Despite daunting scheduling opposite CBS' The Carol Burnett Show, Love Boat became an immediate success, eventually reaching No. 5, helping fast-track another Spelling series, Fantasy Island, and spawning a few copycats ( Supertrain?!?!). Beach Bums was yanked from the schedule after a few months.
FRED SILVERMAN: [ABC's] Saturday night had been a graveyard. All of a sudden, the damn show went through the roof, and destroyed Carol Burnett.
GAVIN MACLEOD: There was a big party at Chasen's, and Carol said, ''Gavin, if I had to be knocked off, I'm so glad it was you.''
FRED GRANDY: Then they put Kojak against us and we started cleaning his clock. People began to say, ''Wait — what are we missing here?'' Including us.
MACLEOD: In the winter when it's freezing in Buffalo and Minnesota, our numbers are going through the roof. People are looking at those girls in the bikinis by our pool.
GRANDY: I think Aaron was actually seeding clouds over Omaha but I can't prove it.
Playing a reformed alcoholic, MacLeod became an unlikely leading man in shorts (''I got a lot of letters about my legs,'' he marvels). Meanwhile, fans began greeting Lange with his signature grin-and-point from the opening credits. That iconic moment? Not in the script.
TED LANGE: They set up a fake little bar and said, ''Smile into the lens.'' ''You're kidding me, right?'' ''Ted, don't give me any crap. Just look in the lens and smile.'' So being an actor, I said, ''Why am I smiling?'' He said: ''Think of your check.'' And I went [grins and points], ''What's my motivation? You're getting paid, a—hole! Riiight!'' [grins and points]
III: GUEST WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?
More than 1,000 guest stars boarded Love Boat , from future A-listers (Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal) to film legends (Ginger Rogers, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) to athletes and artists (Reggie Jackson, Andy Warhol).
LYNNE FARR: We said, ''Don't we want to see all these people who have been around but don't have a television series right now and aren't in movies anymore?'' We started a lot of careers again.
GORDON FARR, producer: I got a chance to direct Helen Hayes, Sir John Mills, and Ethel Merman in the same show. Jesus Christ!
CYNTHIA LAUREN TEWES: I was so naive. I had to look people up in a book before I would go to work on Monday to see who the new people were. I was always sticking my foot in my mouth.
LANGE: When the old-timers came on, it was like two virgins after a hooker. Me and Fred, we'd beeline to these guys.... I bought Gene Kelly a drink in Hong Kong. He says, ''Let me pay for this.'' I said, ''Oh, no — I want to be able to tell my kids I bought Gene Kelly a drink in Hong Kong.''
TEWES: Ruth Gordon was my fantasy camp day. I actually have a photograph — she passed by me in a frame of film.
FLORENCE HENDERSON, 8-time guest: The set was great fun, and you always got to work with all these different stars.... I played so many wives, I'm trying to remember all the people I married. Shecky Greene, Don Adams, Bert Convy...there had to be many more. If you find out, lemme know.
The guest most associated with the show: Charo, another 8-timer. After Spelling saw her act in Las Vegas, she was cast as stowaway-turned-entertainer April.
CHARO: Never in history [did] a producer give so many chances to so many people, and one of those people was me.
GORDON FARR: How much energy can someone bring to a project? Forget ''cuchi-cuchi'' — she's got a smile and a face that just went wowww.
CHARO: ''Cuchi-cuchi'' showed me the way to the bank. That bulls--- make me rich.
SCOTT BAIO, 1-time guest: You got to go to Mexico and swim with the dolphins. I remember everybody getting sick because we hit a storm. I remember everybody getting really drunk....
DENNIS HAMMER, casting director/producer: I watched the Miss America pageant and Vanessa Williams won. My first phone call in the morning was to Doug Cramer and I said, ''Isaac meets Miss America!'' and he said, ''Done.'' By the end of the day, we had Vanessa Williams set for Love Boat.
CRAMER: We had so many people on the show, and the trade papers made fun of them: If you showed up on Love Boat, you were down on your luck. So Liz Taylor did Hotel but wouldn't do Love Boat.
HAMMER: I was a huge Alice Faye fan. We tried her year after year but she was happily in Palm Springs and didn't want to work. Finally she called and said, ''All right, I give up! I'm the only one on the golf course who hasn't done the show. I'll do it.''.... There was almost no one we wouldn't pursue. When Ronald Reagan was running for President, I called his office. I had this great pitch as I recall. And whomever I was talking to was so incredulous that I was asking Ronald Reagan to do Love Boat: He said, ''There's just no way Governor Reagan is doing this.'' And there was a pause, and I said, ''Well... what about Nancy?'' He laughed very hard, then said, ''No, that's not going to happen either.'' If Nixon could go on Laugh-In while running for President, why couldn't Reagan go on Love Boat while running?
GRANDY: Apparently against a lot of advice to the contrary, the producers decided to hire both Carol Channing and Ethel Merman [for 1982's musical extravaganza ''The Love Boat Follies'']. According to most show-business legends, they loathed one another. We were all waiting with bated breath to see what was going to happen: Who's going to strike first? So Ethel and Carol were at the piano working on a number to sing together. Carol thought Ethel was wadding up pieces of tissue and throwing them in Carol's purse. On a couple of occasions, she said, ''Ethel, don't do that. That's very irritating.'' Ethel said, ''I'm not doing that, Carol. Leave me alone.'' Finally Carol said, ''Don't tell me you're not throwing that tissue paper in my purse.'' And Ethel took one step back and said, ''Oh, shut your hole!'' And the reason this is a good story is because somebody from the next soundstage came over and said, ''What the f--- was that?'' They're called soundstages because they're soundproof, right? That does not apply to Ethel Merman. [Channing doesn't recall the incident and says the two became good friends on the set.]
NEXT PAGE: ''This guy came up — turns out he was some mid-level executive at Princess. He said, ''I had to come over here and talk to you two guys because — how do I say this? — you guys have made me so rich! I can't believe it!''
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