In the “Gilligan’s Island” episode “New Neighbor Sam,” the castaways begin hearing mysterious voices from the bushes. Suspecting there are other people on the island, several of them go to investigate and discover — after some slapstick shenanigans, of course — that the voices were all coming from a talking macaw. The macaw identifies itself as Sam, and the Professor (Russell Johnson) tries to get the bird to say more, hoping to glean more information as to where it came from. The macaw also speaks like a gangster, so the Professor figures it must have once belonged to a career criminal, but somehow escaped and flew to their island.
The Professor’s suspicions are confirmed when Sam steals a diamond belonging to Mrs. Howell (Natalie Schafer) and tries to abscond with it. Clearly, this macaw knows about jewels. Eventually, the castaways find the cave where the parrot had been hiding, and discover an old stash of loot as well as a newspaper explaining that it was hidden there way back in 1906. It seems that the gangsters who owned Sam wanted to find where the loot from a 60-year-old heist was hidden, but only Sam (who soon becomes Gilligan’s pet) was able to find it.
The name of the parrot who played Sam is lost to time, but the voice of Sam will be familiar to anyone who watched cartoons from 1945 until the present. Sam was voiced (at least partly) by Mel Blanc, one of the preeminent practitioners of the craft. Blanc voiced most of the characters in Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies shorts, including Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, Tweety, the Tasmanian Devil, etc. etc. as well as Barney Rubble, Mr. Spacely, Secret Squirrel, Speed Buggy, Captain Caveman, Twiki, Heathcliff, and a hundred others besides.
Mel Blac had several voice roles on Gilligan’s Island, mostly playing animals
Mel Blanc was already a celebrity by the time “Gilligan’s Island” was on the air, having acted in hundreds of Warner Bros. shorts., and “Gilligan’s Island” debuted when “The Flintstones” was already on its fourth season. Voice actors, however, weren’t often given the same prestige as their live-action counterparts, so it’s likely Blanc was called because he was the only “voice guy” that the show’s casting directors knew about.
His voice performance as Sam the macaw was supplemented by lines of dialogue by Herb Vigran, a prolific character actor famous for the hundreds of roles he played in the 1950s and 1960s.
Blanc, meanwhile, had several additional cameos on “Gilligan’s Island.” He provided the sound of a quacking duck in “The Sound of Quacking” and squawking noises for a parrot in the episode “Angel on the Island.” Blanc also did the vocal frog croaking for the central amphibian in the episode “Water, Water Everywhere.” In that episode, the island is experiencing a drought, and the appearance of a frog leads Gilligan (Bob Denver) to figure there is water nearby. (Gilligan and the frog, of course become friends.)
Blanc’s parrot squawking can also be heard briefly in the episode “The Friendly Physician,” although that episode seems to make use of a stock vocal track; I suspect Blanc didn’t come to the studio for that particular performance, but that isn’t substantiated. It seems that “New Neighbor Sam” was the only “Gilligan’s Island” episode that made extensive use of Blanc’s talents.
Blanc passed away in 1989, and it took a raft of new vocal talent to replace his many voices. These days, animals vocals one hears on TV and in movies are likely provided by the inimitable Frank Welker, a young contemporary of Blanc’s known for playing Fred on “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!,” Megatron on “Transformers,” and literally hundreds more.
