Born Free (1966) is an Open Road Films Ltd./Columbia Pictures feature film starring Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers as Joy and George Adamson, a real-life couple who raised Elsa the Lioness an orphaned lion cub to adulthood, and released her into the wilds of Kenya. The screenplay, written by blacklisted Hollywood writer Lester Cole (under the pseudonym "Gerald L.C. Copley"), was based upon Joy Adamson's 1960 non-fictional book Born Free. The f...
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Born Free (1966) is an Open Road Films Ltd./Columbia Pictures feature film starring Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers as Joy and George Adamson, a real-life couple who raised Elsa the Lioness an orphaned lion cub to adulthood, and released her into the wilds of Kenya. The screenplay, written by blacklisted Hollywood writer Lester Cole (under the pseudonym "Gerald L.C. Copley"), was based upon Joy Adamson's 1960 non-fictional book Born Free. The film was directed by James H. Hill and produced by Sam Jaffe and Paul Radin. Born Free, and its musical score by John Barry, won numerous awards.
The Adamsons tend three orphaned lion cubs to young lionhood, and, when the time comes, the two largest are sent to the Rotterdam Zoo, while Elsa the Lioness (the youngest of the litter) remains with Joy. When Elsa is held responsible for stampeding a herd of elephants through a village, John Kendall (Geoffrey Keen), Adamson's boss, gives the couple three months to either rehabilitate Elsa to the wild...
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