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
Bill Travers a leg and dislocated a shoulder. He played the title role in a British TV version of "The Admirable Crichton" (1968), alongside his wife, and had a small part in Peter Hall's adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1968). Travers teamed up with James Hill, the director of "Born Free", to make the documentary, "The Lions Are Free" (1969), which both men directed. Travers and McKenna made another "animal movie", "Ring of Bright Water" (1969) for which he also wrote the script. They followed this with "An Elephant Called Slowly" (1970), which Travers helped write and produce with James Hill,