Lloyd Schwartz (left) and his father Sherwood Schwartz, creator of "Gilligan's Island," arrive at Glenn Stearns' "Millionaire's Hut" to watch the finale episode of "The Real Gilligan's Island" in Newport Beach, California in this December 21, 2004 file photo. Schwartz died on July 12, 2011 at the age of 94. Photograph by: Robert Galbraith, Reuters
LOS ANGELES — Sherwood Schwartz, the comedy writer and producer who created what have remained two of the most enduringly popular TV series in worldwide syndication, died Tuesday morning. He was 94.
Schwartz, who began his more than six-decade career by writing gags for Bob Hope’s radio show in 1939, died of natural causes at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said his son Lloyd.
Schwartz once said he created Gilligan’s Island, which aired on CBS from 1964 to 1967, as an escape from his seven years on The Red Skelton Show, for which he served as head writer and won an Emmy in 1961.
There was nothing quite as escapist as the wacky tale of seven people on a small charter boat, the SS Minnow, who set out on a “three-hour tour” and wound up shipwrecked on an uncharted South Pacific island.
Starring Bob Denver in the title role of the boat’s bumbling crew member, Gilligan’s Island famously featured the exasperated skipper (Alan Hale Jr.), the millionaire and his wife (Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer), the professor (Russell Johnson), the naive country girl (Dawn Wells) and the sexy movie star (Tina Louise).
Schwartz also wrote the lyrics for the show’s memorable theme song:
“Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip.
It started from this tropic port aboard this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailing man,
The skipper brave and sure,
Five passengers set sail that day
For a three-hour tour.”
Critics had a field day lambasting Schwartz’s shipwreck saga when it debuted.
“It is impossible that a more inept, moronic or humorless show has ever appeared on the home tube,” wrote UPI’s Rick DuBrow.
“It is difficult for me to believe that Gilligan’s Island was written, directed and filmed by adults,” wrote Terrence O’Flaherty of the San Francisco Chronicle.
It is “quite possibly the most preposterous situation comedy of the season,” wrote Jack Gould of The New York Times.
But the show’s very preposterousness struck a chord with millions of viewers.
For all its crude sight gags, low-brow humor and pratfalls, Schwartz viewed “Gilligan’s Island” as something more: It is, he proclaimed, “my version of a social microcosm, where seven people from various backgrounds had to learn to live together.”
In a 1965 TV Guide interview, Schwartz said he was “not disheartened by the (negative) reviews — only a bit angry with the lack of understanding of what was being attempted. Here are the same men who are forever saying: ‘For heaven’s sake, won’t somebody give us something other than the wife and the husband and the two children?’ “
Four years later, Schwartz served up his own version of that television staple: the family sitcom.
The story of the marriage between a “lovely lady” with three daughters and “a man named Brady” with three sons, The Brady Bunch became TV’s first sitcom to feature a blended family. And its theme song featured lyrics again written by Schwartz.
The series, starring Robert Reed and Florence Henderson as Mike and Carol Brady, aired on ABC from 1969 to 1974. The Brady kids were played by Maureen McCormick, Barry Williams, Eve Plumb, Susan Olsen, Christopher Knight and Mike Lookinland. Ann B. Davis played Alice, the housekeeper.
Like Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch was dismissed by the critics, and it never did as well as Schwartz’s gang of castaways in the ratings. But the idyllic suburban tale of Marcia, Jan, Cindy, Greg, Peter, Bobby, Mike, Carol and Alice took on a life of its own in endless syndicated reruns around the world, watched by succeeding generations.
The Brady Bunch also begat a 1972-74 Saturday morning animated series (The Brady Kids), a 1977 comedy-variety series (The Brady Bunch Hour), a 1981 TV-movie (The Brady Girls Get Married), a 1981 sitcom (The Brady Brides), a 1988 TV-movie (A Very Brady Christmas) and a 1990 hourlong dramatic series (The Bradys.)
There was even a stage production in the early ‘90s, The Real Live Brady Bunch, which re-created episodes word-for-word, as well as “The Brady Bunch Movie” (1995), a hit spoof starring Shelley Long and Gary Cole that was followed by “A Very Brady Sequel” with Long and Cole (1996); and “The Brady Bunch in the White House,” a 2002 TV movie.
“Gilligan’s Island” likewise continued to air in reruns around the world and spawned two animated series, three TV-movies and a 1992 stage musical, Gilligan: The Musical, for which Schwartz and his collaborator son, Lloyd, wrote the book.
Schwartz, who practically made a career out of the two shows, put little stock in what the critics had to say about his creations.
“I honestly think I could sit down and write a show tonight that the critics would love, and I know it would be canceled within four weeks,” Schwartz said in a 1990 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I know what the critics love. We write and produce for people, not for critics.”
Born on Nov. 14, 1916, in Passaic, N.J., Schwartz received a bachelor’s degree from New York University and was working on his master’s degree in biological sciences at the University of Southern California in 1939 when he unexpectedly abandoned his plan of becoming a doctor.
At the time, he was living with his older brother, Al, a comedy writer for The Bob Hope Show, then in its first year on radio. In need of money, Schwartz told his brother, “If I write some jokes, would you show them to Bob?”
As Schwartz told Jordan Young, author of the 1999 book The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV’s Golden Age: So I wrote some jokes, and he showed them to Bob, who liked them — and the last month of The Bob Hope Show that first year, they used some of my material. And then (Hope) said to me, ‘Why don’t you come on the show?’ “
After four years writing for Hope’s radio show, Schwartz joined the Army and wound up writing for Armed Forces Radio Service in Hollywood, including the shows Command Performance, Mail Call and Jubilee.
After the war, he returned to radio, putting in stints on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, The Alan Young Show and The Beulah Show.
He made his move to television in 1952, spending two years writing for Joan Davis’ situation comedy I Married Joan. In addition to The Red Skelton Show, Schwartz also wrote for the sitcom My Favorite Martian in the early ‘60s.
Schwartz conceived the idea for the Brady series in 1965 after reading a brief news report that said nearly one-third of American households included at least one child from a previous marriage.
“I realized there was a sociological change going on in this country, and it prompted me to sit down to write a script about it,” he recalled in a 2000 interview with the Los Angeles Times.
It took him more than three years to sell The Brady Bunch, a show whose cheery depiction of family life was, he said in another interview, “100 percent sincere.”
“A lot of people say television holds up a mirror to life, and that’s why you see all the drug busts and the killings and the seamier side of life,” he said in the 1990 Times interview. “I personally take the view that as a responsible producer, it’s not sufficient to portray only negative role models. I think it’s better to give an alternative. It’s not enough to say ‘no’ to drugs. What do you say ‘yes’ to?”
In addition to his son Lloyd, Schwartz is survived by his wife, Mildred; his two other sons, Dr. Donald Schwartz and Ross Schwartz; his daughter, Hope Juber; eight grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Los Angeles Times
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
Schwartz receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008 
Television producer and creator of shows '''' and ''''  has died at the age of 94. His daughter Hope Juber announced his death. The cause of death was announced by his son Lloyd as natural causes. Schwartz had a career that lasted six decades after he starting writing jokes for ’s radio show in 1939.

After his brother got Schwartz a role on Hope's writing staff he went onto work for the  and became a writer for the radio series ''''. He first entered television when he started to write for the show '''' in the 1950s. Schwartz got his big break when he became head writer for ''''. He won an Emmy award in 1961 for his work on the show.

''Gilligan's Island'' was first broadcast in 1964 and featured stars such as Bob Denver, Jim Backus, and Alan Hale Jr. The show ran until 1967 but did feature several run off specials. Schwartz's other big creation, ''The Brady Bunch'', was first shown in 1969. The series focused on a couple of newlyweds with children from previous relationships. The show ended in 1974.

Schwartz is survived by Mildred, his wife, Ross, Lloyd and Dr. Donald Schwartz, his sons, Hope Juber, his daughter, and eight grandchildren, as well as four great-grandchildren.