Farewell To Our Friend, The Professor

Russell Johnson, better known to so many as "the Professor," from that role on "Gilligan's Island," died on January 16, 2014. 

When I was a kid fifty years ago, CBS aired a weekly comedy called "Gilligan's Island," a show that quickly became one of my favorites. The network execs thought the show wouldn't last, because they saw it mainly as a children's show running in prime time.What they didn't seem to realize was, many of us humans, hopefully all, retain at least some of our childhood likes, whether we'll admit it or not. Gilligan's Island lasted for three years, 98 episodes and the show's ratings placed it in the top 20 shows during two of its three seasons. The show contained a good deal of slapstick, with stumbling, falling down, dropping things and the like, mainly by the show's namesake character "Gilligan," played perfectly by Bob Denver. The show's scripts laid out a general pattern, presented in comedic form, of how seven people from various walks of life became castaways on an uncharted Pacific island and how they needed one another to survive. One of the characters was played by actor Russell Johnson, who is better known around the world as "the Professor." And I do mean "around the world," as the original 98 "Gilligan's Island" episodes continued to be shown in the U.S. and in numerous countries for the decades since the show left prime time and actual filming, although several full length movies and a cartoon series were done years later, too.

The Professor's character, who was from Cleveland, was a bit more serious than some of the others, and it was to him that the other six castaways turned for help in most matters, as his scientific mind tried to come up with a way to get them rescued or to develop a solution to save them from some predicament. Johnson later talked about how difficult it had been to memorize his lines, which were frequently filled with all sorts of complicated scientific terms. Like the rest of the cast, Russell Johnson's role as the Professor became so etched in the public's mind, that after the show was canceled, he had trouble getting acting jobs. According to various  interviews done later, Johnson said he was at first bitter about the typecasting brought about by the show, but that the comments he got from people everywhere he went, as well as the mail he received, finally made him realize how the show had positively affected the lives of so many people. He and some of the others began to do interviews and make public appearances about "Gilligan's Island."*

Johnson suffered a terrible blow when his son died of AIDS in the 1990s at the age of 39, and I remember seeing a heart tugging interview with a distraught Russell Johnson talking about his son's death.

So now we must bid farewell to our friend Russell Johnson, who will continue to live on as "the Professor." Thank you for giving me great memories from my childhood and thank you for helping to keep that part of my childhood alive in me to this very day. R.I.P.

* Actress Tina Louise, who played "Ginger" on the series, has remained bitter over "Gilligan's Island" throughout her life, and she chose not to participate in the later movies, nor to participate in the public appearances regarding the show. My mind's a bit hazy on this, so take that into account, but several years ago Tina Louise had released a children's book and was doing some promotional interviews for it. I believe she wanted (or was asked?) to do an interview on a popular Cleveland radio show, but she made the interview conditioned upon her being asked only one question about "Gilligan's Island." One of the show's hosts was outraged by the condition and to be quite honest, I can't remember if the interview went forward or not, but that's really not that important, as I add this only to show how contentious her relationship with "Gilligan's Island" has been.

WORD HISTORY:
Professor-This compound goes back to the Indo European root "pro/por," which had the notion of "in front, ahead, before," and the Indo European root "bha," which had the general idea of "speak, talk," which then gave Latin "fateri" (meaning "acknowledge," and whose participle was "fassum," which contributed the "fessor" part of our word). The combination gave Latin "profiteri," which meant "to acknowledge publicly;" that is, "in the open, in front of others." From that was derived Latin  "professor" ("one who openly declares knowledge of a subject, or subjects"), which then was inherited by Old French, a Latin-based language, as "prof(f)esseur," and it was then carried to England by the Normans, but it was the latter part of the 1300s before it was borrowed into English, likely reinforced by the Latin word itself.