Born Free Born Free Born Free is a 1966 British drama 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 wilderness of Kenya. The film was produced by Open Road Films Ltd. and Columbia Pictures. The screenplay, written by blacklisted Hollywood writer Lester Cole (under the pseudonym "Gerald L.C. Copley"), was based upon Joy Adamson's 1960 non-fiction book "Born Free". The film was directed by James Hill and produced by Sam Jaffe and Paul Radin. "Born Free", and its musical
George Worsley Adamson George Worsley Adamson George Worsley Adamson, RE, MCSD (7 February 1913 – 5 March 2005) was a book illustrator, writer, and cartoonist, who held American and British dual citizenship from 1931. Adamson was born in the Bronx, New York City. His parents were George William Adamson, a master car builder for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, and Mary Lydia (Lily, née Howard). His father, born in Glasgow, Scotland, and his mother, born in Wigan, Lancashire, had moved to New York City from Bombay in 1910. Following the death of his mother in February 1921, George Adamson sailed to England with