When love DOCKED IN OZ!
NAUTICAL BUT NICE
The Love Boat was required primetime Tuesday night viewing on Channel Nine. It made stars of Gavin Macleod, who’d been promoted from Mchale’s
Navy seaman to cruise liner Captain Merrill Stubing, and Lauren Tewes as “your cruise director Julie Mccoy”.
Aussies watched in droves, as much to marvel at the exotic ports of call – Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta – as to see the galaxy of A-listers on deck. Tom Hanks, Betty White, Debbie Reynolds and Olivia de Havilland are just a handful of celebrities who made appearances.
Pure escapist fun and romance, The Love Boat enjoyed a near-untouchable nine-year run on our screens before running off course amid changing viewer habits, hokey plotlines and the cast’s personal troubles. A reboot Love Boat: The
Next Wave sank without trace in the late 1990s.
G’DAY SAILORS!
The show was such a hit Down Under during its heyday that both Kylie Minogue and the late Olivia Newton-john covered the iconic theme tune. An Aussie-themed two-part episode also aired in 1982.
The special saw cruise director Julie set to marry during a stopover in Sydney – providing the cue for koalas, kangaroos, headscratching “local lingo” and broad accents. It also allowed for an arresting turn by local bombshell Delvene Delaney as Julie’s stand-in, Yvonne Petty.
Then a 29-year-old rising star, Delvene secured the high-profile cameo due to Lynda Stoner – also from The Paul Hogan Show and The Young Doctors – being unavailable.
Loveable crew stalwarts Doc (Bernie Kopell) and Gopher (Fred Grandy) vied for Yvonne’s affections when Julie “disappears into the Outback” with her hunky vet fiancé.
Winning the role came “out of the blue”, said Delvene. In fact, she didn’t even have time to tell husband John ‘Strop’ Cornell, who was in LA. She recalled phoning him with the news from her cabin on the real-life
Sea Princess which was being used for filming.
Eventually, through the static, John got the message. “It was a terrible phone line,” Delvene said later, “but I had to tell John where I was. It all happened so fast he didn’t know
I had the role.”
Over the two instalments, local luminaries Graham Kennedy, Queenie Ashton, Alan Fletcher, Margaret Laurence and
Cop Shop’s Patrick Ward rubbed shoulders with the likes of glamorous imports Morgan Fairchild and Linda Evans.
While some reviews called it “so bad it’s good”, fans revelled in the local connection and gave Nine a ratings bonanza.