Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 20, 1993 TAG: 9307200254
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
She was up for the part before Dawn Wells got it.
Before the television comedy premiered in 1964, Carroll O'Connor was considered for the skipper, Jerry Van Dyke for Gilligan and Dabney Coleman for the professor.
Russell Johnson, who won the role of the professor, now wishes he had never taken the job. Johnson, the author of a new book on the popular sitcom, "Here on Gilligan's Isle," said the show ruined his acting career because he was typecast in the role of the absent-minded professor.
Johnson, who lives on an island in Puget Sound in Washington state, acts occasionally and does commercial voice-overs.
Ginger Baker, the drummer for 1960s rock legend Cream, easily makes the switch from sticks to saddles.
Baker, 52, played Sunday in the Charity Polo Cup at the Cottonwood Riding Club in Denver, Colo., which raised money for the Colorado AIDS Project.
He has nine polo horses for his spread near Santa Ynez, Calif., north of Santa Barbara.
Baker, along with guitarist Eric Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce, formed Cream in 1968, and went on to create blues-based rock hits including "White Room" and "Sunshine of Your Love."
"Shogun" and "Gai-jin" author James Clavell clearly has an affection for Japan, but the best-selling writer's feelings for the Japanese were not always so kind.
Clavell was an officer with the British Royal Artillery during World War II when he was captured in Java. He spent the rest of the war in Changi, the infamous Japanese prisoner camp.
"That is the paradox," said Clavell, who was a POW for three years. "I hated them for what they did."
"I bottled it all up. People didn't talk about what happened," he said.
Then Clavell wrote "King Rat," a novel based on the real-life exploits of a U.S. Army corporal he knew at Changi.
"All my hatred was gone after that. `King Rat' cleansed me," Clavell said.
by CNB