Gilligan's Island Star Jim Backus Was Nearly Unrecognizable On The Brady Bunch

On "Gilligan's Island," Jim Backus's millionaire Thurston Howell III was a refined man of taste and leisure, and he was always loath to get his hands dirty. When Backus appeared on "The Brady Bunch," however, he played almost the complete opposite character: a dirty, wiley prospector searching for gold — and he'd be darned if he was gonna let the Bradys get to his riches first!

Backus appeared in "The Brady Bunch" Season 3 premiere "Ghost Town, U.S.A.," which aired on September 17, 1971. It had been a little more than four years since "Gilligan's Island" was canceled, and the "Brady Bunch" episode was a reunion of sorts for Backus and Sherwood Schwartz, who created both sitcoms. While the faces might have been familiar, however, Backus's character certainly wasn't. He played Zaccariah T. Brown, a prospector the Bradys encounter during a stopover in a ghost town on their vacation to the Grand Canyon. They get along at first, but Zaccariah starts worrying that the family is trying to steal his gold, so he locks them up in a jail to protect his claim.

The Bradys manage to escape in the second episode of the season, "Grand Canyon or Bust," only to discover that Zaccariah has stolen their station wagon. Luckily for them, he comes back after filing his claim. For sitcom audiences used to Backus as Thurston, a New Englander with a Harvard degree and multiple country club memberships (or even as the voice of Mr. Magoo, another member of the upper crust), his kooky turn as a prospector must have been quite the trip.

Even though Sherwood Schwartz created both "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch," very few "Gilligan's" alumni ever made it to "Brady." Jim Backus appeared as Zaccariah in the first episodes of Season 3 and played a different character in the Season 5 episode "The Hustler." Natalie Schafer, who played Backus's on-screen wife Lovey Howell on "Gilligan's Island," was the only other one of the main "Gilligan's" castaways to appear in both shows. She featured in the Season 5 episode "The Snooperstar."

Denny Miller, who played Tongo the Ape Man on "Gilligan's," appeared in Season 5's "Quarterback Sneak." He played Carol's visiting high school sweetheart, pro football player Tank Gates. Bob Denver, who played Gilligan himself, never appeared on "The Brady Bunch," but he was the lead of another (unsuccessful) show Schwartz created — one that was a blatant copy of "Gilligan's Island," except in the Wild West.

Perhaps the biggest connection between "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch" was a joke in "A Very Brady Sequel" where Carol reveals that her first husband was a professor who went missing on a boat called the S.S. Minnow. Considering that the 1996 movie is a parody that was set in the then-present day and "Gilligan's Island" took place in the '60s, this connection is probably best thought of as a clever, meta gag rather than confirmation of some airtight continuity. It is a good joke, though.