Elvira Actress Cassandra Peterson Almost Played Ginger Grant

Cassandra Peterson, known today as Elvira, nearly landed the role of Ginger Grant in the 1981 television movie "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island." Originally promised the part by show creator Sherwood Schwartz after Tina Louise declined to return for sequels, Peterson was told days before her trip to Hawaii that Constance Forslund had been chosen instead. In her autobiography, Peterson described the initial promise as too good to be true but later learned from a party encounter with Schwartz that a network executive objected to one of her sketches involving a gynecologist's office patient.