Denver's signature role was "Gilligan," the inept first mate of the Minnow whose bumbling resulted in a group of tourists being stranded on an uncharted desert island for three seasons in the 1960s and for decades afterward in reruns and movies.

When he took the role in 1964, however, he was already widely known to TV audiences for another iconic character, Maynard G. Krebs, the bearded beatnik friend of Dwayne Hickman's Dobie in the "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," which aired from 1959 to 1963.

Krebs, whose only desire was to play the bongos and hang out at coffee houses, would shriek every time the word "work" was mentioned in his presence.

Gilligan on the other hand was industrious but inept. In one of the films, for example, the seven castaways actually got off the island, only to wind up back there when Gilligan bungled their reunion cruise a year later.

His character was as lovable as he was inept, though, and viewers embraced the skinny goofball kid in the Buster Brown haircut and white sailor hat. So did the Minnow's skipper, Jonas Grumby, who was played by Alan Hale Jr., and who always referred to his first mate affectionately as "little buddy."

"As silly as it seems to all of us, it has made a difference in a lot of children's lives," Dawn Wells, who played castaway Mary Ann Summers, once said. "Gilligan is a buffoon that makes mistakes and I cannot tell you how many kids come up and say, 'But you loved him anyway."'

His wife, Dreama Denver, said in a statement released by Eisenstadt: "He was my everything and I will love him forever."
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