Dawn Wells (Mary Ann) tells Dori she still has her Gilligan’s Island short-shorts

Back in the 60s, when Dawn Wells played Mary Ann, everybody’s girl-next-door, on “Gilligan’s Island,” her short-shorts were considered a bit scandalous. While visiting Seattle for a book tour Monday, she told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson that’s not the case anymore and discussed how the TV landscape has changed.

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“I have my short-shorts; they must be worth a fortune. Because I couldn’t show my navel I had to bring them up on the side because my legs were much shorter than Tina Louise’s,” she said.

“I was raised a Mary Ann. My mother knew where I was every minute, every single second. … There’s nothing wrong with that. Parents now are all working. You have two divorced families living together and maybe they’re raised by different families until they come together. It’s much more difficult. You see the Kardashian’s and nude people on the sides of busses, you didn’t have that when we were there. That’s why Mary Ann’s shorts were so [gasp] titillating. We never saw anybody in shorts on television. Boy, have we gone downhill.”

Listen below to Wells talk about her acting career and why she said, “There’s more to me than Mary Ann, but Mary Ann is the essence of really who I am.”

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