No other TV show has attracted more Oscar winners as guest stars that ABC’s The Love Boat. The show ran for nine seasons between 1976 and 1986 and included a young Tom Hanks and Kathy Bates, as well as movie icons such as Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine. Take a trip down memory lane with Academy Award winners who set sail on The Love Boat.
Ginger Rogers
As guest stars go, The Love Boat promised something for everyone — including Ginger putting the moves on Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in one 1979 episode. Yet Jill Whelan, who played Vicki, wasn’t intimidated by such legends. “I started on the show when I was 11, too young to understand the enormity of the people we were working with.”
Jamie Lee Curtis
After her 1977 hit Halloween, the future Oscar winner for Everything, Everywhere All at Once didn’t find jobs floating back to her, so she “did the ultimate guest-star part” in ’78 with mom Janet Leigh! “The storyline [was] my parents come on [my] honeymoon. Hilarity ensues!”
Kathy Bates
For her TV debut, the future star of Misery played a newlywed bride who “every time we wanted to consummate our marriage, something kept getting in the way,” Kathy recalled of the 1978 episode. “He had a rash [or] I went ashore in Mexico and got on the wrong boat!”
Tom Hanks
For two-time winner Tom, making his TV debut as Gopher’s old frat buddy in 1980 was a sweet reward. “My fifth-grade teacher called me up and said, ‘I can’t believe my eyes. Tom, you’re on The Love Boat.’ When it aired…I can’t tell you what it meant to my world.”
Jane Wyman
The Oscar winner for 1948’s Johnny Belinda got in the habit of guest-starring on TV shows. In addition to her role on The Love Boat in 1980, she appeared on My Three Sons and Charlie’s Angels. As she said, “They were fun.”
Stars of The Love Boat walk along the top of the Great Wall in Beijing. From left to right are: Fred Grandy, who plays the purser Burl "Gopher" Smith; Ted Lange, who plays the bartender Isaac Washington; Jill Whelan, who plays Captain Stubing's daughter Vicki; Gavin McLeod, who plays captain Merrill Stubing; Lauren Tewes, who plays cruise director Julie McCoy; and Bernie Kopell, who plays the ship's doctor Adam Bricker.Getty Images
Joan Fontaine
“One quality we had was surprise,” said the late Gavin MacLeod about the appearance of such stars as the Oscar winner for 1941’s Suspicion — who came aboard in 1981 as a woman trying to help an old flame.
Patty Duke
She may have won an Oscar for 1962’s The Miracle Worker, but Patty was always up to make another run on The Love Boat. She guest-starred three times, including her first voyage in ’77 with fellow Oscar winner Ruth Gordon, who played a meddling grandma looking to marry her off.
Olivia de Havilland
In 1981, the two-time Oscar winner guest-starred as Captain Stubing’s (Gavin MacLeod) Aunt Hilly and set a course for adventure opposite fellow screen legend Joseph Cotten. The pairing wasn’t too much of a stretch, as they’d taken off as paramours in Airport ’77 a few years before!
Donna Reed
After starring on The Donna Reed Show for eight seasons, the actress (who won her Oscar for 1953’s From Here to Eternity) didn’t take a role on TV for 18 years — until The Love Boat’s 1984 Hong Kong cruise episode. In it, Donna played a businesswoman with her eyes on a dashing presidential hopeful (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.)
Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters
When this pair set sail for the show’s 1982 Italian cruise, Ernie once got so annoyed with his onscreen wife he “ripped into her with every Italian curse that no one in the world had ever heard,” said Bernie Kopell, who played Doc.
