The Untold Truth Of The Love Boat

Relatively few television series are based on books. The shows that have originated as novels — particularly in the 1970s — tend to take on the miniseries format rather than the loose adaptation necessary for a regularly airing, open-ended program. However, there's one big exception to the rule. Prolific 1970s TV producer Wilford Lloyd Baumes developed The Love Boat franchise from The Love Boats, a 1974 memoir by Jeraldine Saunders, who wrote of her years working as a cruise director on some very large ships. The show captured the spirit of Saunders' book, what with characters flitting in and out of the lives of cruise ship employees.

Saunders died at age 95 in 2019 after a long life of minor celebrity afforded her by her book and its successful TV version. She wrote a syndicated astrology column, taped a segment for TLC's Extreme Cougar Wives with her much younger boyfriend, and Princess Cruises named her "the patron saint of cruising."

The Love Boat deftly mixed fiction and reality. Captain Stubing and his crew were fictional characters portrayed by actors, and they interacted with celebrity guest stars, but the extras on the ship — all those hundreds of people having the time of their lives on the high seas — were real people enjoying a real cruise vacation. Episodes were produced occasionally on Princess Cruises' Island Princess, but for the most part, the Pacific Princess was the floating home of The Love Boat. 

In use by the cruise line since the early 1970s, the Pacific Princess was part of the company's fleet for decades after the cancellation of The Love Boat. In 2002, Princess Cruises sold the 20,000-ton ship to Spanish carrier Pullmantour Cruises, and it was supposed to be upgraded and improved in Italy in 2008, only for the project (and ship) to be abandoned. Finally, in 2013, the once mighty and glamorous "Love Boat" made its final trip, heading to Turkey to be broken down and its metal elements and most valuable parts sold for scrap. Turkish company Izmir Ship Recycling Company paid $3.3 million for the decommissioned cruise liner, and sadly, two of the firm's workers died during the breakdown process. While pumping water out of the engine room, they accidentally inhaled a fatal amount of toxic exhaust.

In June 1983, The Love Boat embarked on a 14-day voyage to China, Hong Kong, and Japan to film three special episodes. Taped aboard the Pearl of Scandinavia, according to People, the project cost a huge-for-the-time $12 million. It took months to plan, and producer Doug Cramer wondered if it would happen at all after the political tensions that developed after Chinese tennis player Hu Na defected to the U.S. in 1982. But the real issue, Cramer said, was with cast members, with a level of hostility on the ship he likened to "a miniature World War III." After guest star Susan Anton scored a large cabin on the exclusive "skydeck," cast member Gavin MacLeod got so angry that he made a cruise line official give him their own skydeck room. Guest star Erin Moran cried until she got a better room. 

And, as was usual operating procedure on The Love Boat, the ship was full of real people who paid big money to be on the boat as it made its way around East Asia. Some paid as much as $8,550 to blur reality with TV and be on this Love Boat cruise, which included activities dropped or rescheduled to accommodate shooting, and — during a stop in Tianjin, China — two nights stuck in a cheap motel because all the good hotel rooms got swiped by Love Boat cast and crew.

Never mind all those luminaries of Hollywood gone by — the most headline-grabbing (and unlikely) Love Boat guest star of all time is Andy Warhol. He championed the pop art movement and was in many ways the first hipster, forming a collective of cool and beautiful New York creatives called "The Factory" and discovering the Velvet Underground. Warhol, who never committed himself to one medium, presented himself to the world as an art project, and he embraced what might otherwise be considered pop cultural junk or ephemera, such as a light, frothy, and purely entertaining TV show like The Love Boat. In fact, he loved it so much that he decided to embark on a Love Boat adventure. 

The early ninth season Love Boat episode "Hidden Treasure / Picture from the Past / Ace's Salary" aired in October 1985. Also the show's 200th episode, the star-studded affair included guest performers Andy Griffith, Milton Berle, and Marion Ross as Emily Stubing (wife of Captain Stubing). In the episode, Ross' character once starred in an edgy and experimental Warhol film as one of his so-called "Superstars," and she really doesn't want to bump into him on her cruise ... because he's there, too. Warhol shows up as himself, and he offers to paint a portrait for one lucky cruiser. Maybe he elevated The Love Boat to high art status because Warhol's appearance pushed the installment to a rank of #82 on TV Guide's 100 television episodes of all time.

The Love Boat aired its last regular installment in February 1987, but the show had such a positive impact on cruising as a vacation option and on its corporate partner in Princess Cruises that its presence looms large over present-day voyages. Princess contracted with The Love Boat's production company to shoot on three of its cruise ships over the show's long run — the Sun Princess, the Pacific Princess, and the Island Princess. In the years after the show left the air, cast member Gavin MacLeod — Captain Stubing himself — signed on to be a company spokesperson. And in 1997, all six members of the original cast staged their first full reunion to christen a Princess ship, the Dawn Princess.

In 2013, Princess executive Vice President Rai Caluori announced (via USA Today) that its massive, 3,560-passenger Royal Princess vessel would be outfitted with a special horn that would play the first two bars of The Love Boat's familiar theme song when the ship left certain ports. That was an expansion of something that had already been happening on other Princess boats for years. Numerous cruise directors would play the song when shipping out, but it was never an official company policy for a ship until the Royal Princess made it so. Moreover, the company's passenger safety announcements take the form of a parody video of the Love Boat opening credits sequence.

Accounting for some test TV movies, nine seasons of weekly episodes, and a few more telefilms, The Love Boat shipped out from TV in 1987. However, it wasn't long before the most romantic ocean liner in the world was setting a course for adventure once more. In the spring of 1998, scarcely more than a decade after the demise of the original series, Love Boat: The Next Wave debuted on UPN. Not quite a reboot or a remake, the show's characters were all new, including Captain Jim Kennedy III (portrayed by TV stalwart Robert Urich), purser Will Sanders (Phil Morris), and security chief Camille Hunter (Joan Severance). Love Boat: The Next Wave failed to capture the attentions of audiences the way its predecessor did, and after two short seasons as one of the least-watched shows on network TV, UPN canceled the show.

In 2019, a few years into the television fad of bringing back old shows (Roseanne, Twin Peaks, The X-Files), discussions commenced about a new Love Boat featuring at least some members of the old cast. "We've talked about a reboot," Jill Whelan (who played Vicky Stubing on the original series) told Fox News. "We're thinking about how we would fit into something like that."