Sherwood Schwartz being honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008. Image by Getty Images

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale… Of a Jew from Passaic, NJ who created two iconic television series that helped define an era.

Sherwood Schwartz, who died today in Los Angeles at 94, was the force behind “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” two of the “most affectionately ridiculed and enduring television sitcoms of the 1960s and ’70s,” as The New York Times put it.

Schwartz “weathered painfully dismissive reviews to see his shows prosper and live on for decades in syndication,” the Times wrote. “Many critics suggested that they were successful because they ran counter to the tumultuous times in which they appeared: the era of the Vietnam War and sweeping social change.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Schwartz gave up a medical career to write jokes for Bob Hope’s radio show, according to Access Hollywood. He went on to write for radio and TV shows including “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” and dreamed up the Robinson Crusoe-esque “Gilligan’s Island” in 1964.

The massively successful program, chronicling the circular adventures of seven disparate castaways, spawned movies, cartoons, and even a 2004 reality show Schwartz co-produced. Schwartz also wrote the show’s haunting theme song, whose opening lines — “”Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, A tale of a fateful trip…” — are burned into the collective consciousness of millions of post-baby-boomers.

With an initial run from 1969 to 1974, “The Brady Bunch” also had an enduring afterlife and an equally contagious Schwartz-penned theme song (“This is the story / Of a lovely lady…”). It was followed by three one-season spinoffs, and a hit movie in 1995.

Most recently, Schwartz was working on a big-screen version of “Gilligan’s Island,” nephew Douglas Schwartz — himself creator of smash TV schlockfest “Baywatch” — told Access Hollywood.

Schwartz died peacefully in his sleep of natural causes, according to the Associated Press. He is survived by his wife of 69 years, Mildred, and their four children.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount