Obituary: Actress Dawn Wells, 82, best remembered for her role as Mary Ann Summers in the 1960s turkey Gilligan's Island, has reportedly passed away from complications from COVID.
She, like so many performers at the time, appeared on numerous television series, but she is best remembered for the "comedy" role. She provided a contrast to the sultry Tina Louise character. Tina Louise, 86 these days, is the last surviving cast member of the series.
Wells was born and raised in Reno, Nevada. She represented the state when she won the Miss Nevada competition and was in the Miss America pageant in 1960.
In recent years she came upon hard times as she lost a lot of money in the economic downturn of 2008. There was actually a GoFundMe page for her, which raised a couple hundred thousand dollars until the sponsors ended it.
Wells was a fourth-generation Nevadan born in Reno on Oct. 18, 1938. She graduated with honors from Reno High School.
She attended the all-women’s Stephens College in Missouri, where she originally planned to become a pediatric surgeon. But, “I took a theater course and my professor said I was so good that I should major in it,” she said in a 2014 interview in the RGJ.
She transferred to the University of Washington in Seattle to major in theater, and in 1959, she ran for Miss Nevada and won.
"I thought it would be fun to get up in front of an audience and do a dramatic scene for the contest but never thought I would win because I was so tiny and short," she said. "But I won! After graduating, I told myself I would give acting a chance for one year and if it was not successful, would go back to medicine."
One of the pictures at the link shows her as Grand Marshal of the Sparks Hometowne Christmas Parade in 2005. I saw her then. She looked way better than I did, and I was born 17 years after she was.
I wrote about her here.
Though the article doesn't say, given the fact she was a fourth-generation Nevadan, Wells Avenue in Reno must be named after a member of her family. You can find a copy of her senior high school yearbook on Classmates. She graduated from Reno High School, class of 1956. She was involved in numerous extracurricular activities. Her senior picture is on page 54. She is on several other pages, too.
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