There is a legend that Aaron Spelling, who produced extra tv exhibits than anybody in historical past, as soon as stated, “Do you know what our suicide rate would be if we didn’t have television? Do you know how much happiness I’ve brought to people who couldn’t get out of the house but could watch The Love Boat?”
It’s unclear if this utterance ever actually escaped Spelling’s lips, nevertheless it does completely seize the tv present it referred to, in addition to Spelling’s legacy extra broadly.
Premiering on Sept. 24, 1977 (following three made-for-TV prequel films that had aired in 1976 and ’77) The Love Boat was an hour-long episodic comedy/drama. It aired on Saturday nights on ABC, together with the similarly-themed Fantasy Island, which was additionally produced by Spelling, and shortly turned a nationwide sensation.
Watch The Opening Credits of ‘The Love Boat’
Each episode revolved across the adventures of the workers and company throughout a journey to unique locations aboard a cruise ship known as the Pacific Princess (which was an actual ship operated by Princess Cruises, though little of the present was really filmed on it.) There had been at all times three totally different plot traces: one that includes comedy, one that includes drama and one that includes romance, that are the “three magic words” of tv, as Spelling famous in an interview with the Television Academy Foundation.
It was a repetitive construction that relied on broad jokes (it is likely one of the solely hour-long exhibits to ever use fun monitor) and heavy doses of melodrama, however out of those parts The Love Boat created a way of romance and escape that completely entranced its viewers.
In half, this spell got here from the casting. The regulars included Captain Stubing (Gavin MacLeod), who was each firmly in cost and sometimes the butt of the joke, “Doc” Bricker (Bernie Kopell) who was famously amorous with the women and had been married (and divorced) six instances, a much-beleaguered purser named “Gopher” (Fred Grandy), a pleasant bartender named Isaac (Ted Lange) and a plucky younger cruise director named Julie (Lauren Tewes). These actors, together with the opposite regulars, managed to create the sensation that they knew one another properly and shared quite a lot of camaraderie, which helped give the viewer the sensation that once they tuned in they had been turning into a part of a enjoyable, close-knit group. The actors had been additionally all adept at dealing with the swings from comedic to critical that the present’s 9 seasons threw at them, which is likely one of the most important causes the characters they created have lingered so lengthy in in style reminiscence.
Watch a List of Famous Appearances on ‘The Love Boat’
Beyond this, The Love Boat made well-known an efficient secondary casting strategy: every episode featured a minimum of 4 or 5 – and typically as many as ten – visitor stars from different tv exhibits, films and Hollywood historical past. There had been crossover moments – The Brady Bunch actors Robert Reed and Florence Henderson each guest-starred in a single episode, and the 1979 season premiere of Charlie’s Angels (one other Spelling manufacturing) befell on the Pacific Princess – and appearances by Hollywood royalty, together with some thirty-two Oscar winners, together with up-and-coming celebrities from Tom Hanks to Janet Jackson.
This aura of Hollywood previous and current gave the present an added romance, surrounding the viewer on every week’s journey with well-known faces and recollections of different exhibits and flicks. And it relied on the idea that Spelling would use to nice impact again and again all through the years, from Starsky & Hutch within the ’70s, to Hart to Hart, T.J. Hooker and Dynasty within the ’80s and all over to Beverly Hills, 90210 within the ’90s: individuals do not watch tv to interact with life, they watch it to flee from life.
“I think life is reality enough,” Spelling informed the L.A. Times in 1992. “People want to be entertained. They want fantasy, love stories and happy endings.” Modern viewers may be tempted to snigger at this concept, nevertheless it earned Spelling a 123-room mansion and the envy of less-successful TV producers all through Los Angeles.
Watch the Charlie’s Angels Board the Love Boat in a Crossover
And perhaps one of the best proof of Spelling’s idea is The Love Boat. Play its well-known opening theme track – carried out by Jack Jones, with lyrics by Paul Williams and music by Charles Fox – and extra probably than not individuals will nonetheless acknowledge it in the present day, despite the fact that the final episode of the present aired in 1986, greater than a 3rd of a century in the past. Turn on any TV community on any evening, and you may see the affect of Spelling’s strategy to storytelling, and The Love Boat specifically: from our sitcoms to our tent-pole hour-long exhibits, we’re nonetheless fascinated with comedy, drama and romance, and love issues served as much as us in a number of story-lines.
It’s a method that may in all probability by no means get outdated. As Gavin MacLeod, who performed Captain Stubing, remembered in a 2007 interview with Entertainment Weekly, “I went to my cleaners. There was a new girl. And she said, ‘Man, aren’t you the captain?’ I said, ‘Well, I used to be.’ She said, ‘You’ve got to tell somebody to put that show back on.’ I said, ‘Why?’ And she said, ‘That show used to give me something to dream about. Nothing on television gives me anything to dream about.'”
The Love Boat did simply that. And it labored.
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