Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island," dies at 82 of COVID-19 complications

Dawn Wells, the beloved actress who portrayed fan-favorite Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island,” has died of causes related to corona virus.

She was 82.

Wells died Wednesday in Los Angeles at a living facility, according to her publicist, Harlan Boll.

He said there was “so much more to Dawn Wells” than her performance as the charming Mary Ann Summers, including her work as a teacher and motivational speaker.

Wells starred as Mary Ann throughout the three-season run of “Gilligan’s Island” from 1964 to 1967. The iconic CBS sitcom centers on an eclectic group stranded on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean after the SS Minnow charter boat becomes shipwrecked in a typhoon during a three-hour tour.

With Wells’ death, 86-year-old Tina Louise, who played Ginger, is the last surviving cast member of the show.

Wells and Russell Johnson, who played the professor, originally didn’t get credited in the opening in the first season, and were referred to as “the rest” in the opening theme song. That was changed the next year, with screen credit and the song lyrics revised to “the professor and Mary Ann.”

Wells’ virtuous and easygoing character, who hailed from a farm in Kansas, served as a change of pace from others on “Gilligan’s Island,” particularly Ginger, an elegant film star.

“Mary Ann was a good girl,” Wells told the magazine Smashing Interviews in a piece published last year. “She was polite. She was a hard worker. She would be your best friend. She cooked. She cleaned. She did all of those things, and she was a really good role model. But the first thing you want to do is break that character and go do something else.”

Before she broke into acting, the Reno-born Wells was crowned Miss Nevada and participated in the Miss America pageant in 1959.

Her earliest acting gigs included appearances on the TV series “Maverick,” “Cheyenne,” “Bonanza” and “Wagon Train.”

Wells also starred in the 1976 thriller flick “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” and the 1977 horror film “Return to Boggy Creek,” and appeared as Mary Ann in multiple “Gilligan’s Island” made-for-TV movies.

The actress wrote in her 2014 book “What Would Mary Ann Do?: A Guide to Life” that her own values were reflected in her performance on “Gilligan’s Island.”

“Every character on Gilligan’s Island was given a broad ‘stock’ comedy role to fill — captain, mate, wealthy man, wealthy wife, professor, movie star — except me,” Wells wrote, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Gilligan's Island cast members, from left, Dawn Wells (as Mary Ann Summers) and Bob Denver (as First Mate Gilligan) appearing in the pilot episode. Image dated August 12, 1964.

“She was given a name and location — Kansas farm girl. I had to fill in the blanks. So, from the get-go, the Mary Ann character was different. She wasn’t a Hollywood creation. She was molded by me, from me.”

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