Fred Grandy Jokes That ‘The Love Boat’ Ended Up as a ‘Pension Program’

• Love Boat stars Fred Grandy, Bernie Kopell, Ted Lange and Jill Whelan reunited on Princess Cruise’s Love Boat Celebration at Sea that left out of Brooklyn, N.Y. on Saturday, Aug. 31 and stops in New England and Canada throughout the seven-night sailing
• Aaron Spelling came on as executive producer of The Love Boat after its first two TV movie pilots failed to lead to a series at ABC
• Grandy told the crowd on the Enchanted Princess that “nobody at the network” thought The Love Boat would succeed and put it on “as a favor to Aaron Spelling”

It took three TV movie pilots and superstar producer Aaron Spelling coming aboard The Love Boat for the show to become the beloved series fans know and love today. But The Love Boat didn’t come out of the gates as an instant hit.

“Despite the fact that Aaron took over the show, despite the fact that we had a cast that cohered at the beginning, the show was really only put on the air as a favor to Aaron Spelling,” Ted Grandy, who played purser Burl “Gopher” Smith, said during the Love Boat Legacy: Original Cast Reflections Q&A on Princess Cruise’s Love Boat Celebration on Sunday, Sept. 1. “Nobody at the network thought this was going to work. It wasn’t just the television critics. And they gave us the 10:00 time spot on Saturday night, which was opposite The Carol Burnett Show. And they thought, ‘Obviously, this thing will be in dry dock before October.’”

Grandy, 76, told the crowd on the Enchanted Princess (the show took place on the Pacific Princess, a real Princess ship at the time) that the guest stars started off as the main draw when The Love Boat began in 1977. “At the time, we weren’t even sending our laundry out,” he said.

The actor explained that the network saw him and his costars Bernie Kopell, Ted Lange and Jill Whelan, who also appeared on the panel moderated by author Jim Colucci, as “kind of interstitial.”

“We were kind of the people that would bridge between the scenes that involved the guest stars,” Grandy continued. “So, we were to some degree, grace notes in the show. But what happened, of course, is we just continued to survive and thrive.”

The show ran for 10 seasons and received five Emmy nominations and eight Golden Globe nominations, including two acting nods for star Gavin MacLeod who played the boat’s captain and died in 2021 at age 90.

The Love Boat revitalized the cruising industry and on Saturday, Aug. 31, Princess Cruises kicked off its second Love Boat Celebration at Sea, during which guests can attend cast Q&As and meet and greets, test their knowledge of the show at The Love Boat trivia, sip on Love Boat specialty cocktails and watch episodes of the show at the Enchanted Princess’s outdoor theater during the seven-night sailing. The show’s bartender, Lange, 76, hosts two cocktail demonstrations throughout the sailing — the first of which packed the Princess Live! venue — and he and the cast will officiate a vow renewal for guests on Friday, Sept. 6.

Even outside of the scheduled activities, the cast will graciously snap photos and chat with guests — many of whom don Love Boat T-shirts and merch and gush about how much they love the show — when stopped around the ship.

“We were delighted that the show became a hit,” Grandy said during the panel in the Princess Theater. “We never thought it would be a pension program.”

Grandy credited the show’s success to the fans.

“Our show took off, and we actually succeeded in knocking The Carol Burnett Show off the air,” he said. “And then Kojak, for heaven’s sakes. So, all of a sudden we weren’t just a hit, we were a nuclear weapon. And nobody really — except perhaps Aaron Spelling, but not at the network — saw this coming. So, all of the odds were stacked against us. And the only reason it survived is because of you.”

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Grandy parlayed the fame he garnered on The Love Boat into a political career, becoming a Republican congressman for his home state of Iowa.

“One of the things that I was not aware of until I actually went back to Iowa and ran for Congress, yes, of course, was how enormously popular this program was,” Grandy said. “Because Hollywood is a bubble, you’re insulated from the rest of the world, and then you’re kind of hermetically sealed from the rest of the country. But back home I thought, well, people might know who I was, but it was astounding to me.”

While Grandy’s opponents tried to use his celebrity against him, it ultimately worked out in his favor, and Grandy served for four terms from 1986 to 1995.

“There was this one incident where I finally understood how powerful this show was and how important it was for me,” Grandy explained. “I was in a little tiny town in the northwest part of my district, and we were having one of these town meetings in a high school gymnasium, and all the candidates were there.

“And we were having this forum, and I’d done my little spiel and some guy got up — I didn’t know him — and he said, ‘Well, what makes you think a Hollywood actor is somebody who could represent us?’ And before I could say anything, another guy in a seed cap jumped up and said, ‘Well, I don’t know what your problem is. They got 435 amateurs there. Let’s send a professional for a change.’”

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The Love Boat’s success already has Princess Cruises planning its next Love Boat Celebration at Sea themed cruise, which will sail from Galveston, Texas on Regal Princess from Nov. 16-23, 2025, and make stops throughout Mexico at Cozumel, Costa Maya and Roatan.