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| Ted Wass played Sheena's love interest, a sports journalist named Vic Casey. Casey's investigative instincts are aroused when he discovers that King Jabulani of Tigora has been assassinated and Sheena's female mentor, the Zambuli shaman, is being framed for the murder. Wass was born in Lakewood, Ohio, on 27 October 1952 and was a graduate of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. He debuted on Broadway in the 1976 production of Grease. From 1977 to 1981 he played the character of Danny Dallas, a junior gangster in training, on the immensely popular Soap, a controversial series that was part drama, part satirical comedy, and part soap opera. In 1983 he landed the leading role in Curse of the Pink Panther, the eight film in the series begun by Blake Edwards in the early-Sixties. The film was designed to launch him as the new lead following the death a few years earlier of Peter Sellers, the series' regular star, but was a dismal failure. The same year as Sheena (1984) he appeared with George Burns in Oh, God! You Devil, the third film in that series featuring Burns as God Almighty. From 1991 to 1995 Wass played the father in Blossom, a sitcom about a teenage girl in a house full of men. He has also worked extensively as a director on television. He has two children from his first wife, actress Janet Margolin, who died of ovarian cancer in 1993, and one from his second marriage to producer Nina Wass. |  |
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Vic Casey's sidekick, cameraman and loyal buddy was played by Donovan Scott. Fletch, a bumbling coward, provides most of the comic relief in the film, partly aided by the fact that his moustached portly appearance has more than a slight resemblance to the classic early comic, Oliver Hardy. Donovan was born in Chico, California on 29 September 1946. He studied for two-and-a-half years at the prestigious American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. He later toured as both an actor and artistic director of a theatrical troupe. Since settling in Los Angeles in 1977 he has worked extensively in both film and television. He made his film debut in Steven Spielberg's heavy-handed rollicking comedy, 1941 (1979), about the US's preparations for a Japanese invasion. Over the next few years he appeared in a swathe of comedies - Robert Altman's Popeye (1980) with Robin Williams, The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981), with Lily Tomlin, Zorro, the Gay Blade (1981) with George Hamilton and Police Academy (1984). He also appeared in the pop video of Olivia Newton John's Let's Get Physical (1982), as the guy being powdered by Olivia. In later years he switched to directing, most notably the Children of Captain Grant (1996), a German co-production and teaching. In the late-Nineties he was the director and teacher of his own Los Angeles based improv company, Brew Ha Ha. |
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| This remarkable woman played the role of Sheena's adoptive carer and teacher, the female shaman of the Zambuli tribe. In the early scenes that precede the opening credits, when instructing the young Sheena, she appears young and beautiful (see photo right). When Sheena is fully grown she is heavily made-up with greying hair and wrinkled skin to appear quite aged and fatigued. Some sources say she was born in 1936, others (including IMDb), say 1943. Depending on who you believe, so she was either 47 or 41 when Sheena was filmed in 1984. She was the daughter of George Matthew Kamurasi Rukidi III and Kezia Byanjeru, the king and queen of the Kingdom of Toro in western Uganda. She was the first female barrister in Uganda and she was the first, and so far the only, female Foreign Minister of Uganda. Idi Amin appointed her Foreign Minster in February 1974 after she had won his trust as Uganda's Roving Ambassador and Delegate to the United Nations. Her fortunes changed in November 1974 when she was placed under house arrest for unbecoming behaviour while on a mission abroad and was dismissed (he accused her publicly of making love with a white man in a toilet at the Paris airport). Prior to this she had worked as a model in London and had appeared in many magazines. Her film debut was in Bullfrog in the Sun (1972), shot in Nigeria. She currently lives in Uganda. |  |
| A stunningly beautiful actress from Martinique played the dangerous femme fatale, Countess Zanda, who betrays her fiancé, King Jabulani, to throw in her lot with his scheming brother, Prince Otwani. When Otwani displays lascivious interest in the blonde jungle girl, Sheena, Zanda's malevolent jealousy manifests itself in an attempt to throw Sheena from a helicopter over the Zambuli Falls. Zobda, whose birth-date is not disclosed, has an exotic background of mixed Indian, African, West-Indian and French heritage. Her father, and all of her brothers and sisters, are painters, but as a child she was more strongly drawn to physical activities. She started ballet at an early age and completed 15 years of study, while also pursuing interests in modern jazz dancing, swimming, athletics and sailing. She also has a black belt in judo. She left Martinique when she was 17 and moved to Orleans, in France, to study and completed a Doctorate of English. She also studied management and administration, which brought her in contact with the theatre industry. She made her film debut in Adieu Foulards (1983), a French musical comedy. Her very next film was Sheena, and she attributes her success at winning the role to her competence at English acquired through her studies. Most of her work over the next twenty years was in French films and television. |  |
| Trevor Thomas played Otwani, the heartless and power-hungry brother of King Jabulani, the rightful ruler of Tigora. Otwani and Zanda, Jabulani's fiancé, conspired together to eliminate the king and seize control of the country. Otwani's obvious interest in the scantily-clad, blonde Sheena infuriates Zanda and leads to her death. Thomas was born in Jamaica and his birth-date is unknown. He made his film debut in 1975 in a soft-porn Spanish film called Las Adolescentes (The Adolescents), which also introduced the habitually nude Koo Stark. His next major role was as Ben, the naive Guaynan innocent recently arrived in London only to be deceitfully robbed by his new "friends", in Black Joy (1977). He found frequent work on UK television, appearing on Space 1999, The Professionals, The Sweeny and Minder, amongst others. In 1978 he played a black athlete in International Velvet, with Tatum O'Neal, and followed this up few years later with a minor role in Inseminoid (1981), a low-budget British rip-off of Alien, while pursuing his regular television work. After Sheena he continued to work in UK film and television and also branched out into live theatre. In 2003 he appeared in The Illustrious Corpse, a political satire at the Soho Theatre and in 2004 he had a minor role in Eugene O'Neill's Freudian epic, Mourning Becomes Elektra, with Helen Mirren at the National Theatre. |  |
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• Starlog magazine Number 83, Jun 84
• Prevue magazine Vol 2 No 17, Nov/Dec 84
• The Iger Counter: Additions and Corrections to Jay Disbrow's "The Iger Comics Kingdom" by Roy Thomas (date unknown)
IMAGES
• All images of the cast of this film are video captures from the Sheena DVD, Sony Pictures Corporation
• Set of Sheena lobby cards is from my private collection
LYNX
• Read a filmography for Tedd Wass at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) site
• Read a filmography for Donovan Scott at the IMDb site
• Read a filmography for Elizabeth of Toro at the IMDb site
• Read a filmography for France Zobda at the IMDb site
• Read a filmography for Trevor Thomas at the IMDb site
This independent, fan-based analysis of the Sheena material is copyright © 2006-2008 Paul Wickham