GILLIGAN’S STAR RESCUED FROM POVERTY!
Fans donate $200G to crippled Dawn Wells, 80
STRUGGLING Gilligan’s Island cutie pie Dawn Wells has accepted a $200,000 handout from fans desperate to help the crippled sitcom legend!
As GLOBE reported, the 80-year-old actress — who played bouncy brunette Mary Ann opposite Bob Denver on the hit show from 1964 to 1967 — was “embarrassed” over a public appeal to pay massive medical and tax bills that were making her last days a living hell.
The star’s hairstylist pal Dugg Kirkpatrick launched the appeal, saying Dawn was clobbered by the 2008 “banking crash and lost everything, including her life savings.”
Then the actress was crushed with medical bills after breaking her knee and undergoing “life-threatening surgery which came close to killing her,” he reveals.
Dawn was hospitalized for two months and needed a lengthy recuperation, says Dugg. The medical crisis left Dawn in the hole for “$194,000 to alleviate penalties by the IRS, which are compounded daily, and to pay her hospital costs.”
He started a GoFundMe page that’s raised more than $202,000, which her reps now say Dawn will accept.
“She has decided to gratefully accept the money, and considerable effort is being made to see that it is used to the best possible usage,” says a rep.
“Every day is a little better. She has therapy almost every day and she is off the walker now, graduating to a cane with the goal of eliminating that.”
A thankful Dawn says: “I’m grateful God has given me so many friends and fans who care. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for this fresh start.”