Tina Louise (born February 11, 1934) is an American actress best known for playing movie star Ginger Grant in the CBS television situation comedy Gilligan's Island. She began her career on stage during the mid-1950s, before landing her breakthrough role in 1958 drama film God's Little Acre for which she received Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year. Louise had starring roles in a number of Hollywood movies, including The Trap, The Hangman, Day of the Outlaw, and For Those Who Think Young. Louise later returned to film, appearing in The Wrecking Crew, The Happy Ending, and The Stepford Wives (1975). Tina Blacker was born in New York City. By the time she was four years of age, her parents had divorced. An only child, she was raised by her mother, Sylvia Horn (née Myers) Blacker (1916–2011), a fashion model. Tina's father, Joseph Blacker, was a candy store owner in Brooklyn and later an accountant. The name "Louise" was allegedly added during her senior year in high school when she mentioned to her drama teacher that she was the only girl in the class without a middle name. He selected the name "Louise" and it stuck. She attended Miami University in Ohio. Louise made her Hollywood film debut in 1958 in God's Little Acre. That same year, the National Art Council named her the "World's Most Beautiful Redhead." The next year she starred in Day of the Outlaw, with Robert Ryan. She became an in-demand leading lady for major stars like Robert Taylor and Richard Widmark, often playing somber roles quite unlike the glamorous pinup photographs and Playboy pictorials she had become famous for in the late 1950s. She turned down roles in Li'l Abner and Operation Petticoat taking roles on Broadway and in Italian cinema and Hollywood. Among her more notable Italian film credits was the historical epic Garibaldi (1960), directed by Roberto Rossellini, that concerned Garibaldi's efforts to unify the Italian states in 1860. When Louise returned to the United States, she began studying with Lee Strasberg and eventually became a member of the Actors Studio. In 1962, she guest-starred on the sitcom The Real McCoys, portraying a country girl from West Virginia in an episode titled "Grandpa Pygmalion". Two years later, prior to the development of Gilligan's Island, she appeared with Bob Denver in the beach party film For Those Who Think Young. In 1964, she left the Broadway musical Fade Out – Fade In to portray movie star Ginger Grant on the situation comedy Gilligan's Island, after the part was turned down by Jayne Mansfield. Over time she became unhappy with the role and worried that it would typecast her. The role did make Louise a pop icon of the era, and in 2005 an episode of TV Land Top Ten ranked her as second only to Heather Locklear as the greatest of television's all-time sex symbols.[citation needed]. After the series ended in 1967, Louise continued to work in film and made numerous guest appearances in various television series. She did not appear in the 1978 movie Rescue from Gilligan's Island nor on another cast reunion film, The Castaways on Gilligan's Island and The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island, the only original cast member to decline reprising the role (which was played by Judith Baldwin and Connie Forslund in the later film). She appeared in the Matt Helm spy spoof The Wrecking Crew (1969) with Dean Martin. Louise played a doomed suburban housewife in the original The Stepford Wives (1975), and both the film and her performance were well received. She attempted to shed her comedic image by assaying grittier roles, including a guest appearance as a heroin addict in a 1974 Kojak episode, as well as a co-starring role as a Southern prison guard in the 1976 ABC television movie Nightmare in Badham County. Her other television films of the period included Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976), SST: Death Flight (1977), Friendships, Secrets and Lies (1979), and in the prime-time soap opera Dallas, during the 1978–1979 seasons, as J.R. Ewing's secretary, Julie Grey, a semi-regular character. Her character was finally killed off. In the fall of 1984, she replaced Jo Ann Pflug as Taylor Chapin on the syndicated soap opera Rituals after Pflug refused to do love scenes with co-star George Lazenby because of her religious beliefs. After a few months, however, Louise did not renew her own contract and the character was written out. She later made cameo appearances on the network daytime soaps Santa Barbara and All My Children. The question "Ginger or Mary Ann?" is considered a classic pop-psychological question when given to American men of a certain age as an insight into their characters, or at least their desires as regarding certain female stereotypes. With the January 2014 death of Gilligan's Island co-star Russell Johnson, Louise and actress Dawn Wells are the only two surviving cast members of the original sitcom.