Last week I featured the 1978 NBC/Hanna-Barbera series Godzilla, which originally aired as one half of The Godzilla Power Hour along with another action series, Jana of the Jungle. I planned to discuss both shows in one column, but I wound up having a lot more information on Godzilla than I expected, so Jana gets her own!
Like Godzilla, Jana of the Jungle was created by Hanna-Barbera and aired on NBC in 1978. Jana was a female Tarzan-like character, an apparently North American Caucasian girl whose scientist father was lost during a boating accident in the unnamed South American jungle. In the opening credits, it is shown that Jana’s father survived the accident but vanished. Jana spent the entirety of the series searching for him, although she never found him.
Jana was rescued from the raging river by Montaro (whose name is alternately pronounced “Mon-TAR-o” and “Mon-TEAR-o”), an indigenous warrior, who helps raise her along with the animals of the jungle with whom Jana learns to communicate. Another confidant is Dr. Ben Cooper, a Caucasian man who runs the nature preserve established by Jana’s father. The two animals that regularly accompany Jana and Montaro on their adventures are Ghost, an albino jaguar, and Tico, a mischievous water opossum.
Jana is armed with a necklace which doubles as a razor-sharp discus and resembles the chakram later used by the live-action character Xena, Warrior Princess. Montaro carries a spear called the Staff of Power which has various mystical qualities including the power to split the earth.
Hanna-Barbera mainstay B.J. Ward voiced Jana, while Montaro was voiced by Ted Cassidy and Ben Cooper was voiced by Michael Bell. Cassidy also provided the roars for Godzilla on Jana‘s companion show.
Jana’s name is often mispronounced by folks that remember the show. It is “Jan-a” like the middle Brady sister with an “a” at the end, not Jayna, the female Wonder Twin from Super Friends. Speaking of Super Friends, visually, Jana bears a resemblance to Rima, a member of that DC Comics-inspired team that also debuted in 1978. Rima was Latina with white hair with similar bangs and wore a tattered blue dress in a style akin to Jana’s. But in black and white pictures, I have noticed that people often get the two mixed up.
Jana of the Jungle only lasted for one 13-episode season and was not rerun after the 1978-79 season. It later aired as a segment on the USA Cartoon Express beginning in 1985. Perhaps it was because Jana was part of an anthology and her name wasn’t in the title, but her show was nearly forgotten for many years. Unlike most Hanna-Barbera shows, Jana of the Jungle was never aired on Cartoon Network or Boomerang and has not officially been released on home video. (A Jana of the Jungle complete series DVD boxed set exists and looks very much like an official Warner Archive release, but I’m pretty sure it’s a bootleg.)
But Jana of the Jungle is not completely forgotten. In 2007, Dynamite Entertainment released the comic book Jungle Girl featuring a lead character named Jana. Though this isn’t an adaptation, the cartoon clearly had an influence.
Reportedly, Jana, Ghost, and Tico appear on the new HBO Max series Jellystone but I haven’t seen that.
Jana of the Jungle may be one of the more obscure Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but it’s one of the best when it comes to action-adventure. The writing is solid. The animation is better than a lot of HB’s other shows from that era. (The animation is superior to that of Super Friends and that was one of HB’s top shows at the time!) But for whatever reason, either NBC or Hanna-Barbera didn’t have enough confidence to put the show on as its own entity and aired it as part of The Godzilla Power Hour and didn’t even give Jana billing. If it hadn’t been for the USA Cartoon Express, this series may have faded into obscurity.
Do you remember Jana of the Jungle?