Career
After the Gilligan"s Island pilot was made, series creator Sherwood Schwartz, after many network problems, decided to make changes, including dropping McCarthy"s character. She also appeared in two other unaired television pilots: Zelda with Sheila James and on The Peter Lorre Playhouse. McCarthy made appearances on a total of eight episodes of other television series, including My Three Sons, The Donna Reed Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Adventures in Paradise, Lock Up and Surfside 6.
McCarthy originally made her New York stage debut as Dixie Evans in The Big Knife at the Seven Arts Playhouse in 1959, which starred Carroll O"Connor and was directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
She appeared in several live television plays produced in New York including True Story, Divorce Court, and Moment of Fear with Robert Redford on the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" series. On stage in Los Angeles she played Maggie in After The Fall.
Her regional credits include Flirt in Dark at the Top of the Stairs with Sylvia Sydney at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis Massachusetts and as Maisie in The Boy Friend at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. McCarthy retired from acting after suffering a back injury in 1972, but continued to work as a print and fashion model and, later, in the advertising and design field
Her final television cr is the pilot for Gilligan"s Island, which finally aired on Turner Broadcasting System on 16 October 1992, twenty-nine years after it was filmed.
