The Actor Behind The Gorilla On Gilligan's Island Had A Key Role On Star Trek

It's astonishing how many gorillas turned up on "Gilligan's Island." Gorillas are native to central, Western, and Eastern Africa, so it would be highly unlikely that one would organically find its way to the South Pacific, where Gilligan's Island is likely located. Gorillas, however, were common fodder for 1960s comedy writers, and they were employed frequently. Or rather, actors in gorilla costumes were employed frequently, and created an absurd subset of ape tropes that we, as a culture, still haven't fully and philosophically unpacked. 

Apes were featured heavily in the "Gilligan's Island" episodes "Diamonds Are an Ape's Best Friend" (February 27, 1965), "Beauty Is as Beauty Does" (September 23), "The Chain of Command" (December 2), "Forward March" (February 17, 1966), and "Our Vines Have Tender Apes" (January 30, 1967). It was a profuse plethora of primate pransktership. 

In all of the above cases, the apes were played by prolific Hollywood stuntman Janos Prohaska, an experienced Hungarian circus performer who started appearing in movies and on TV in the early '60s. Prohaska was, for many years, Hollywood's go-to ape performer, donning a series of silly-looking suits to play gorillas, chimps, and orangutans, all with commitment and enthusiasm. His first primate performance was playing a chimpanzee in a 1963 episode of "The Outer Limits." He also played a few aliens on the same show, including a blob-like alien called the Mikie. In 1965, he played gorillas on both "The Lucy Show" (in the episode "Lucy and the Monkey") and on "Perry Mason" (in the episode "The Case of the Grinning Gorilla"). 

Trekkies, however, may know Prohaska from multiple episodes of the original "Star Trek." Prohaska played several notable aliens and creatures on Gene Roddenberry's sci-fi classic, including the ape-like Mugato, the floor-crawling Horta, and the molten monster Yarnek. 

Janos Prohaska's first "Star Trek" role came during the show's original pilot episode "The Cage," wherein he played a vicious ape-like monster that Captain Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) fought in hand-to-hand combat. His experience playing gorillas on "Gilligan's Island" and aliens on "The Outer Limits" made him the perfect, logical choice to play an alien gorilla on "Star Trek." He also played a bird-like monster in the same episode. Prohaska was not credited for his performances. 

Nor was he credited for playing the Horta, the rock-like, acid-squirting alien from the episode "The Devil in the Dark" (March 9, 1967). The Horta, Trekkies can tell you, was a burrowing creature that killed human miners in order to protect its eggs. It's one of the better episodes of "Star Trek," even if it has no women in it. According to Herbert Solow's and Robert Justman's memoir "Inside Star Trek: The Real Story," the makers of "The Devil in the Dark" assumed that Prohaska invented the Horta suit especially for the episode, when he actually just repurposed the Mikie suit he invented for "The Outer Limits." If sci-fi fans have always suspected the monsters looked suspiciously similar, it's because they were the exact same suit.

Trekkies also saw Prohaska play the notoriously silly Mugato, an albino gorilla creature with a horn, seen in the episode "A Private Little War" (February 2, 1968). Prohaska created the Mugato suit, and some fans have theorized that he merely repurposed a suit he wore to play an albino ape in an episode of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." He also wore the same ape suit in an episode of "Here's Lucy." Prohaska merely added claw hands, back ridges, and the rhino spike.

Janos Prohaska also played Yarnek, the all-powerful Excalbian, as it was seen in the episode "The Savage Curtain" (March 7, 1969). Excalbians are beings made of molten rock, and they have the ability to summon simulations of long-dead historical figures (this was the episode where Kirk met Abe Lincoln). Bart LaRue played the voice of Yarnek, but it was Prohaska inside the suit. 

After "Star Trek," Prohaska continued to play apes for a few more years. He played two different gorillas in two different episodes of the ABC sci-fi drama "Land of the Giants," and even played a full-on gorilla opposite the hyper-intelligent chimps in "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" in 1971. He was a gorilla in an episode of "Bewitched," a series that also asked him, on two occasions, to play a bear. Equipped with a new bear suit, Prohaska played bears in "Here's Lucy," "Dusty's Trail" (a Western riff on "Gilligan's Island"), and the movie "Zandy's Bride." He starred in an unsold sitcom pilot for a series called "The Bear and I" wherein he played a talking bear. In that show, most people assumed he was a man in a bear suit, except for a children's show host played by Soupy Sales. 

Prohaska, a Hungarian immigrant, had trouble finding speaking roles in Hollywood because of his accent. He and his son Robert died in 1974 while taking a plane to the set of "The Primal Man," another TV series wherein he was to play an ape. Prohaska wasn't often credited for his animal work, but he was a gifted physical performer, and stuffing himself into furry costumes couldn't have been comfortable. He's buried in Santa Monica, California.