehnquist: A Speculative History

Seven castaways. Nine judges.

The deaths this week of TV’s Gilligan, Bob Denver, and Chief Supreme Court Justice William “Hubbs” Rehnquist suggest a long and curious connection between these two mixed-up, inventive, and sometimes inept groups of people. In their ceaseless struggles to “get off the island” or “interpret the constitution” they reflect the many challenges faced during the upheavals of post-World War II America.

Flashback to the 1950s. At the time Denver was playing a whacked-out beatnik named Maynard G. Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Rehnquist had graduated from Harvard, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson and was raising children with his young wife Natalie in the Phoenix suburbs while working at a private law practice. Did William and Natalie gather at the small black and white television in their home and have a few laughs in the evening at Maynard’s hilarious hi-jinks?

More importantly, did they recognize in those early days that the bongo-playing TV character was a harbinger (albeit one sanitized by the entertainment industry) of a counterculture that would have a profound impact on American society, down to the bedrock values of the judiciary, where principles of "equal protection" would be employed by progressives to promote activist social change in the decades ahead?

The connections run deeper. When the original Gilligan's Island aired in 1964, the ship which struck ground had been christened the 'SS Minnow' by legendary TV producer Sherwood Schwartz. This was a subtle yet telling jape at the expense of Newton Minow, head of the FCC, who had famously remarked that television was "vast wasteland". This may have been the opening volley in a long battle between the forces of regulation and entertainment, a struggle which continued in various forms through Rehnquist's tenure, with landmark rulings such as MGM vs. Grokster as late as this year.

Likewise the Skipper and Gilligan - "friends" from the Navy - were ostensibly in command of a motley group of castaways from all walks of American society. What more suitable metaphor could be found for the generation of WWII veterans to which the reigns of power were given in the 50s and 60s? They, like the Supreme Court of the 60s, were confronted with a society in upheaval though the forces of feminism and civil rights. We wince at the stereotypes portrayed by Gilligan's cohorts - the "Indians", the plight of Mary Anne - but they reflect, by way of high farce, the forces that were set loose in America in that tumultuous decade.

The show went off the air in 1967. But the legacy continued.

In 1981 the Harlem Globetrotters visited Gilligan’s Island for a one-time special. By then Rehnquist had served on the U.S. Supreme Court for almost 10 years. It was a time of transition for both our favorite fictional castaways and the nation’s highest judiciary body. Not only were basketball superstars "Geese" Ausbie and Clyde “The Glide” contending with the challenges of bamboo huts and coconut telephones, but in 1981 the formerly all-male cloakroom had a new member, the Reagan-nominated Sandra Day O’Conner.

Few people may have noticed, by then, how far we had come. And fewer still could appreciate this long and storied connection between one of TV's most-beloved characters and the highest judge in the land. Like Lear and the Fool, they told us who we were - and are - wisdom we were loathe to accept, but also longed to hear during the calamity of changes that befell our American kingdom.