Today in History: Saturday, April 17, 2021

Television and Radio
CBS sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” concluded its three season run in 1967. It wasn’t until the first of three television movies, “Rescue From Gilligan’s Island” in 1978, that the castaways finally left the island. During a reunion cruise on the first Christmas after their rescue, fate intervened and the seven castaways found themselves wrecked on the same island at the end of the film. In the next movie, “The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island” in 1979, they are rescued once again and the Howells (Jim Backus and Natalie Schaffer) converted the island into a getaway resort…The Pulitzer prize was awarded to Larry McMurtry for “Lonesome Dove” in 1986…The Consumer News and Business Channel — also known as CNBC — launched in 1989…“Game of Thrones,” the most honored drama in Emmy history, debuted in 2011. In 2019, the show’s final season established a new record for most Emmy nominations received in the same year by any regular series with 32, breaking the 25-year-long record of 26 nominations established by ABC’s “NYPD Blue” in 1994…In 2012, the Sarah Michelle Gellar drama “Ringer” concluded after one season on The CW. It was originally in development at CBS.

Movies
Daffy Duck made his first appearance in the animated short “Porky’s Duck Hunt” in 1937.

Music
Paul McCartney’s first solo album, “McCartney,“ was released in 1970…The astronauts on the troubled craft Apollo 13 safely returned to Earth in 1970. The movie version of its events, which starred Tom Hanks and Kevin Bacon and directed by Ron Howard, was released in theaters in 1995

Celebrity Birthdays
Actor Sean Bean (“Game of Thrones”) is 62; actor Henry Ian Cusick (“Scandal”, “Lost”) is 54; actress Jennifer Garner is 49; Victoria Beckham is 47; actress Rooney Mara (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) is 36.

-Did You Know?:
“Gilligan’s Island” was expected back for a fourth season on CBS (in 1967-68), but the decision not to cancel western “Gunsmoke” (which ultimately ran for another eight seasons) meant there was no room on the schedule for the inane sitcom…Sarah Michelle Gellar’s first regularly scheduled series role was in a syndicated teen drama called “Swan’s Crossing” that aired in first-run syndication for 13 weeks in 1992. The series chronicled the lives of a group of wealthy teenagers living in the seaside town of Swans Crossing. Gellar as Sydney Rutledge was the daughter of the town’s mayor, Margaret “Muffy” Rutledge.