Answer: Janos Prohaska (1919-1974), a U.S.-based Hungarian actor and stunt performer on American television from the 1960s. He usually played the roles of animals or monsters.
He is best remembered for his recurring comic role as The Cookie Bear in The Andy Williams Show from 1969 to 1971. Prohaska also appeared in multiple roles on such TV series as The Outer Limits, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Lost in Space, and a few episodes of Gilligan's Island, where he plays a gorilla. His only credited role on that series appears in the episode "Our Vines Have Tender Apes." In 1967 he appeared as a white gorilla in the "Fatal Cargo" episode of the ABC-TV sci-fi series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. On NBC-TV's Star Trek his turns as the Horta in Star Trek's "The Devil in the Dark", and the Mugato (credited, curiously enough, as the Gumato) in "A Private Little War" are the best known of these. He made an appearance on an episode of What's My Line? in 1969, where he wore one of his ape costumes.
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The Horta was played by Janos Prohaska. Aside from playing the creature, Prohaska also designed and created the "suit" for the creature as Producer Robert Justman clarified,
"We made a "spec" [note: industry idiom for an unsolicited pitch without any guarantees] deal with Janos. If he came up with a really great creature for a script Gene Coon was writing, we'd rent it and hire him to play the part. Janos was back within a week's time with his custom-designed creature. It was a large pancake-shaped glob of gook with a thickened raised center and fringe around its circumference. It sure didn't look like much. As Janos took the glob out of sight to put it on, Gene Coon raised an objection "Bob, why are wasting time with this?" Suddenly, the blob skittered around the corner, making straight for us. Then it stopped, curiously, backed away, and rotated in place. The blob gathered itself up, quivered, made a whimsical up-and-down movement, grunted, and skittered away again – leaving behind a large, round white "egg". Coon was dumbfounded. He watched the creature giving birth. And when the creature suddenly turned and scurried back to nuzzle its "child", Gene was sold. "Great!" he exclaimed, "It's perfect! Just what we need." Then he excitedly hastened back to his office to finish writing the script. "Gene Coon's "The Devil in the Dark" became one of Star Trek's most famous episodes. And Janos Prohaska played his own creation, one of Star Trek's most famous creatures, the highly imaginative and custom-designed mother Horta." (Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, pp. 214-215)
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20 Jan 2020, 3:28 pm
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