Neither critics nor production headaches could sink The Love Boat
For most of the history of television, the barrier to syndication—and to profitability—has been 100 episodes. The shows that have made it to that mark are an unusual group. Many were big hits. Some found small cult audiences. Still others just hung on as best they could and never posted numbers quite low enough to be canceled. In 100 Episodes, we examine the shows that made it to that number, considering both how they advanced and reflected the medium and what contributed to their popularity. This entry covers The Love Boat, which ran for nine full seasons and 250 episodes between 1977 and 1986.
Aaron Spelling began his showbiz career as a studio bit player in the 1950s, portraying one-off characters like “Weed Pindle” on a first-season episode of Gunsmoke. Familiar with TV and movie sets, he started writing, and producing, and eventually booked a spot in the Guinness Book Of World Records as “Most Prolific TV Producer.” In the ’60s and ’70s, he spearheaded shows like The Mod Squad, Family, Starsky And Hutch, Hart To Hart, and Charlie’s Angels. At his peak, he was responsible for seven hours of programming on the ABC schedule. The running joke was that the network should change its name to Aaron’s Broadcast Company; The New Yorker had its own name for Spelling: “schlock merchant.”
Around the time of Charlie’s Angels, Spelling was asked why he didn’t make more thought-provoking television. He replied, “People have enough to worry about. I don’t think television has to preach so much. What’s wrong with sheer escapism entertainment… cotton candy for the mind?”
The Love Boat, one of Spelling’s biggest hits, might have appeared like cotton candy, but it was only silly on the surface. In truth, the show offered a higher degree of difficulty than most TV productions. In their book The Sweeps: Behind The Scenes In Network TV, authors Mark Christensen and Cameron Stauth describe Love Boat as
a monumental exercise in controlled chaos, in which almost 15 tons of equipment, 300 crew members, numerous high-voltage guest stars, three interwoven plot lines, and the governments of numerous foreign countries had to regularly be controlled, organized, appeased, and made sense of week after week. Customs agents had to be paid off, lovers’ quarrels… patched up, guests stars flown in and out, and new locations constantly scouted. On top of that, each episode had three story lines: the “heart” story, the “tears” story, and the “laughs” story, all of which had to be somehow melded into a cohesive plot. And every show had to have an appeal to the three major age groups; a guest star like June Allyson would be hauled in for the older group, a Tom Selleck type would be brought in for the young adults, and somebody from a kids’ show, like Eight Is Enough, would be shoehorned in to the plot to attract the youngsters. To [the producers], doing Love Boat had seemed like waging a weekly World War III.
Spelling patterned his eventual hit after a previous one: ABC’s Love, American Style, an anthology series featuring weekly vignettes of sex and romance. Love Boat basically moved these random players and their stories to the ocean, making them passengers aboard a giant cruise ship. The show’s combination of accessibility with romantic, escapist everyday elegance turned Love Boat into a ratings juggernaut on Saturday nights, where Starsky And Hutch had failed to correct a decade of ABC flops like Griff, Holmes And YoYo, and Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell.
Love Boat producer Doug Cramer had been a Love, American Style producer. He had also purchased the rights to The Love Boats, a risqué tell-all from former cruise director Jennifer Saunders (the Jacqueline Susann of cruise ships), who detailed all her many stories from her high life on the seas. Cramer made multiple Love Boat pilots for ABC (three of which aired as made-for-TV movies), and after a few middling efforts, eventually the show was able to pull together a cast that absolutely clicked: Get Smart alum Bernie Kopell as the ship’s doctor, future Republican congressman Fred Grandy as the assistant purser (the head purser was never spotted), and theater veteran Ted Lange as the outgoing bartender. Newcomer Lauren Tewes became cruise director (Spelling had just spotted her on a Starsky And Hutch episode), while The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s Gavin MacLeod was hired as the ship’s captain.
Mary Tyler Moore had just ended, and MacLeod was looking forward to an onstage musical with Debbie Reynolds. Then his agent called with an offer for The Love Boat. MacLeod asked what his agent thought, and he replied, “I think it sucks. Do you want to read it?” But MacLeod remembers Spelling selling him on the emphasis on weekly happy endings and big guest stars. “All these things were pluses, pluses, pluses.”