Wells, who now lives in Idaho, was pulled over by a Teton County sheriff's deputy, who reported finding unfinished joints in her vehicle and said in his report that he could "smell a strong odor of burning marijuana."The case came to court recently, and Wells was sentenced to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation -- after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving.
Some members of the press (some of them are old enough that the old "Ginger or Mary Ann?" question is considered revealing of the preferences of men in their age range) are finding it difficult to believe that Wells could be guilty. She claims she isn't. She says the marijuana was left there by some hitchhikers she picked up.
Well, whatever the truth is, this isn't the first time Wells has been connected to something like this. Gilligan (Bob Denver) was arrested 10 years ago for having a parcel of marijuana delivered to his home. He originally said it came from Wells, but later refused to name her in court, blaming instead "some crazy fan." He pleaded no contest and received six months probation.
It would be nice if we could ask Denver a few questions, but we can't. He died in September 2005. Mary Ann, Ginger (Tina Louise) and the Professor (Russell Johnson) are the only surviving cast members.
Actually, it would be nice to know what the TV viewers who made Gilligan's Island a hit were smoking. It might exonerate Wells.
In the mid-1960s, America was beginning to get bogged down in Vietnam, yet, with all the men, materiel and money the government was committing to southeast Asia, there were literally hundreds, if not thousands, of viewers who wasted money and time calling "the authorities" to demand that the military be dispatched to the uncharted desert island to rescue those seven American castaways.
And this was with the knowledge (apparently) that one of the seven was a professor who could make a radio out of a coconut but couldn't patch a hole on a boat.
2 comments:
These rumors about Mary Ann have been around for a long time. But in the original series, the major drug kingpin on the island was Thurston Howell III, with his briefcase full of pills.
"Every big businessman uses tranquilizers," Mr. Howell told Gilligan. "It makes them calm enough to take the rest of his pills."
I guess the drug angle was a common one for TV series in the 1960s. Maybe that was because of the highly (so to speak) publicized nature of recreational drug use in those days.
On one of the most popular comedies of the decade, the Beverly Hillbillies, for example, Granny was the pusher. She ran a still, which produced gallons of moonshine, some of which was pushed on the family (and acquaintances) as "spring tonic." And in a series of episodes that included a gang of hippies, there was a running joke about "smoking crawdads" -- to the hillbillies, that meant food, but to the hippies, it meant a drug experience. At one point, Granny was arrested because she acknowledged that she wanted "to smoke some crawdads -- but first I need a little pot."
Post a Comment