‘Gilligan’s Island’ Star Tina Louise Says Her Real Desert Island Was A Lonely Childhood

Actress Tina Louise felt like she was stranded on a deserted island long before she starred as Ginger Grant on “Gilligan’s Island.”

Tina says that at age 6 she was sent to boarding school in Ardsley, N.Y., after her parents’ divorce. At the school, she suffered horrendous cruelty — from getting stabbed with a pencil to being placed in solitary confinement in a dark, spider-infested bathroom.

“I didn’t want to be there right from the start,” Tina, now 91, recalls. “We were all just a bunch of angry little girls. It was like ‘Lord of the Flies’ — nobody wanted to be there.

“And there were gangs of little girls. You were always going to find someone to pick on. I was told that my job was to hit this little girl. It was ridiculous. I never figured out why they chose me.”

Tina says she wasn’t even allowed to have personal items, noting, “They took everything away. My mother once brought me a doll, and that was immediately taken away in the night.”

Sadder still, Sundays were visiting days — and her parents never showed up. “I yearned for hugs,” she says. “I don’t think I knew what was going on. I just knew that it was painful.”

While Tina eventually reconciled with her dad, her relationship with her mom remained strained until she died. Adds Tina, “She was a vivacious person, but she had lost her mother when she was three, so she had her problems.”