LOS ANGELES, July 2 -- The Love Boat sailed into American living rooms every Sunday night for nine seasons, carrying its cargo of romance and lightweight comedy to audiences who had come to rely on it as a kind of weekly ritual. The man who built that ship, who argued for the concept, shaped its production, and steered it through ABC's development process, died last Tuesday at 86. For the four decades that followed, almost nobody in Hollywood had been looking for him.

Wilford Lloyd Baumes, the television producer and production designer whose credits shaped three of the era's most recognizable properties, died July 1, The Hollywood Reporter announced. His family asked that donations in his memory be made to the Alzheimer's Association. N...