Mara the Lioness Mara the Lioness Mara the Lioness is an animal actor who appeared as Elsa in the 1966 movie "Born Free", based on the true story of Elsa the Lioness raised by George and Joy Adamson. Mara was born in the wild in 1965, a premature cub abandoned by her mother during a violent rain storm. She was found lying on sodden ground, caked in mud on the plains of Masailand by Samwel, an African game scout and Larry Wateridge. Sick with hunger and in a semi coma, she was taken to a nearby coffee plantation in Kenya owned by British
George Worsley Adamson "Meet My Folks!" (1961); this was followed by the drawings he did for Ted Hughes's first book of children's stories, "How the Whale Became" (1963), and those for the first edition of " The Iron Man" (1968). In 1970, Adamson illustrated the book based on Richard Carpenter's television series "Catweazle"; this was followed in 1971 by the drawings he did for the book based on the second series, "Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac". In the 1980s, he illustrated the first five of the Richard Ingrams and John Wells "Dear Bill" books for "Private Eye". Besides work for books, Adamson undertook