The Love Boat

The Love Boat (Love Boat in its final season) is an American television series set on a cruise ship, which aired on the ABC Television Network from September 24,1977, until May 24,1986.The show starred Gavin MacLeod as the ship's captain. It was part of ABC's popular Saturday night lineup that included Fantasy Island until the latter show ended in 1984.

The original 1976 made-for-TV movie on which the show was based (also titled The Love Boat) was itself based on the nonfiction book The Love Boats by Jeraldine Saunders, a real-life cruise director. Two more TV movies (titled The Love Boat II and The New Love Boat, respectively) would follow before the series began its run.

The executive producer for the series was Aaron Spelling who produced several successful series for ABC from the 1960s to the 1980s.

In 1997, the segments "Hidden Treasure", "Picture from the Past" and "Ace's Salary" were ranked #82 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.^[1] The program ran for 10 seasons including specials.

Synopsis

The sitcom was usually set aboard a cruise liner called the Pacific Princess, whose passengers and crew had romantic and funny adventures every week. Other ships used were twin sister Island Princess, the Stella Solaris (for a Mediterranean cruise), Pearl of Scandinavia (for a Chinese cruise), the Royal Viking Sky (for European cruises) and the Royal Princess and Sun Princess (for Caribbean cruises). In 1981 P&O Cruises' MV Sea Princess was also used for a special feature length episode called 'Julie's Wedding', set in and around Australia, and guesting Lloyd Bridges, Katherine Helmond, Harry Morgan, Patrick Duffy and Anthony Andrews, among others.

Series stars MacLeod, Bernie Kopell, and Ted Lange are the only cast members to appear in every episode of the regular series, including the last three two-hour made-for-TV movies, and stayed throughout the entire run. MacLeod was not the captain in the first two TV movies, however. We are told in Love Boat II that Gopher, Doc, Isaac, and the captain in that movie all served together in Vietnam, but no reference to this is ever made to their shared history again. However, when MacLeod's character was introduced, there was mention of him being "the new captain." Though Grandy was given an appearance in every episode and stayed throughout the entire run, he missed the last of the three two-hour made-for-TV movies.

For its first seven years, The Love Boat sailed successfully in the ratings. During that time, it ranked among the top twenty, if not the top ten, popular shows then currently on television. For the 1980-1981 season, it posted its highest rating at #5. By the start of the 1984-1985 season, the ratings were beginning to slip, and at the end of the following year, The Love Boat was cancelled after nine years on ABC, although the show was revived in a number of two-hour specials during the 1986-1987 season.

The series became immensely popular in reruns, both in syndication and on TV Land.

Cast

• Gavin MacLeod - Captain Merrill Stubing, "Your Captain" - also played Captain Stubing's father, under the name O. D. Warbux, in 2 episodes, as well as Captain Stubing's brother, under the name Sonny Wilde
• Bernie Kopell - Dr. Adam "Doc" Bricker, "Your Ship's Doctor"
• Fred Grandy - Burl "Gopher" Smith, "Your Yeoman Purser" Gopher leaves the ship but later changes his mind. (S 8)
• Ted Lange - Isaac Washington,
• Lauren Tewes - Julie McCoy, "Your Cruise Director" (1977–84)
• Jill Whelan - Vicki Stubing, the captain's daughter (1979–86)
• Ted McGinley - Ashley "Ace" Covington Evans "Your Ship's Photographer" (1984–86)
• Pat Klous - Judy McCoy, Julie's sister and her successor as cruise director (1984–86)
• Sandy Helberg - "Gopher" Smith in first "Love Boat"

The series' attraction was in the casting of well-known actors in guest-starring roles, with many famous film stars of yesteryear making rare television appearances. It wasn't the first series to use the all-star cast anthology format — Love, American Style used the formula seven years earlier — but The Love Boat had such success with the formula that future shows in similar style (such as Supertrain and Masquerade) were inevitably compared to The Love Boat.

Many famous stars agreed to do the early movies because they were filmed aboard actual cruise ships. (The series was filmed primarily on sets in California.)

Production notes

Writing format

Another unique aspect of The Love Boat was its writing format. Each episode contained several simultaneous storylines, each one written by a different set of writers. Each set of writers worked on one group of guest stars and their story of the week. As a result of this, episodes ended up with ungainly titles like "Disco Baby/Alas, Poor Dwyer/After the War/Ticket to Ride/Itsy Bitsy: Part 1." This also led to notorious continuity errors, most notably in Julie's outfits during boarding and disembarkation, which were often inconsistent between storylines.

Even though the cast of Charlie's Angels had been on separate episodes of the show, there was a crossover episode of the show in which the lady detectives had a case on the ship.

On rare occasions there would be crossovers between the stories. In one episode actors Robert Reed and Florence Henderson, formerly of The Brady Bunch, guest starred in separate segments. In one scene the two pass each other in a corridor, do a 'do I know you?' double-take, and then continue on their separate ways without talking.

In a one-time Fantasy Island crossover episode, the cruise ship makes a detour to deliver a troubled woman (played by Loni Anderson) to the mysterious island, and her storyline continued on that show.

There were usually three storylines. There was a pattern to the three storylines: one storyline focused around a member of the crew, a second storyline would often focus on a crew member interacting with a passenger, and the third storyline was more focused around a passenger (or a group of passengers). Additionally, the three storylines usually followed a similar thematic pattern: One storyline (typically the "crew" one) was straight-ahead comedy. The second would typically follow more of a romantic comedy format (with only occasional dramatic elements). The third storyline would usually be the most dramatic of the three, often offering few (if any) laughs and a far more serious tone.

Laugh track

The series was also distinctive as being one of the few hour-long series ever made for American television that used a laugh track (Eight is Enough, on the same network and produced at the same time, being another example).

Theme song and title sequence

The Love Boat theme song was sung by Jack Jones (except for the last season, where a cover version by Dionne Warwick was used). The lyrics were written by Paul Williams with music by Charles Fox. The song has since been recorded and released commercially by Charo in 1978 and Amanda Lear in 2001.

The opening sequence for the series underwent three different changes over the years. From seasons one to eight, the opening sequence began with a long shot of the ship before the camera slowly zoomed in onto its bridge area. This was followed by posing shots of the crew members (updated several times due to cast additions and changes throughout all seasons) at different points on the ship set. The long shot footage of the ship was used for the credits of the celebrity guest stars. For only the first season, the guest stars were credited by having their names appear on the screen while the show's symbol, a circle with four hearts in the corners (resembling a porthole), wrapped around them. Starting with season two (and originally experimented with in the fifteenth episode of the first season), the heart porthole was graphically put in place and at the center of the graphic, the guest stars were shown posing for the camera on different parts of the set while their names appeared at the bottom of the screen. For the final season, the heart porthole was replaced by a crescent wave and the long shots of the ship were replaced by a montage of the various locations traveled to on the show. At the center of the wave graphic, the guest stars in this version were shown posing for the camera wearing their formal dinner outfits against different colored backgrounds.

Sequels and spin-offs

• A TV movie, The Love Boat: A Valentine Voyage, followed in 1990 on the CBS network, four years after the show was cancelled.
• A second TV series, The Love Boat: The Next Wave aired on the former UPN Network (now The CW network) from 1998 to 1999. It stars Robert Urich as Captain Jim Kennedy, a retired U.S. Navy officer. Heidi Mark was cast as the cruise director. Several members of the original show's cast guest-starred on a reunion-themed episode, where it was revealed that Julie and Doc had been in love all along.
• A 1979 episode of another Aaron Spelling series, Charlie's Angels, had that show's characters trying to recover a stolen statue while aboard the Pacific Princess on a Caribbean cruise. All of the Love Boat regulars had cameo appearances in the crossover episode.
• A two-part 1997 episode of the sitcom Martin had the main characters going on a cruise and encountering Isaac, Julie, Doc, and Vicki.

Syndication

ABC also aired reruns of the show in their daytime lineup from 11:00 a.m.-noon (10 a.m.-11 a.m. Central) from June 30, 1980 to June 24, 1983 (with the exception of June 15, 1981 to September 11, 1981 when back-to-back reruns of Three's Company aired instead).

DVD releases

CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) has released Seasons 1 & 2 of The Love Boat on DVD in Region 1 & 4. Each season has been released in two volume sets.

International

See also

• List of The Love Boat episodes
• List of guest stars on The Love Boat
• Pacific Princess

References

External links

• The Love Boat at the Internet Movie Database
• The Love Boat at TV.com
• The Love Boat at epguides.com
• Love Boat Theme Songfacts