Babes of Yore #5

Sandahl Bergman





Better know to the nerd community as Valeria, the warrior goddess and soul mate of Conan the Barbarian, Sandahl started her career as a broadway dancer. She was featured in many stage productions in the early 70’s and as a result ended up in films like All that Jazz, A Chorus Line and Xanadu. When casting for Conan, the producers wanted a female lead with a commanding presence to match up with Arnold and she fit the bill perfectly. The icing on the cake was that she could perform all of her own stunts due to the lack of tall stunt women at the time.





Due to her 5’10 stature, Sandahl didn’t prove popular for too many leading lady roles until her star making turn in Conan. After that she found her niche and became sort of a go-to girl for action flicks. Immediately following Conan, Sandahl headlined one of the absolute worst movies ever filmed, the 1982 Italian made SHE. If you’ve never witnessed it, you should do so by any means necessary immediately! Unfathomably bad.





Shortly after recovering from that monstrosity she was offered the lead in the pseudo-follow up to Conan the Destroyer, Red Sonja. She turned down the role of the headlining ass-kicker in favor of playing the movie’s primary villain, Queen Gedron. After that, she appeared in many smaller budget movies like Stewardess School, Programmed to Kill, and Hell Comes to Frogtown. She continued her career through the 90’s and was last seen as a dancer in the 2003 film the Singing Detective.



Sandahl will always be Valeria to me and that is about as good a compliment as I could ever give to a true Babe of Yore.

nice!!
I forgot she was in Red Sonja!

She was great as Valeria.. too bad for her she never achieved any higher fame.. although how much higher can you get than being Conan's babe?

I forgot about this girl. She rocks though! Nice choice!