The Halloween Icon Who Almost Took Over Tina Louise's Role In A Gilligan's Island Movie

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Tina Louise, the last living "Gilligan's Island" star, is adored for her role as Ginger Grant on the hit '60s sitcom, but her decision not to reprise the character for the series' subsequent reunion movies meant there was a big role to fill. Judith Baldwin stepped in to play the redheaded castaway for 1978's "Rescue from Gilligan's Island" and 1979's "The Castaways on Gilligan's Island." But when it came time for the next installment, "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island," the role of Ginger was once again open — and a famous spooky icon was originally supposed to get the part. Cassandra Peterson, perhaps better known as Elvira, was all-but-officially cast to play Ginger in the 1981 movie, but she never ended up making it on-screen.

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Peterson, who has red hair under her jet-black Elvira wig — she looks totally different with her signature look stripped bare! — was one of the finalists for the role of Ginger, a role that happened to be her childhood dream. A lifelong fan of the red-haired bombshell, Peterson claimed she was "privately assured" she was going to land the part, according to her memoir, "Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark," released in 2021. "I went to CBS Studios for wardrobe fittings, received my script to study, and made plans to pack up my apartment because — icing on the cake — we were shooting in Hawaii!" Peterson wrote. She remembered being "thrilled out of [her] mind," only to find out just days before leaving for Hawaii that her dream role was, in fact, "too good to be true." The role went to Constance Forslund, instead, and Peterson was left "devastated."

In her 2021 memoir, not only does "Elvira" actor Cassandra Peterson open up about her sexuality, but she also dishes the details about why she really didn't get the part on "Gilligan's Island." According to Peterson, producer and creator Sherwood Schwartz called to tell her the network decided to go a different route for the role of Ginger. It wasn't until years later that she ran into Schwartz at a party and inquired about the real reason she missed out on playing the character of her dreams. "He confided that one of the network heads had seen me in the comedy improv troupe, the Groundlings," where she had done a sketch playing a patient in a gynecologist's office. "The network veep reported back to the producers that they didn't need 'that kind of element' in their programming," she wrote. But for Peterson, she never believed that was the whole story.

Instead, the actor has a hunch she didn't get the job thanks to that same network exec — but for a different reason entirely. "Years before, I'd lost my s*** when I walked in on the same network exec in bed with my boyfriend, Matt," she wrote. "Guess we'll never know for sure." Nevertheless, the whole situation was ultimately "gratifying" for Peterson, as the movie "bombed," she claimed. Plus, the same year "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island" premiered, Peterson debuted as Elvira. She began hosting "Elvira's Movie Macabre" in 1981, marking the beginning of a decades-long career playing her iconic and creepy alter ego.