Remembering Sherwood Schwartz -- The Genius Behind 'Gilligan's Island' and 'The Brady Bunch'

American citizens are better than anyone else in the world at reconciling mockery and adoration when it comes to cheesy art, and ono one ever did cheesy as well as Sherwood Schwartz.

He started out performing yeomen duties as an Old School writer for such master comics as Bob Hope and Red Skelton, Schwartz went on to create two goofy masterpieces that penetrated the culture in extraordinary ways. First with “Gilligan’s Island,” and then with his magnum opus, “The Brady Bunch,” Schwartz carved out a special place in the national psyche during the heady days of the network era of American television.

Gilligan” spawned three made-for-TV movies and “The Brady Bunch” sired a spin-off (“The Brady Brides"), a musical variety show, a cartoon series, a Christmas special, an hour-long dramatic series, a stage production, a few big-screen movies, and a cottage industry of memoirs and guest appearances by members of the cast and by Schwartz himself.

Needless to say, the theme songs for these shows, also written by Schwartz, became American musical standards, as easily recited as “White Christmas” and “Happy Birthday.”

Robert J. Thompson is the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, where he is also a Trustee Professor of Television and Popular Culture at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. He was a visiting professor for six summers at Cornell University and served for nine years as professor and director of the N.H.S.I. Television and Film Institute at Northwestern University.