Gilligans Island first episode
 

Just saw Gilligan's Island added to Tubi. I was curious to watch the first episode and see how it all started. Why did the millionaire get on this crappy little boat? But they don't have it. They start with episode 2.

My searching says that episode one is lost. There are some commentaries on it but no episode. Is it out there somewhere that I missed?

I'm not sure. I found the pilot episode on Daily Motion but they were already on the island. That was labeled Season 1 Episode 0. S1 E1 is titled Two Men on a Raft. It's also available on Daily Motion. You do find out that the skipper's real name is Jonas Grumby and The Professor is Roy Hinkley and he's described as a research scientist and well known scoutmaster. But as far as I can tell there's no explanation as to why Thurston Howell III and his wife were on the boat in the first place.

It was a tour boat. I always thought they all were just taking the tour. I think a better question is, regardless of why they took the three-hour tour, why did they take so much stuff with them?

The '1st' episode isn't lost, it's the pilot episode which features a somewhat different cast. I seen it on the Gilliagan's Island DVD set. The actors who played the Professor, Ginger and Mary Ann were different, the rest of the cast was the same. The theme song is interesting as it's a calyapso song.
https://external-content.duckduckgo....c6c&ipo=images

Two men on a raft is listed as episode 2 on Tubi. On wiki, they say that it was the first aired episode. Apparently the pilot episode was never broadcast. But may exist somewhere to be watched.

Yes a tour boat. But not something a millionaire would ever go on. A crappy little boat. Just wondering what the justification was for them to go on that thing. And with so much luggage.

Was that whole pilot on the DVD set? Or just scenes from it?

Re: Gilligans Island first episode
 

Found it. On Internet Archive.


https://archive.org/details/gilligan...d-series-pilot

That was so awesome! Campy, yet awesome. Never seen this episode and a most wonderful find. I am truly impressed with this nugget of gold. Not only a new Ginger, but one named "Bunny".

The whole pilot was on the DVD set. The pilot was never shown on TV just shown to TV executives to decide if they wanted to buy Gilligan's Island.


The IMDB trivia page for the pilot is interesting https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368744/

I liked the actress who played Bunny (Nancy McCarthy), I thought she was promosing. She was quite a different character than Mary Ann would be. Strangely the Gilligan's Island pilot was her last acting job. The actress who played Ginger (Kit Smythe) didn't do much acting either...But the actor who played the Professor (John Gabriel) had a very long acting career...He did 775 episodes of Ryan's Hope. Ironically he was the most succesful actor of all of the castaways.

Thanks for finding that. It does sort of answer why the Howells had all those clothes. Because they could.

The next two people are millionaires
They got no worries, they got no cares
They climb aboard and they step inside
With just enough bags for a six hour ride

And the guy singing the theme song is Sir Lancelot, who more or less did the same thing in I Walked With a Zombie.