Gena Lee Nolin

Sick of running in slow-motion and shaking sand out of her skin-tight Lycra bathing suit, Gena Lee Nolin couldn`t wait to dump "Baywatch" after four years of burning her feet on hot sand and freezing in Venice Beach`s polluted waters. It was a personal decision and nothing to do with the wholesale lay-offs of a half-dozen amply endowed "Baywatch" babes - including Carmen Electra, Donna D`Errico and Traci Bingham - in May 1998.

"I was tired of it because I had just had a baby an didn`t want to work 14-15 hours a day anymore," says the svelte 5-foot-9 Nolin, still an impossibly well-shaped blonde at the ripe old age of 28. She had a few other issues with the powers-that-be at "Baywatch," too, including feeling like a number from time-to-time.

"You`re an ensemble (cast), so you`re replaceable," Nolin explains. "It would be like, `OK, jump off the end of the bridge! You don`t like it? Go home! Can you say recast?` so we would jump off anything and do whatever we had to do."

Although she declines to be specific, Nolin claims the primary reason for leaving her role as the nasty, man-eating Neely Capshaw was behind-the-scenes politics.

"There was a bunch of crap (going on) involving producers and some other people," she says, picking her words carefully. "Politics ran deep and that`s why nine or 10 cast members left in one year. I was sick and tired of it."

Her personal problems on the show did not involve David Hasselhoff or Pamela Anderson Lee, she hastens to add.

"My relationship with David is fine and dandy, and Pamela is just awesome. We were just together in Morocco this summer for the World Music Awards. We have a great relationship and I loved working with her. Things were not good with some of the other people. ..."

Fortunately, she maintained an excellent relationship with Douglas Schwartz, one of "Baywatch`s" executive producers during those turbulent years. And he is the man responsible for Nolin being able to trade in her skimpy, low-cut second-skin bathing suit for a skimpy, low-cut (fake) deer-skin costume carefully designed to leave nothing to the imagination as the Queen of the Jungle title character in "Sheena."

Based on the popular comic book heroine of 1930s and 1940s by Will Eisner and S.M. Iger, it is also a remake of the short-lived 1955 cult action-adventure television series called "Sheena, Queen The Jungle," starring Irish McCalla. For good measure, former "Charlie`s Angels" (1980-81) replacement star Tanya Roberts (Julie Rogers) played the vine-swinging forest lurker in the 1984 feature film-version of "Sheena." The most memorable scene in the terrible movie was Roberts (now Midge on "That `70s Show") riding bare-breasted and bare-back on a zebra.

Once cast by executive producer Schwartz (son of "Gilligan`s Island`s" creator Sherwood Schwartz), the rather attractive Scottsdale, Ariz.-resident tracked down the 71-year-old Irish McCalla in nearby Prescott. The original TV Sheena - now a respected Western artist who has battled brain tumors off and on since 1969 - was more than willing to give sage advice, according to Nolin. On the practical side, McCalla strongly suggested the employment of a top-notch stunt double.

"During a two-hour phone conversation about a year ago, Ms. McCalla basically said that she played Sheena in the `50s, when a woman`s role was raising kids and baking cookies, and female superheroes were laughed at," says Nolin, "But times have changed, look at `Xena,` and now it`s cool to have sexy women with incredible physical and spiritual powers. She also sent me her private journals from the `Sheena` years and asked me to make her proud of being a woman."

Nolin made her solemn promise and reported for work in Florida, where the Disney Studios in Orlando and Busch Gardens in Tampa represent the darkest of Central Africa and looks suspiciously like the northern edge of the Everglades. Whereas McCalla used male stunt doubles in long wigs and padded costumes after crashing into a tree, Nolin smartly found a female stunt double - the 5-foot-9, natural blond Vicki Phillips - before shooting started. Nobody has been hurt so far.

While Phillips swings from tree-to-tree on ropes disguised as vines and wrestles ugly alligators, Nolin skinny dips with Bubbles, the sweet-natured elephant, and is used for target practice by mischievous chimpanzees once their diapers come off and the camera rolls. Although not thrilled to be working with such creatures as snakes and giant spiders, she is now a genuine hero to Spencer - her 3-year-old son by second husband Greg Fahlman, a Canadian video producer from Edmonton, Alberta.

Born in Duluth, Minn., Nolin was reared in Las Vegas by her mother in the wake of her parents` divorce. She appeared to be stumbling through life until friends exerted some pressure for her to try beauty contests and modeling while a high school senior at 17.

"Finally, I thought what the hell, and entered a pageant," she recalls. "I won, and kept winning. I couldn`t believe it!"

A career was born, that includes a string of regional beauty contests, numerous modeling competitions affiliated with the prestigious Ford Agency and Elite Agency, plus a plethora of national TV commercials and spokesperson contracts for products ranging from Hyundai cars and and StarBurst candy to Levi`s jeans, Swatch watches and Coors beer. She met her husband-to-be in 1993 ("he made me laugh") while handing out literature at a Las Vegas trade show.

A year later, she moved to Los Angeles and sent her picture and resume to "the Price Is Right" at Fahlman`s urgings. Days later, she became a Showcase Model in the wake of Diane Parkinson`s departure. By the end of 1994, she left to do a brief stint on the daytime soap opera "The Young & The Restless," then wriggled and jiggled into a four-year gig on the now 11-year-old "Baywatch (Hawaii)" for greater glory and global recognition.

She is anxiously awaiting a release date on an independent film titled "The Flunky" - playing a larcenous bookie - with Farrah Fawcett and Dean Stockwell, but hopes "Sheena" holds the key to her future.

"I love the show and the people in it," says Nolin, maintaining total objectivity. "They are very careful and treat me very well, like a jungle princess. My stunt-double twirls through the trees and smashes bad guys in the mouth before they cut to a close-up of me. On `Baywatch,` we`d (have to) jump off anything ..."

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Eirik Knutzen