Looney Tunes Icon Mel Blanc Was In 3 Gilligan's Island Episodes (But Never On Camera)

Gilligan and the other castaways on "Gilligan's Island" often found themselves in looney situations, but a couple episodes of the classic CBS sitcom were especially looney because they featured the work of the late Mel Blanc, the voice behind Looney Tunes characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. By the time "Gilligan's Island" debuted in the mid-1960s Blanc was already a voice acting veteran. He got his start in radio in the 1930s before lending his pipes to "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies," and audiences in the '60s were used to hearing him as Barney Rubble in "The Flintstones."

Unlike the other major stars who appeared on "Gilligan's Island," Blanc was never actually seen in the flesh on the CBS sitcom, instead lending his voice to different animals. He contributed three notable voice performances in the first season. Blanc voiced a parrot who calls the Skipper's acting "terrible" in the last joke of Episode 11 ("Angel on the Island"), and in Episode 14 ("Water, Water Everywhere"), he voiced a frog who leads Gilligan to water.

Blanc's biggest "Gilligan's Island" role came in Episode 27 ("New Neighbor Sam"), in which he voiced a parrot named Sam. The castaways find Sam on the island, and, because he keeps talking about gangsters and jewels, they assume the bird can lead them to a hidden stash of treasure. If one executive who wanted to add a talking dinosaur companion to "Gilligan's Island" had gotten his way, the odds are pretty good that Blanc would have ended up voicing it.

"Gilligan's Island" is ultimately a footnote on Mel Blanc's long resume, but his work on the sitcom may have had a lasting impact on the English language. Some say that the word "ribbit," the onomatopoeia commonly used to describe the sound a frog makes, came from Blanc's frog character in "Gilligan's Island," and while this may be the case, others have attributed the word to a different show.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites an episode of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" as the first known use of "ribbit." The book "Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" describes the episode in question, which saw the late Tom Smothers get turned into a frog. The plan was for him to say "friggit," but the network objected to that, so they used "ribbit" instead.

Some sources state that the name of Blanc's frog in "Gilligan's Island" is Ribbit, which would make this the first use of the word, as "Water, Water Everywhere" aired before the frog episode of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." The issue is that Gilligan only ever calls the frog "Froggy" in the episode, and its name doesn't appear in the end credits, so it's unknown when people started calling the character Ribbit.

The true origin of the word is unknown (a program manager on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" has stated that it probably existed before they used it), but our use of "ribbit" is almost certainly linked to Hollywood, because early productions recorded Pacific tree frogs, which are native to the West Coast. The "ribbit" noise made by Pacific tree frogs was reused so often by film crews, regardless of the location, that it became widely known.