Original subtitles

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip that

started from this tropic port aboard this tiny ship.

Welcome, friends, to Season 1 of Gilligan's Island, Goofs, Errors, and

I am author David Calderola, and please don't be upset at me for throwing in

this quick plug for my latest book, as well as my other YouTube videos before

start. Very quickly, here they are.

There, you see, that wasn't so bad.

Now, as to the series.

Allow me to say that I absolutely love the Gilligan's Island TV show. I was

in 1959, so I was only five and a half years old when the show started, and a

month away from my eighth birthday when it ended.

The 60s was a tough time to be a young adult because of the war in Vietnam, but

it was a great decade to be a kid.

It was a joy to watch great shows like Gilligan's Island, Beverly Hillbillies,

Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, The Munsters, The Addams Family, Dark

Batman, and Star Trek, to name just a few, and to watch each new episode as

aired for the first time.

But even so, as the years passed by with each viewing of the reruns of

Gilligan's Island, I began to notice some mistakes being made regarding

storyline, continuity, or errors in filming.

At first, I didn't think much of it, as it was a comedy family show that wasn't

meant to be taken too seriously.

But over the years, more and more gaffes began to show up, so much so that I

decided it was time to chronicle them in this documentary.

Some of these goofs have already been offered over the Internet, but I

you, I have caught far more goofs, errors, and oddities than you have.

I'm not bragging, because I have the proof right here.

Now, naturally, the first season isn't so bad.

as most breaks in continuity occur when a subsequent episode doesn't agree with

an earlier episode.

And I confess it was difficult at times determining what should be included and

what should not.

For instance, when the castaways try to secure a rescue by making a black and

white and silent movie, the themes in the end product often do not match the

themes they originally shot.

Now, if I wanted to, I could point out a dozen inconsistencies where this is

concerned. but it's understood that the finished product is not meant to

accurately mirror the shooting scenes, and this is intentional so that the

finished film will be sillier and funnier than the shooting scenes the

has already viewed.

Also, the first few times I tried to record an off -the -cuff live

of the images you'll be looking at, each narration lasted from a total of 42 to

50 minutes, a bit too long.

so I have had to resort to scripting narration to pick up the pace.

So, without further ado, hop on your ascot, grab your teddy, ain't that

Teddy?

And let's start Season 1.

We start with the minnow beginning its fateful trip.

You can see the skipper and Gilligan steering the vessel topside with Mrs.

Howell, Mr. Howell, and the three people who eventually become Ginger, the

professor, and Mary Ann, two crew and five passengers. But if you look

you will also see an eighth person.

It seems that someone forgot to tell the man who owns the boat and is really

steering it to duck out of sight for a few seconds.

Also notice the overhead loft that Skipper and Gilligan are standing in.

But when the weather started getting rough and the tiny ship was tossed, the

little model boat in the studio tub has no overhead loft.

No skipper and Gilligan to steer the ship.

But oddly enough, if you look closely at the boat's windows, it looks like they

pasted a picture of Alan Hale with his skipper's hat on in the window.

Of course, the next scene, though, shows the skipper and Gilligan in the loft.

Now, the island used in this distance shot is an island called Coconut Island,

the smallest of the Hawaiian islands. As you can see, its tallest inhabitants

are the palm trees.

And I'll come back to that later.

As the skipper awakens, you can see the original three actors that didn't make

it into the regular series.

Most people have caught this, too, but if you're going to change actors and not

reshoot the opening scene, I'm going to call you on it.

We're not far into the pilot episode where the tiny island shows off one of

many cliffs and mountains, but Coconut Island has no mountains.

This scene shows what many people spotted already.

The passengers are listening to the report of their demise on the radio.

The professor is seated, but when they mention his name on the radio, he is

standing with his hands on his hips.

Also note the beautiful hills in the background.

The scene continues with the professor seated again.

Well, the skipper and Gilligan head out to sea on a raft to fetch help. The raft

is attacked by sharks, and Gilligan pulls out a pocket knife to fight off

sharks with.

No, for some strange reason, he begins to cut the vines that hold the raft

together.

It's a good thing I wasn't the skipper, because I would have chucked Gilligan

overboard and fed him to the sharks for trying to scuttle the raft.

Well, the sharks are gone, and there is just enough raft left to keep them

afloat. But when the raft sinks anyway, and the skipper and Gilligan make it to

shore, the skipper asks Gilligan what he has.

Gilligan says he saved the raft.

I thought I would include these shots to show that Gilligan isn't simply a

lovable ne 'er -do -well, but is actually insane, and you'll see this

the series.

Here we have Marianne running towards the Professor and Ginger, another shot

a lovely mountain in the background that is a bit taller than the palm trees of

Coconut Island.

The point I'm trying to make is, if you're going to show so many mountains,

not take that distant shot of Gilligan's Island with a larger island that has at

least a few hills on it?

As the series continues, you're going to see how the most undefined element of

the show is the island itself.

Here the Casseries have built the community hut.

Naturally, it has a dirt and sand floor, yet it floats in the lagoon.

Earlier during the storm, Thurston says, Lovey, if anything happens, I want to

thank you for 15 of the happiest years a man ever had.

To which Lovey replies, Thurston, we've been married for 20 years.

To which Thurston remarks, I know, but the last five years have been a little

shaky.

So we know that the Howells have been married 20 years.

This comes up again in the first season and again in the second season, as you

will see.

Gilligan is standing watch, and he hears noises coming from the supply hut that

was recently plundered.

The vicious creature attacks Gilligan, and I have to say that this is the

cheapest dummy they could have come up with.

Its head looks like a stuffed sack, more like the hood of a ninja rather than

the chimp that has terrorized the island.

In this episode, the skippers dreamed of his...

World War II days when he converted the receiver into a transmitter.

In order to induce him to remember what he did to make that happen, the

professor has hypnotized him, and at this point he tells the Cassoys to make

battle noises.

Lovey is standing with her hands apart while she blurts out bang, bang, bang.

When the scene goes to a close -up of Gilligan, Lovey's hands are folded

her midsection.

Yes, she's still going bang, bang, bang.

When the scene returns to the first angle, her hands are apart again while

continues to bang away.

At the end of the Wrong Way Feldman episode, Wrong Way flies into the wild

yonder. but the editor left too much of the stock footage in at the beginning,

which shows a good part of Southern California below.

In this episode, the Howells are tasking Gilligan with the building of a simple

palatial estate.

They have several bamboo poles planted to mark the boundaries, one of which has

a fake bill on it that has been pushed through the top of the pole, but the

close -up shows a real dollar bill taped to the top.

Now this is preposterous, even for Gilligan's Island, especially when

tells Marianne, in a later episode when he's tying up the clothesline, that

sailors know how to tie all kinds of knots. Big knots, small knots, itsy

teeny -weeny, transistor -Japanesey knots, etc.

Here the minnow, which was repaired with Gilligan's superglue made from pancake

syrup, begins to fall apart.

Now... Even in this island of fantasy land, it makes no sense for the

boards to start popping loose.

There are production crew members pulling on strings to make the boards

like this.

Gilligan, who disassembled a healthy raft, now runs aboard the minnow and

the skipper, Don't worry, skipper, I'll hold it together for you.

He disassembles a working raft, but when the boat disassembles itself, he

charges on board to hold it together.

I told you he was insane.

As the howls react to the boat falling apart, you can see one of the strings

production crew are pulling on to pop the ship's boards out with.

One might think that they could have had the howls in front of the string so it

wouldn't be so noticeable, but it is more likely that they have two cameras

shooting at the same time.

But if that is the case, why not have a second camera take the close -up of

Gilligan so they wouldn't get the shot with Lovie standing behind them with her

hands folded?

Well, the ship completely disassembles.

The point here is, if you are going to do something so extreme, something that

is a quantitative change to the reality of living on the island, then you have

to stick to it.

But the minnow seems to keep putting herself back together in later episodes.

It would be like having the skipper lose an eye in an episode, which means he's

going to have to wear an eye patch for the rest of his life.

But with the start of the next episode, he has both eyes, and everyone is

pretending that the accident in the previous episode never happened.

If you commit to such a significant change, you have to abide by it.

Now this is just a pet peeve of mine, but considering all of the great work

prop department is doing with bamboo huts and furniture and the like, one

think they could do better for Mrs. Howell's one -pound diamond ring than a

glass doorknob.

Well, now the skipper has dug up Kona, the god of evil.

You can see over Gilligan's left shoulder a rack that has some bamboo

it. As the earth shakes, the logs fall to the left.

After a brief shot of the skipper, the scene returns to Gilligan and the

professor, and the logs are up again and falling to the right.

After a fade -out and a fade -in, the logs are back up and they eventually

left again.

Well, Gilligan, as the great Watubi, has healed the skipper of his curse,

proclaiming he actually has the power.

Mr. Howell tests him by asking for cool breeze on that terribly hot day.

Gilligan commands a breeze, and of course nothing happens for a second or

and then they turn on the big studio fans.

As Gilligan prepares to take hold of the nearby palm tree, you can see that the

fans have blown the fake ground cover up, revealing one of the braces of the

stand that holds the fake tree trunk up.

Well, at least they caught this because you can see that they tacked down the

ground cover for the rest of the shot.

In this episode, the castaways are running out of fresh water.

Gilligan goes for a drink, but the water doesn't flow if he's not pedaling. Kind

of makes you wonder about that freshwater waterfall that's always

lagoon. Anyway, the skipper goes to talk to Gilligan.

You'll notice the skipper's shirt is a mid -ranged light gray, as it appears in

the black and white episode.

But when he speaks with Gilligan, his shirt is dark gray, almost black.

When he is finished, his shirt is light again.

This is not a unique event here.

In a number of the first season black and white episodes, the skipper's shirt

changes from light to dark and back again.

I thought that maybe they wanted him in the dark shirt for exterior sunlit

scenes and the lighter shirt indoors to strike a balance. But why do that only

for the skipper?

Also, this whole scene was shot indoors, so why change shirts?

Sometimes I think they are intentionally messing with our minds.

Here's a common segue, the minnow beached.

But the minnow was destroyed, wasn't it?

In the Japanese Sailor episode, the skipper ponders what to do next. The

waterfall is in the background.

Now, Sherwood Schwartz mentioned in interviews that they had fire trucks or

water tankers supplying the little waterfall with water.

It seems, though, that they may have run fire hoses along the sides of the

waterfall to pump water at key points to keep the flow looking natural and even,

but here one of those hoses, or the fixture at the end, seems to be leaking

it's spraying water forcibly.

Gilligan enters the sub, which almost sinks.

The stuntman's head has just emerged under the water, but he kicks around in

water and you can see his shoes pop up over the surface.

Gilligan can't read Japanese, so he is steering the sub in circles, as can be

seen as the periscope is going in circles.

Unfortunately, the scuba diver who's pushing the prop periscope gets too

to the surface and his air tank emerges.

There is buried treasure on the island, and there is need for a court trial to

determine the owner.

The Honorable Professor will preside in black robes with a bench and gavel, and

an American flag behind him with all 42 stars on it.

This is the episode with Larry Storch from F Troop playing bank robber Jackson

Farrell. In the brief segue between scenes, someone's shoulder can be seen.

had to guess, I would say it's probably Alan Hales.

Mr. Howell offers Jackson Farrell a check for what he says is $100 ,000 if

Farrell will help rescue them.

Of course, he's written this check on a piece of driftwood.

Farrell exclaims, it says $10 ,000.

Mr. Howell says, no, that's a bit of seaweed, and he flicks the false comma

But either way, a one with six zeros is a million dollars.

Notice also, after the one and the third zero, there appears to be commas that

were erased, suggesting they intended to make the offer one million, but for

some reason changed their minds.

Notice also in the inset image from the gold mine episode where Mr. Howell is

trying to rent the Skipper and Gilligan's picks and shovels, he breaks

checkbook.

If he has his checkbook on the island, why write out a check on Driftwood?

Now this is just a bit of trivia.

In the episode where a missile is launched down the South Sea Missile

under the name of Operation Powder Keg, we see the General talking with an

officer on his right.

who is actor Harry Lautner.

About a dozen years earlier, Lautner played the part of Atlasan, an officer

a rocket ship pilot on the early 50s TV show Rocky Jones Space Ranger.

I just thought it was interesting that the only Gilligan's Island episode Harry

Lautner appeared in was one that was about a rocket launch.

Well, the skipper and professor are about to signal the search plane with

professor's handmade mirror, which has a rounded perimeter.

Gilligan grabs the vine, swings down, and crashes through the mirror.

Notice that all the pieces are now straight -edged.

The stock footage of the missile is actually one of a missile going up, not

down. They just turned the picture upside down.

As you can see, a missile has a simple shape, a cylindrical body, conical nose,

and a few fins at the back.

But when the missile lands in the lagoon and beaches itself, we see a very

bizarre, more complex structure.

It would have been easier to duplicate the real missile's actual shape.

Yet, while the outside is more ornate than necessary, the interior is cheap

cheesy looking.

Even when I first saw this as a child, I refused to believe any missile could be

so shoddy inside.

Why gussy up the outside unnecessarily and then go cheap on the inside?

Maybe they borrowed the rounded mirror and the rocket from a local amusement

park.

Gilligan discovers a jungle boy played by 14 -year -old Kurt Russell.

Naturally, one can't expect him to be running around the stage butt naked, but

notice that Kurt is wearing two covers, a pair of shorts or swim trunks, and a

leopard -skin loincloth.

But where on the island did he find a leopard, and how did a boy like that

manage to kill and skin him?

The girls have moved out to build their own huts.

In this scene, Gilligan says he doesn't know much about women, to which Mr.

Howell adds, neither do I, and I've been married to one for 22 years.

However, the inset image shows the community hut scene where Lovey says

have been married for only 20 years.

This little gaffe will return again in season two.

Ah, the natives are restless tonight.

An interesting choice for a South Sea native, a blue -eyed white guy.

But hey, he obviously comes from a more advanced tribe, as the efforts of the

tribal witch doctor will attest. Look at all of those beautifully set golden

teeth.

Here we see Gilligan at the end of the Wrong Way Feldman episode.

The skipper laments, our hero didn't leave us much.

Gilligan then says, oh yes he did, I got his wings.

but when wrong way returns he has his old outfit on with the wings still

attached in order to agitate wrong way gilligan starts eating an apple and he

then gives the skipper a whole stalk of celery he gets all this from a brown

paper bag now come on if they are stranded on an island with no boats no

no motor -car not a single luxury and it's primitive as can be you can't have

crewman run out to the local grocer for an apple and celery and then just leave

the grocery bag in the hut for gilligan to use After all, Gilligan crunching on

a pineapple, rind and all, and the skipper -o smacking two coconuts

get a nightcap before sleeping would have been just as funny, maybe even more

so.

Here we have Gilligan percussing on his percussion instrument.

Lovey decides to form an orchestra, and the skipper decides he will be the

conductor. After all, I led the Navy band aboard my destroyer for two years,

for two years in a row we almost got honorable mention.

Well, that got me started thinking about the skipper's military career, and it's

high time we set the record straight.

You may recall the earlier episode where the skipper is sleepwalking, and he is

dreaming about his days assigned to a sub -chaser, and the time at Guadalcanal

where he converted the receiver into a transmitter.

Now, a sub -chaser is not a destroyer. The inset image shows a sub -chaser,

which was specifically made to hunt down German and Japanese subs.

It is smaller, faster, and more maneuverable than a destroyer.

Well, it's not too much of a stretch to suggest that the Skipper served two

different positions on two different classes of ships.

But go back to the beginning of the Wrong Way Feldman episode.

The professor laments that none of them knows how to fly an airplane.

Mary Ann says she knew a crop duster, and Ginger says she once dated a pilot.

Gilligan then suggests that they have plenty of experience between them as the

skipper was on an aircraft carrier.

The skipper then says, a lot of good that'll do, Gilligan. I was a cook.

So now the skipper was a cook on an aircraft carrier.

But that's not all. In the episode where the skipper has amnesia, the professor

has hypnotized the skipper, hoping he'll remember being on the island, but the

skipper believes he is on an island during World War II.

So he captures Marianne and Ginger, who he thinks are Japanese soldiers, and he

picks up the radio, trying to use it as a transmitter, and he starts his report

by saying, this is the CO of the 177th Infantry.

Infantry?

It's time to press on, but I will revisit this topic in Season 2.

Here's Gilligan with his dear diary in his back pocket. It says so right on the

cover. but on more than one occasion in this episode we see a book that has no

writing on its cover.

Marianne and Ginger are about to enter the scene with bowls of crab and

pineapple to feed Gilligan with.

You can't see anything where the oval is marked, but you can if you watch this

scene on DVD.

Marianne and Ginger are standing there for several seconds just waiting for

their cue to enter the scene.

Alan Hale once said he patterned the skipper after Oliver Hardy.

On more than one episode, Skipper and Gilligan try an old vaudeville joke, but

they always manage to blow it.

The Skipper says, I haven't had food for three days.

He is supposed to say, I haven't tasted food for three days, so the comic can

reply, don't worry, it still tastes the same.

It seems that the great Raftini has lost his crate of gear as the Skipper and

Gilligan are pulling it ashore.

But the prop department messed this crate up.

It's acceptable that it's empty, but they fouled up by not putting a back on

so as you can see, light is seeping between the front boards.

This is really unacceptable, as one only needs to tape over the gaps between the

boards from the inside, or cover the inside front with black roofing paper.

G. Thurston Howell IV doesn't want to be G. Thurston Howell IV.

So he punches the skipper in the gut and then tells dear old dad that they own

the minnow now. He won it in a card game.

But there isn't a minnow. It fell to pieces earlier.

Finally, Harold J. Stone appears as Alexander Gregor Dubov, the greatest

in the whole wide world.

This scene is shot near the lagoon, but from a different vantage point.

The only problem with this angle is that it exposes in the background a distant

Southern California ridge.

This ridge had got to be at least two or three miles away.

Oh, well, maybe that part of the small island is an unexplored part that wrong

-way Feldman flew over earlier.

Well, that's it for Season 1.

Please feel free to view my other Two Gilligans Islands clips of Seasons 2 and

3, and by all means, check out my other YouTube videos.

Thank you, and see you later.