The Love Boat Information

The Love Boat (Love Boat in its final season) is an American television series set on a cruise ship, which aired on the ABC Television Network from September 24, 1977, until May 24, 1986. The show revolves around the ship's captain and a handful of its crew, with several passengers - played by different guest actors for each episode - having romantic and humorous adventures. It was part of ABC's popular Saturday night lineup that included Fantasy Island until that show ended in 1984.

The original 1976 made-for-TV movie on which the show was based (also titled The Love Boat) was itself based on the nonfiction book The Love Boats by Jeraldine Saunders, a real-life cruise director. Two more TV movies (titled The Love Boat II and The New Love Boat) would follow before the series began its run.

The executive producer for the series was Aaron Spelling, who produced several successful series for ABC from the 1960s into the 1980s.

In 1997, the episode with segment titles "Hidden Treasure", "Picture from the Past", and "Ace's Salary" (season 9, episode 3) was ranked No. 82 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. The Love Boat ran for 10 seasons, including specials.

Cast

• Gavin MacLeod as Captain Merrill Stubing, "Your Captain"; also played Captain Stubing's brother Marshall, under the name O. D. Warbux, in two episodes, and as Captain Stubing's brother Milo, under the name Sonny Wilde, in one episode.
• Bernie Kopell as Dr. Adam "Doc" Bricker, "Your Ship's Doctor"
• Fred Grandy as Burl "Gopher" Smith, "Your Yeoman Purser"
• Ted Lange as Isaac Washington, "Your Bartender"
• Lauren Tewes as Julie McCoy, "Your Cruise Director" (1977-84)
• Jill Whelan as Vicki Stubing, the captain's daughter (1979-86)
• Ted McGinley as Ashley "Ace" Covington Evans, "Your Ship's Photographer" (1984-86)
• Pat Klous as Judy McCoy, Julie's sister and her successor as cruise director (1984-86)
• Sandy Helberg as "Gopher" Smith in first "Love Boat"

Gavin MacLeod, Bernie Kopell, and Ted Lange are the only cast members to appear in every episode of the series, including the last three made-for-TV movies. Fred Grandy was in every episode throughout the run of the series, but was not in the last of the TV movies. MacLeod was not the captain in the first two TV movies, however. The viewers are told in Love Boat II that Gopher, Doc, Isaac, and the captain served together in Vietnam, but no reference to this is ever made to their shared history again. However, when MacLeod's character was introduced, there was mention of him being "the new captain".

Among the series' attractions was the casting of well-known actors in guest-starring roles, with many famous film stars of yesteryear making rare television appearances. It was not the first comedy series to use the guest-star cast anthology format"?Love, American Style used the formula seven years earlier, but The Love Boat had such success with the formula that future shows in similar style (such as Supertrain and Masquerade) were inevitably compared to The Love Boat. The show was followed on Saturday nights on ABC by Fantasy Island, which was also produced by Aaron Spelling, and had a similar format.

Production

The one-hour sitcom was usually set aboard a Princess Cruises cruise liner called Pacific Princess. Other ships used were twin sister Island Princess, Stella Solaris (for a Mediterranean cruise), Pearl of Scandinavia (for a Chinese cruise), Royal Viking Sky (for European cruises) and Royal Princess and Sun Princess (for Caribbean cruises). In 1981, P&O Cruises' Sea Princess was also used for the special two-hour episode "Julie's Wedding", set in and around Australia, and guest-starring Lloyd Bridges, Katherine Helmond, Harry Morgan, Patrick Duffy and Anthony Andrews, among others. (The series was filmed primarily on sets in California"?20th Century Fox Studios for seasons one through five and Warner Hollywood Studios for the remainder of the series.)

For its first seven years, The Love Boat was very successful in the ratings. During that time, it ranked among the top 20, and even the top 10, popular shows then currently on television. For the 1980-81 season, it posted its highest rating at No. 5. But by the start of the 1984-85 season, the ratings were beginning to drop, and at the end of the following year, The Love Boat was cancelled after nine years on ABC, although a number of three-hour specials aired during the 1986-87 season.

Writing format

<imagemap>Image:Love_boat_cast_1977.JPG|200px|right|thumb|Original cast in a program premiere publicity photo 1977 default desc bottom-left rect 200 190 335 850 Julie McCoy (Lauren Tewes) rect 336 158 525 750 Captain Merrill Stubing (Gavin McLeod) rect 245 45 335 189 Dr. Adam Bricker (Bernie Kopell) rect 336 45 416 157 Isaac Washington (Ted Lange) rect 417 1 525 157 Burl "Gopher" Smith (Fred Grandy)

1. See for details on image maps.

</imagemap> Another unique aspect of The Love Boat was its writing format. Each episode contained several simultaneous storylines, each one written by a different set of writers. Each set of writers worked on one group of guest stars and their story of the week. As a result of this, episodes ended up with ungainly titles like "Disco Baby/Alas, Poor Dwyer/After the War/Ticket to Ride/Itsy Bitsy: Part 1". This also led to notorious continuity errors, most notably in Julie's outfits during boarding and disembarkation, which were often inconsistent between storylines.

Even though the cast of Charlie's Angels had been on separate episodes of the show, there was a crossover episode of the show in which the lady detectives had a case on the ship.

On rare occasions there would be crossovers between the stories. In one episode actors Robert Reed and Florence Henderson, formerly of The Brady Bunch, guest starred in separate segments. In one scene the two pass each other in a corridor, execute a "do I know you?" double-take, and then continue on their separate ways without talking.

In a one-time Fantasy Island crossover episode, the cruise ship makes a detour to deliver a troubled woman (played by Loni Anderson) to the mysterious island, and her storyline continued on that show.

There were usually three storylines. There was a pattern to the three storylines: one storyline focused around a member of the crew, a second storyline would often focus on a crew member interacting with a passenger, and the third storyline was more focused around a passenger (or a group of passengers). Additionally, the three storylines usually followed a similar thematic pattern: One storyline (typically the "crew" one) was straight-ahead comedy. The second would typically follow more of a romantic comedy format (with only occasional dramatic elements). The third storyline would usually be the most dramatic of the three, often offering few (if any) laughs and a far more serious tone.

Laugh track

The series was also distinctive as being one of the few hour-long series ever made for American television that used a laugh track (Eight is Enough, on the same network and produced at the same time, being another example).

Theme song and title sequence

See Love Boat (song) for more information The Love Boat theme song was sung by Jack Jones (except for the last season, where a cover version by Dionne Warwick was used). The lyrics were written by Paul Williams with music by Charles Fox. The song has since been recorded and released commercially by Charo in 1978 and Amanda Lear in 2001.

The opening sequence for the series underwent three different changes over the years. From seasons one to eight, the opening sequence began with a long shot of the ship before the camera slowly zoomed in onto its bridge area. This was followed by posing shots of the crew members (updated several times due to cast additions and changes throughout all seasons) at different points on the ship set. The long shot footage of the ship was used for the credits of the celebrity guest stars. For only the first season, the guest stars were credited by having their names appear on the screen while the show's symbol, a circle with four hearts in the corners (resembling a porthole), wrapped around them. Starting with season two (and originally experimented with in the fifteenth episode of the first season), the heart porthole was graphically put in place and at the center of the graphic, the guest stars were shown posing for the camera on different parts of the set (or a city spot used in on-location episodes) while their names appeared at the bottom of the screen. For the final season, the heart porthole was replaced by a crescent wave and the long shots of the ship were replaced by a montage of the various locations traveled to on the show. At the center of the wave graphic, the guest stars in this version were shown posing for the camera wearing their formal outfits against different colored backgrounds.

Sequels, spin-offs and crossovers

• In 1990 a TV movie, The Love Boat: A Valentine Voyage, aired on CBS.
• A second TV series, The Love Boat: The Next Wave aired on UPN from 1998 to 1999, with Robert Urich as Captain Jim Kennedy, a retired United States Navy officer, Phil Morris as Chief Purser Will Sanders, and Heidi Mark as cruise director Nicole Jordan (several members of the original show's cast guest-starred on a reunion-themed episode, where it was revealed that Julie and Doc had been in love all along)
• A 1979 episode of another Aaron Spelling series, Charlie's Angels, had that show's characters trying to recover a stolen statue while aboard the Pacific Princess on a Caribbean cruise (all of the Love Boat regulars had cameo appearances)
• A two-part 1996 Martin episode, "Goin' Overboard", had the main characters going on a cruise and encountering Isaac, Julie, Doc, and Vicki
• Isaac Washington also appeared in a 2005 episode of The King of Queens, "The Black List".

Syndication

ABC also aired reruns of the show in their daytime lineup from 11:00 a.m. - noon (10 a.m. - 11 a.m. Central) from June 30, 1980 to June 24, 1983 (with the exception of June 15, 1981 to September 11, 1981 when back-to-back reruns of Three's Company aired instead). The show currently reruns on Sunday afternoons at 14:00 (13:00 Central Time) on Me-TV.

DVD releases

CBS DVD (distributed by Paramount) has released Seasons 1 & 2 of The Love Boat on DVD in Region 1 & 4. Each season has been released in two volume sets.

DVD Name	Ep No.	Release dates		Bonus features
		Region 1	Region 4
Season 1, Volume 1	12	March 4, 2008	April 10, 2008	Episodic promos
Season 1, Volume 2	12	August 12, 2008	October 2, 2008	The New Love Boat (pilot TV-Movie) Episodic promos
Season 2, Volume 1	13	January 27, 2009	September 2, 2009	Episodic promos
Season 2, Volume 2	12	August 4, 2009	December 24, 2009	Episodic promos

International syndication

Country	Foreign title	Translation	Network(s)	Notes
	The Love Boat	None	Nine Network (1978-86) Eleven (2011-)
	The Love Boat		First-run syndication
	To ploio tis agapis (The Ship of Love)	Subtitled	CyBC
	The Love Boat	Subtitled	Kanal 2
	Lemmenlaiva (Ship of Love)	Subtitled	MTV3
	La croisire s'amuse (The Fun Cruise)	Dubbed	FR3 TVA	As usual in France, the laugh track was omitted in the French synchronisation which made this a romantic telenovela-like series rather than a sitcom
	Love Boat	Dubbed	Sat.1 Tele 5 9Live Premiere (pay television network) Anixe	Originally shown on Sat.1 and later on Tele 5, 9Live, Premiere, and Anixe. The laugh track was omitted
	Love Boat		GBC TV	Hugely popular in Gibraltar, with The Love Boat (the real one) having berthed at Gibraltar Port various times over the years
	?? ????? ??? ?????? (The Ship of Love)	Subtitled	ERT
	Szerelemhaj (Love Ship)	Dubbed	Movies 24	Aired in 2010; The laugh track was omitted
	????? ????? (The Love Boat)	Subtitled	IBA
	Love Boat	Dubbed	Mediaset	First run on Canale 5, beginning in 1980; reruns on Canale 5, Rete 4, SkyVivo, FoxRetro, Raidue; In Italy, the laugh track was omitted
	The Love Boat	Subtitled	VARA and later RTL4
	Kjrlighetsskipet (The Love Ship)	Subtitled	TV2 (1994-96)
	The Love Boat	None	GMA Network
	Statek mi?o?ci (The Love Boat)	Dubbed	TVP2
	Barco do Amor (The Love Boat)	Subtitled	RTP 1 RTP 2 Sic Gold Sic Comdia	RTP 1 (first run) in 1980s RTP 2 (rerun) in 1980s and early 1990s as possible choice of phone-vote selection program Agora Escolha Sic Gold (reruns) Sic Comdia (reruns)
	Lo? lsky (Love Ship)	Dubbed	Tv Joj
	Die Plesierboot (The Pleasure Boat)	Dubbed in Afrikaans	TV2
	??? ??? (Cruise ship of Love)	Dubbed	MBC
	??????? ????????? (Ship of Love, Ship of Fun)	Dubbed	TV3
	Vacaciones en el mar (Sea Holidays)	Dubbed	Televisin Espaola (first run) Telecinco (reruns)
	Krlek ombord (Love on Board)	Subtitled	TV4
	??? (The Boat of Love)	Subtitled	CTV
	A?k Gemisi (The Love Boat)	Dubbed	TRT 1 (first run) Show TV (reruns)
	El Crucero del Amor (The Boat of Love)	Dubbed	Venezolana de Televisin Unknown	The show was dubbed in Mexico for Latin America and, with the exception here marked, is known as "El Crucero del Amor" (The Cruise Ship of Love). Also the laugh track was omitted.