Janos Prohaska Played the Gilligan Island Gorilla and Star Trek Aliens

While the castaways on Gilligan’s Island struggled to leave their tropical setting, the actor inside the show’s gorilla suit easily made the jump to outer space. Hungarian actor and stuntman Janos Prohaska portrayed multiple creatures across classic 1960s television, bringing physical performances to screens while largely hidden behind elaborate creature costumes.

Born in Budapest in 1919, Prohaska stood 5’4″ and weighed 140 pounds, and because he could not find an ape suit that fit him properly, he began making his own costumes. First, I make costume of nylon but was no good, Prohaska told TV Guide, explaining that it was Too stiff, too heavy, too fire-danger. Instead, he constructed suits out of rubber, leather, and yak hair.

Monkeys on the Island and Aliens in Space

Prohaska appeared multiple times on the CBS sitcom as a gorilla—most notably in the Season 1 episode Diamonds Are an Ape’s Best Friend, where the animal becomes enamored with Mrs. Howell’s perfume—and later returned to play an orangutan in Season 3. Beyond the sitcom, his prolific career included playing a chimpanzee and an alien on The Outer Limits, the titular primate in a Perry Mason episode, and a white gorilla in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Prohaska’s creature work extended directly into Star Trek from the beginning, playing both an apelike and birdlike alien uncredited in the pilot episode The Cage. He also portrayed the Horta in The Devil in the Dark, the Mugato in A Private Little War, and the Excalbian alien Yarnek in The Savage Curtain.

Recycling Costumes for Television

Rather than designing entirely new wardrobes for every production, Prohaska frequently recycled and modified his existing creature creations for different networks and shows. His Horta costume for Star Trek was actually a modified version of a creature he had previously played on The Outer Limits. Similarly, the Mugato horned white gorilla used in Star Trek was the exact same albino ape suit from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, with a horn simply added to it.

Following his work on Star Trek and Gilligan’s Island, Prohaska continued performing in suits for Land of Giants, Bewitched, Escape From the Planet of the Apes, and Here’s Lucy. His career came to a tragic end in 1974 when he died in a plane crash while working on a television series titled Primal Man.