The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent film made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. It follows a gang of outlaws who hold up and rob a steam locomotive at a station in the American West, flee across mountainous terrain, and are finally defeated by a posse of locals. The short film draws on many sources, including a robust existing tradition of Western films, recent European innovations in film technique, the play of the same name by Scott Marble, the popularity of train-themed films, and possibly real-life incidents involving outlaws such as Butch Cassidy.
Elsa the lioness was a female lion raised along with her sisters "Big One" and "Lustica" by game warden George Adamson and his wife Joy Adamson after they were orphaned at only a few days old. Though her two sisters eventually went to the Netherlands' Rotterdam Zoo, Elsa was trained by the Adamsons to survive on her own, and was eventually released into the wild.
Friederike Victoria "Joy" Adamson was a naturalist, artist and author. Her book, Born Free, describes her experiences raising a lion cub named Elsa. Born Free was printed in several languages, and made into an Academy Award-winning movie of the same name. In 1977, she was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art.
Jonathan Gregory Brandis was an American actor. Beginning his career as a child model, Brandis moved on to acting in commercials and subsequently won television and film roles. Brandis made his acting debut in 1982 as Kevin Buchanan on the soap opera One Life to Live. In 1990, he portrayed Bill Denbrough in the television miniseries It, and starred as Bastian Bux in The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter. In 1993, at the age of 17, he was cast in the role of teen prodigy Lucas Wolenczak on the NBC series seaQuest DSV. The character was popular among teenage viewers, and Brandis regularly appeared in teen magazines. He died by suicide in 2003.
Born Free is a 1966 British drama film starring the real-life couple Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers as Joy and George Adamson, another 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, 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 score, by John Barry, as well as the title song, with lyrics by Don Black and sung by Matt Monro, won numerous awards.
George Alexander Graham Adamson MBE, also known as the Baba ya Simba, was a British wildlife conservationist and author based in Kenya. His wife Joy Adamson related in her best-selling book Born Free (1960) the couple's life with Elsa the Lioness, an orphaned lioness cub they raised and later released into the wild.
John Paterson McGowan was a pioneering Hollywood actor and director and occasionally a screenwriter and producer. McGowan remains the only Australian to have been made a life member of the Screen Directors Guild.
Elsa Maxwell was an American gossip columnist and author, songwriter, screenwriter, radio personality and professional hostess renowned for her parties for royalty and high society figures of her day.
Born Free is an American adventure/drama series based on the 1966 movie of the same name. It aired on the NBC television network from September 9 to December 30, 1974, produced by Columbia Pictures Television and starring and narrated by Diana Muldaur.
Mara the Lioness (1965–1974) was 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.
Christian the lion was a lion born in captivity and purchased by Australian John Rendall and Anthony "Ace" Bourke from Harrods department store in London in 1969. He was later reintroduced to the African wild by conservationist George Adamson. Two years after Adamson released Christian to the wild, his former owners decided to go looking for him to see whether Christian would remember them. He did, and with him were two lionesses who accepted the men as well.
James Hill was a British film and television director, screenwriter and producer whose career spanned 52 years between 1937 and 1989, best remembered for his documentaries and short subjects such as Giuseppina and The Home-Made Car, and as director of the internationally acclaimed Born Free.
Living Free is a 1972 British drama film, written by Millard Kaufman and directed by Jack Couffer. It is starred by Nigel Davenport, Susan Hampshire and Geoffrey Keen. This film is a sequel to Born Free (1966), which was based on the 1960 book of the same name by Joy Adamson. The film Living Free is also based on a book by Joy Adamson; however, it is not based on the book of the same name but is instead based on the third book in the series, Forever Free. Singer Julie Budd sang the title song, composed by Sol Kaplan and Freddy Douglass.
Shaba National Reserve is a protected area in Isiolo County in northern Kenya to the east of the Samburu and Buffalo Springs national reserves. Together, the three reserves form a large protected area.
The 13th Youth in Film Awards ceremony, presented by the Youth in Film Association, honored outstanding youth performers under the age of 21 in the fields of film and television for the 1990–1991 season, and took place on December 1, 1991, at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in North Hollywood, California.
The 14th Youth in Film Awards ceremony, presented by the Youth in Film Association, honored outstanding youth performers under the age of 21 in the fields of film, television, theater and music for the 1991-1992 season, and took place on January 16, 1993, at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Studio City, California.
The 15th Youth in Film Awards ceremony, presented by the Youth in Film Association, honored outstanding youth performers under the age of 21 in the fields of film, television and theatre for the 1992-1993 season, and took place on February 5, 1994, at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Studio City, California.
Contrabandits is a 1967 Australian TV series about the work of the customs department.
There have been numerous on screen adaptations of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The best known cinematic adaptations are Sam Taylor's 1929 The Taming of the Shrew and Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 The Taming of the Shrew, both of which starred the most famous celebrity couples of their era; Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks in 1929 and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 1967. On television, perhaps the most significant adaptation is the 1980 BBC Television Shakespeare version, directed by Jonathan Miller and starring John Cleese and Sarah Badel.
