Sherwood Schwartz, the legendary producer who created "The Brady Bunch" and "Gilligan's Island" and also wrote their theme songs, has died at 94, his great-niece reports.
Robin Randall says Schwartz died at 4 a.m. Tuesday.
Schwartz won an Emmy in 1961 for his work on "The Red Skelton Show" and worked on numerous other programs, but will forever be best known for his two campy 1960s-1970s sitcoms.
“Gilligan’s Island” featured a hummable theme song telling how a boatload of seven characters, including a professor and a movie star, wound up stranded on an island. Bob Denver played Gilligan, the first mate.
“The Brady Bunch” featured Florence Henderson as a widow with three daughters who marries a widower with three sons. Fond memories of the show sparked a revival of interest in that show in the 1990s. A theater production, "The Real Life Brady Bunch," performed actual scripts from the show on stages around the country in the early part of that decade. A bigscreen version, “The Brady Bunch Movie,” was a surprise box-office hit in 1995.
"He had a lot of favorite projects and a lot of favorite shows and his favorite one was always the next one," his son and producing partner, Lloyd, told TheWrap.com. "He didn't really die. He just ran out of time to do things."
The father and son were working together on the upcoming Warner Bros. film adaptation of "Gilligan's Island" at the time of Schwartz's death.
TODAY pays tribute to Schwartz, 'Gilligan's Island'
The Hollywood Reporter quotes Schwartz as saying he'd like to be remembered "as a man who tried to explain in his own way that people have to learn to get along with each other. I did it with comedy because that's what I'm familiar with, and I think it's more acceptable to tell it in comedy form."
TMZ.com reports that Schwartz died peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by family, including his wife of 69 years.
In addition to Lloyd, he is survived by two other sons and his daughter Hope (named for Bob Hope), who appeared on "The Brady Bunch" as a girl. Lloyd Schwartz and Hope Schwartz Juber wrote the 2008 stage show, "A Very Brady Musical." And another son, Ross, wrote the independent film "Bottle Shock."
Born in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1916, Schwartz studied pre-med at New York University before writing for "The Bob Hope Radio Show" in 1939 with his brother, Al.
After four years with Hope, he wrote for the Armed Forces Radio Service, then for the radio version of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet."
Once he turned to television, he worked on more than 700 shows, by his own count. They included "I Married Joan," "The Red Skelton Show," and "My Favorite Martian." He shared a 1961 Emmy for writing for Skelton.
He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008.