Gilligan’s Island made its debut on CBS on September 26, 1964. The iconic sitcom starred Alan Hale Jr. as Skipper Jonas Grumby and Bob Denver as his first mate, Gilligan, who end up marooned on a desert island with a group of strangers after sailing into a violent storm. From there, the series centers around the castaways trying to get along with one another in order to make it off the island alive. Ironically, due to the unfortunate real-life events that occurred while production on the pilot was underway, the show almost didn’t make it beyond the island it was filmed on.

As series creator Sherwood Schwartz explains in his 1988 book, Inside Gilligan’s Island: From Creation to Syndication, the crew ran into a number of issues after filming began in Hawaii, from stormy weather to heavy waves and everything in between. The biggest obstacle they encountered, however, came on November 22, 1963, which was their second-to-last day of filming. Late that morning, they were told that President John F. Kennedy had been shot, but at first, everyone was skeptical of the news. “When you’re thousands of miles from the mainland, news reports don’t seem very realistic somehow,” Schwartz wrote.

By that afternoon, garbled radio reports confirmed that the shooting wasn’t a rumor and that Kennedy was dead, making it “incredibly difficult” for the cast and crew to continue to work. Kennedy’s death also prevented them from filming in Honolulu Harbor the following day, where they were scheduled to shoot the opening sequence in which the S.S. Minnow sets sail on its fateful journey. Initially, the harbor was to be closed for the next two days as a period of mourning. Later they learned that the official day of mourning had been moved to November 25, meaning the cast and crew would have to stay on location for an additional two days, despite the production already being over budget. 

Luckily, CBS executive Hunt Stromberg Jr. had visited the crew on location and liked what he saw, so Schwartz was able to secure the additional funds needed to finish the pilot. Although what was shot at the time ultimately got the series greenlit by CBS, casting changes were made, and the pilot didn’t air until many years later. The first season did utilize the opening sequence they filmed the day after Kennedy died, though, which also contains an eerie reminder of the tragedy. If you pay close attention at the 21-second mark in the video below, a flag can be spotted in the background flying at half-mast, forever linking the series to the events of November 22: