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Bob Denver is most famous for playing a shipwrecked castaway, but he got his start acting aboard a different sort of nautical vessel. The "Gilligan's Island" actor's debut role was in the 1957 military anthology series "The Silent Service," which dramatized stories about the United States Navy's submarine fleet.
Hosted by Thomas M. Dykers, an actual retired rear admiral, "The Silent Service" was created in full cooperation with the U.S. Navy. This meant that the depiction of life and combat aboard American submarines was never portrayed in an unflattering light, but the upside was that the series was filmed inside a real sub, the USS Sawfish. Each episode ended with an interview with a real Navy veteran whose experience the half-hour program was based on. Despite being about military conflict, the show was not exactly a fast-paced action spectacle, but perhaps due to the accuracy, it was a decent hit in syndication, running for 78 episodes from 1957 to 1958.
Denver made his screen debut in "The Silent Service" Season 1, Episode 37, "The Tang's Last Shot," in which he played a seaman named Murph. It's a small part, and the closest the actor ever got to serving in the actual military. Although he was drafted two years later while starring in the 1959 sitcom "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," Denver was exempted from duty because he'd broken his neck as a child.
A submarine featured in one of the most controversial Gilligan's Island episodes
Bob Denver's time aboard the submarine TV series was brief. His role in "The Tang's Last Shot" is small; he's part of a subplot where the seamen need to dispose of some stinky, spoiled jars, but because they're underwater, they can't just dump 'em overboard. Denver would have another encounter with a TV sub a decade later in one of the most controversial episodes of "Gilligan's Island." In Season 1's "So Sorry, My Island Now," Gilligan and the other castaways meet a Japanese sailor who has been patrolling the South Pacific in a mini-sub because he doesn't know World War II is over. The Japanese sailor was played by Italian-American actor Vito Scotti in yellowface. Due to the racism, Denver's role in "The Silent Service" is the better submarine credit by a mile.
As it turns out, the future first mate of the S.S. Minnow was not the only actor from "The Silent Service" fated to find fame on another show about a vessel. Two members of the USS Enterprise crew, Spock and Dr. "Bones" McCoy, served aboard the Navy series. Leonard Nimoy, who appeared in lots of military dramas in his pre-"Star Trek" days, like "West Point" and "Steve Canyon," was in three episodes of "The Silent Service." DeForest Kelley also made three appearances on the show.
