Was 'Sheena' inspired by 'Luana'?

It's more likely that "Luana" copies from "Sheena: Queen of the Jungle", which was a comic book then a Fifties TV series with the Amazonian Irish McCalla. Ms. McCalla was an early heroine for my sister and I, who were born at the beginning of the decade. Tanya Roberts looks frail next to her.

Here's the opening from the series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1u2Ug5PpeU

From Wikipedia:
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle is a fictional, American comic book jungle girl heroine, published originally by Fiction House. The female counterpart to Tarzan, Sheena had two things in common with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Jungle Lord: Both possessed the ability to communicate with wild animals and were both orphans growing up and learning how to survive and live in the jungle. She was fiercely proficient in fighting with knives, spears, and bows, and improvised with makeshift weapons. Her primary ability was to surprise her opponents, either human or animal.
She was the first female comic-book character with her own title, with her 1937 (in Great Britain; 1938 in the United States) premiere, preceding "Wonder Woman" #1 (cover-dated Dec. 1941). Sheena inspired a wealth of similar comic-book jungle queens. She was predated in literature by Rima, the Jungle Girl, introduced in the 1904 William Henry Hudson novel "Green Mansions".

"Sheena" debuted in Joshua B. Power's British magazine "Wags" #1, in 1937. She was created by Will Eisner and S.M. "Jerry" Iger of the comic-book packager Eisner & Iger, one of a handful of studios that produced comics on demand for publishers and syndicates, and whose client Editors Press Service distributed the feature to "Wags'. To help hide the fact their studio consisted only of themselves, the duo signed their "Sheena" strip with the pseudonym "W. Morgan Thomas". Eisner said an inspiration for the character's name was H. Rider Haggard's 1886 novel "She'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheena,_Queen_of_the_Jungle



*** The trouble with reality is there is no background music. ***

Jungle girls go back quite a bit, the first was "Rema" from William Henry Hudson's 1904 novel, Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest. There were a rash of them in movies and print in the 30s and 40s.

With slight modifications, Sheena is basically a female version of Tarzan and was the first female comic book character with her own title, debuting in 1937 in Great Britain and 1938 in America. The first jungle girl in adventure fiction was Rima from the 1904 book by William Henry Hudson “Green Mansions,” which was made into a movie starring Audrey Hepburn as Rima in 1959. DC Comics later had a short-lived series called “Rima the Jungle Girl” in 1974-75. Model Irish McCalla depicted Sheena in a TV series that aired for one season from 1955-1956. Meanwhile Marvel Comics developed their own Sheena-like jungle girl named Shanna the She-Devil, which debuted in a short-lived series in late 1972; she was subsequently a guest character in issues of Ka-Zar and Daredevil. Lorna, Nyoka and Jana (aka Jungle Girl) are other comic book jungle heroines, amidst others.