(FOX Entertainment) Actor Russell Johnson, who played The Professor on “Gilligan’s Island,” has died.
He was 89.
Johnson’s agent told Fox News that the actor passed away at his home in Washington State on Thursday morning of natural causes, with his wife and daughter by his side.
Johnson’s co-star Dawn Wells, who played Mary Anne on the show, posted on her Facebook page: “My 2 favorite people are now gone. The professor past (sic) away this morning. My heart is broken.”
“Russell was a true gentleman, a good father, a great friend, and ‘the rest,'” Wells wrote.
Wells and Tina Louise, who played Ginger, are the show’s last two surviving cast members.
Johnson starred on “Gilligan’s Island,” a classic TV comedy about a mismatched set of castaways stranded on a deserted island, from 1964 to 1967.
His character, high school science teacher Roy Hinkley, built generators and other gadgets out of scraps of junk found on the island. Johnson later joked that the one thing The Professor never figured out how to do was to fix the leaky boat so the group could get back to civilization.
During its three-season run on CBS, critics repeatedly lambasted the show as insipid. But after its cancellation in 1967, it found generations of new fans in reruns and reunion movies.