Rise to Fame
She signed on for the Gilligan's Island pilot because it came with a free trip to Hawaii. She didn't expect the show to be picked up. When it was, she didn't just show up and cash the check. She rewrote Mrs. Howell from the humorless grande dame the writers imagined into a scatterbrained socialite, modeled on 1930s comic actresses Mary Boland and Billie Burke. Seventeen Broadway productions in supporting roles hadn't made her a household name. Three seasons on a desert island did.
In the Spotlight
The real punchline of her career was the age gap. Born in 1900 but listed publicly as 1912, she hid those 12 years so effectively that even Jim Backus, who played her husband on Gilligan's Island, didn't know she was more than a decade older than him. Her Gilligan's contract reportedly contained clauses about limiting close-ups. Off camera, she was a real-life millionaire, having built a Beverly Hills real estate portfolio while the rest of Hollywood spent their checks. Mrs. Howell was the scatterbrain. Schafer was not.
Side Notes
She'd been engaged to character actor Charles Butterworth in 1946, right up until his death in a car accident. She told nobody about the breast cancer she fought roughly 20 years before her death; when cancer reportedly returned in her final months, she declined surgery again. She ran her private life on a strict need-to-know basis. She left her estate to the Lillian Booth Actors Home. The scatterbrained socialite was looking out for retired performers nobody else remembered.
Final Chapter
Her obituary disclosed her real birth year for the first time, revealing she was 90, exactly as she had instructed before her death. Her estate left between $1.5 and $2 million to the Lillian Booth Actors Home; the outpatient wing was renovated and renamed the Natalie Schafer Wing in 1993. Her ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean off Point Fermin Light in San Pedro.