1997

19.3

David B. Broad
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle: White Goddess of the Dumont Era

The twentieth century in American culture has been a period of rapid technological change and concomitant, if somewhat slower, social change. For the most part, contemporary mythology--much of which exists and is practiced through popular culture--has been cast in terms determined by the dominant patriarchy. Predictably, there have been few overt portrayals of the Goddess or her mythic demigoddess agents in American popular culture. Although few heroic female characters have been depicted at all, early television had two outstanding exceptions--Annie Oakley, the pistol-packin' heroine of the Old West (Broad) and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

Sheena's popular culture debut was in Jumbo Comics No. 1, published by Fiction House in September 1938--the creation of nineteen year-old artist William Eisner. She was the first successful female action hero in comics. In the story, Sheena's father was explorer Cardwell Rivington, whose witch doctor friend raised Sheena. Her initial persona was as the brutal ruler of a fierce jungle tribe, but after her dramatic success at the news stand, Sheena was recast as more traditionally heroic (Black and Feret).

From the outset, Sheena was blond, beautiful, spear-carrying, and scantily dressed. Within a year she appeared in the leopard-skin which became her trademark and later bore polished metal armlets and occasionally brass bracelets and anklets. Eisner said he created Sheena to be a female counterpart of Tarzan and that he borrowed the name from the H. Ryder Haggard novel, She. Sheena starred in 167 comic books, from 1938 to 1953, and republications appeared as late as 1985 (Black and Feret 78).

Sheena was Amazonian in prowess, and after her debut as the rather unsympathetic scourge of the jungle, she became a moral and ethical champion of human dignity and fairness. She also more than occasionally evidenced both naturist and feminist agendas. Like Tarzan and other jungle heroes, Sheena saw the presence of people from "civilization" as invasive and potentially dangerous to her domain. Sheena was quick to draw on her instinct for good and evil. In the comic book adventure "Fangs of the Lion Man," Sheena disposes of an evil white usurper of the chieftainship of the Tioga tribe, and installs the daughter of the deceased legitimate chief as the new chief. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle is also a queen maker (Black and Feret 59-67).

In the early comic adventures of Sheena, her relationship with the male character, Bob the white hunter, is sometimes ambiguous, sometimes explicit. In the episode of the Hidden Valley Temple (circa 1943), Sheena makes rare but direct reference to Bob as "my mate" (Black and Feret 68-77). However, the relationship between Sheena and Bob never crimps Sheena's style or overshadows her authority in the jungle. Bob often is taken captive by hostile (usually misled) natives, or finds himself in danger in the bush, and Sheena comes to his rescue as a subplot of the struggle between good and evil. After dispatching the evil white interlopers of the Hidden Valley Temple episode by standing still and letting vampire bats tear open their throats, Sheena must say goodbye to a young jungle subject, who was left by his murdered parents a few years before. She tells him that he must return to the land of his parents where he will be given a name, and he will have to live by the code of the white man's civilization. The boy, in a combination of steel-jawed determination and worshipful admiration, declares "Yet, O Jungle Queen, my memory of you shall never grow dim. Never!" (Black and Feret 77).

Although data on readership of 1930s through 1950s comic books is spotty at best, there is one often-observed difference between the readership of a printed publication and the viewership or listenership of electronic media. To be read, a publication must be purchased, whereas a television or radio show need only be tuned in. This researcher has, to date, been unable to locate more than a handful of male interview respondents of the relevant age group who were readers of Sheena comics, while females of the same age group are likely to respond that they were at least occasional readers of Sheena. The reverse appears true of the viewership of the television show. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, the television show which aired through syndication for twenty-six episodes in 1956-57, is, according to my research, one of the most remembered shows of males age 45-55 today.

Sheena was played in the series by Irish McCalla, who had been a superstar pin-up of the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was quite tall (variously reported as 5'9 1/2" to 6' 1") and strikingly attractive. She was also, as was the emerging current fashion, very busty. While still in her teens, shortly after World War II, McCalla made a short film feature titled River Goddesses, in which she and several other female models were depicted on an excursion on the Colorado River, through Grand Canyon (Black and Feret 19-20).

Irish McCalla's career as a goddess began in earnest in 1955, when she was cast in the Sheena role after Anita Ekberg, who had won the part, failed to show up for the first day of production of the pilot. McCalla's biographers, Bill Black and Bill Feret, begin the definitive book on her life: "To that first generation of kids exposed to television, Irish McCalla was truly a goddess come-to-life" (3). Larry Urbanski, curator of one of the world's largest libraries of early television shows, wrote of Sheena: "This shapely beauty of the jungle is fondly remembered by all boys who watched Sheena in her well fitting leotard [sic]. The girls fondly remember Sheena as the woman who took charge in a 50's era when women usually did not take charge" (18).

Sheena's goddesshood was also recognized by Tim Brooks and Earl Marsh, the editors of the definitive encyclopedia of prime time network TV: "The setting was Kenya, where statuesque Sheena played White Goddess and protector to the beasts and natives" (797). Athleticism was part of the Sheena package. While viewing McCalla's screen test for the show, Don Sharpe, producer, said: "Look at that girl lope. No turned-out feet. No funny switching. No shoulder sway. And look at those legs. That's Sheena" ("Tarzan's Rival").

Sheena was produced in 1955-56 and aired in 1956-57, a period of American social history in which what we now refer to as "traditional" sex roles were firmly entrenched. By "traditional" is primarily meant patriarchal, but this system, in which males were the bread-winners and head of the family and household and females were housekeepers and child-rearers, had been temporarily suspended for the duration of World War II. Early television was largely structured by the expectation of a return to the normalcy of patriarchy. Female characters were overwhelmingly depicted in roles subservient to and dependent on males. Sheena was preceded on television by Annie Oakley, played by Gail Davis, by two years. Annie was a strong and heroic female character, and probably paved the way for Sheena, but Annie was petite and demure. Sheena was robustly feminine and her simple and direct use of language ("Bob stay here!") gave her a forceful persona.

Another common remnant of the effects of World War II on early television is the type-casting of persons with German accents as villains. In the first-filmed episode of Sheena, entitled "The Renegades," John Banner (who a decade later played Sergeant Schultz of Hogan's Heroes) played a diamond thief named Brunner whom Sheena's friend Bob was attempting to apprehend for the victimized mine-owners. Brunner was aided and abetted by the Kitaris--"devils"--who desired guns to prey on trade safaris with. Thus the subtext of there being both "good" and "bad Negroes" is part of the ongoing way of things in Sheena's world. After Brunner and several of his accomplices meet their inevitable violent end, Bob moralizes: "Maybe someday they'll learn that killing is a way of death, not a way of life." The episode ends with a close-up of Sheena tenderly carrying Chim the chimp in her nurturing arms.

"Forbidden Cargo," which was the first Sheena to air, confirmed the postwar vilification of the Axis cultures, with the depictation of the Murani as being misled by Tanyika, "a fanatic who originally came from Asia, who wants to rule the whole Massai country." It was also in this episode that animal sequences shot in Africa began to appear spliced between action segments. These shots focused on mother ruminants peaceably nursing their young. After apparently becoming aware of the intrusion of humans, the mothers adopt an alert protective posture and the young scamper to safety.

In "Forbidden Land," the fourth episode broadcast, Sheena demonstrates her uncanny insight into human emotion and behavior. The complex plot involves a widow who murders her father-in-law, in an attempt to make herself the sole heir to his considerable estate. Upon the father-in-law's untimely death, Sheena notes that "Man is killed, but lady is not sad. That is wrong."

"Sacred River" makes Sheena's role as nexus of nature and culture central to the plot. While looking after Pepe, a spoiled and foolish young bank heir, Sheena must wrestle and kill a crocodile to save Pepe. Later, to save Pepe and Bob from punishment for profaning the sacred river, Sheena imitates the crocodile by slithering into the river on her belly. Thus, like the Paleolithic hunters who painted the cycle of life on cave walls, Sheena models reverence for the animal life she has taken, by taking on its behavior.

The opening credits of the series Sheena, Queen of the Jungle depict Sheena photographed from a low angle, emphasizing her stature. She is blowing her buffalo horn, with which she calls Chim or other jungle creatures as warranted. This pose is strikingly similar to that of the "Venus of Laussel," a Paleolithic goddess carving unearthed in France and attributed to some 20,000 years ago. The figure depicts a fertile-looking female holding in one hand a crescent-shaped bison horn, symbolic of the moon, with thirteen notches carved on it. Her other hand is on her abdomen. The number of days between the first lunar crescent and the full moon is also thirteen. That piece of relief is thought to be the oldest extant evidence of the awareness of our Paleolithic ancestors of the connection between the lunar and menstrual cycles, and, as Joseph Campbell states, is a symbol of the centrality of the fertile goddess to the Paleolithic belief system (Campbell 12).

Sheena also reflects other aspects of goddesshood, as embodied by goddesses of the Classical Period, especially Artemis of Greece and Diana of Rome. As Robert Graves has shown, these mythic personae are in turn derived from Old Stone Age worship ceremonies in honor of the Goddess of the Moon, The Muse or White Goddess, who in the various stages of lunar visibility represented birth and growth, light for the hunt, love or battle, and death and divination (61). Thus, Sheena brings together in her persona the powers of both fertility and destruction--a mystery by patriarchal standards, but a common feature of goddess-worshiping cultures.

That Sheena is manifestly both strong and fertile suggests that she is a possible survival of the goddess worship of our Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Classical ancestors. One of the questions that often comes to mind about the portrayers of mythic and iconic figures in popular culture is whether and how they are aware of the cultural power of their characters. Irish McCalla addressed this in a letter to the present researcher:

I had very little help from directors and writers on the character of Sheena herself. It was mostly expected of me to create the feeling of her in my portrayal of her. To me, a queen of any kind should show that she is a good leader, though little of the writing did that, I feel. My picture of what she was is colored by my own visions of Sheena from the comic books I read as a girl. She was, in my mind, strong, honest, kind and could accept help from the white hunter, Bob, as any friend would without giving up her own independence. Her sense of right and wrong was very strong, just as my own has always been. Wrong should be immediately punished so it doesn't continue, but we didn't have to slash people up then to get that point across. There's too much blood and "spilled guts" today.

When I look around me at the permissiveness of our society and so much injustice instead of justice, I wonder if I influenced the boomers as much as they tell me I did. Something seems to have been lost in the translation. At least my own sons learned right from wrong, thank heaven, and I am proud to have seen them grow into strong young men with a good sense of values. They spent their school years in the Midwest in a small town with my parents, spending holidays and summers in the more worldly environment where their mother lived and worked. I know that I have a lot to thank that small town for--its teaching both me and my sons so much in what you refer to as "social justice attitudes." I also tried to answer children's questions when I was on personal appearances in the way that both Sheena and Irish would have.

Containing the whole of life within her visage, the Goddess of the neolithic imagination was the ultimate matrix: Mother and Maintainer of Life and Death. Her meaning-laden symbol of cyclicity and relatedness was so deeply felt it engendered a reverential concern for all life processes. The ancient Europeans' spiritual involvement with this image guided political decisions until the Goddess cultures' demise beginning about 5000 years ago. (4)

Sociology
Tennessee State University
Nashville, Tennessee 37209-1561

Black, Bill and Bill Feret. TV's Original Sheena: Irish McCalla. Longwood, Florida: Paragon, 1992.

Broad, David B. "Annie Oakley: An American Myth." Presented to the Popular Culture Association in the South, Richmond, Virginia, October 5, 1995.

Brooks, Tim and Earl Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, 1946 - Present (Fifth Edition). New York: Ballantine Books, 1992.

Campbell, Joseph. Transformations of Myth Through Time. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.

Graves, Robert. The White Goddess: A historical grammar of poetic myth. New York: Vintage Books, 1958.

McCalla, Irish. Unpublished letter to David Broad, November 13, 1995.

TV Star Parade. "Tarzan's Rival, Sheena." February 1956.

Urbanski, Larry. "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle." TV's Magic Memories. Orland Park, Illinois: Moviecraft, Inc., 1993.

Watson, Annie Dunn. "Goddess on Our Doorstep." Toward Freedom Volume 45, Number 3 (June/July 1996).