Born Free | |
---|---|
Genre | Adventure/drama |
Based on | Born Free by Joy Adamson |
Developed by | Carl Foreman |
Directed by | Leonard Horn Paul Krasny Russ Mayberry |
Starring | Gary Collins Diana Muldaur |
Narrated by | Diana Muldaur |
Theme music composer | John Barry |
Composers | Dick DeBenedictis Richard Shores Harry Sukman ("A Matter of Survival") |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 13 |
Production | |
Executive producer | David Gerber |
Production location | East Africa |
Camera setup | Single-camera |
Running time | 60 minutes |
Production companies | David Gerber Productions Paul Radin Productions Columbia Pictures Television |
Original release | |
Network | NBC |
Release | September 9 – December 30, 1974 |
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.
Gary Collins stars as George Adamson and Diana Muldaur portrays Joy Adamson. The couple live in Kenya with their adopted lioness Elsa, where they protect the animals in the surrounding area from all sorts of danger, both natural and human.
An unrelated television movie called Born Free: A New Adventure was broadcast by ABC in 1996, starring Linda Purl and Chris Noth. Joy and George Adamson do not appear as the main characters in the story.
Guest stars included Peter Lawford, Barbara Parkins, Alex Cord, Susan Dey. Juliet Mills had a recurring role as Dr. Claire Hanley.
The series was set in Kenya and filmed in East Africa.[ citation needed ]
Born Free was scheduled opposite ABC's Top 20 hit The Rookies and CBS's Top 30 hit Gunsmoke . Rating for the series were low and it was canceled in the middle of the 1974–75 television season after thirteen episodes.
No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | "Pilot" | Gary Nelson | Richard Fielder | September 9, 1974 |
2 | "Elephant Trouble" | Gary Nelson | Sy Salkowitz | September 16, 1974 |
3 | "A Matter of Survival" | Jack Couffer | Don Ingalls | September 23, 1974 |
4 | "Death of a Hunter" | Paul Radin | Nina Laemmle and Sy Salkowitz (teleplay), Nina Laemmle (story) | September 30, 1974 |
5 | "Africa's Child" | Leonard Horn | Hesper Anderson | October 7, 1974 |
6 | "The Masai Rebels" | Richard Benedict | Richard Fielder (teleplay), Nina Laemmle (story) | October 14, 1974 |
7 | "The Flying Doctor of Kenya" | Paul Krasny | Hesper Anderson (teleplay), Nina Laemmle (story) | October 28, 1974 |
8 | "The Trespassers" | Barry Crane | Richard Fielder | November 4, 1974 |
9 | "The Maneaters of Merti" | Paul Krasny | Nina Laemmle and Sy Salkowitz (teleplay), Carl Foreman (story) | November 11, 1974 |
10 | "Elsa's Odyssey" | Russell Mayberry | Richard Fielder and Nina Laemmle (teleplay), Carl Foreman and Nina Laemmle (story) | November 18, 1974 |
11 | "The White Rhino" | Barry Crane | Hesper Anderson | November 25, 1974 |
12 | "The Raiders" | Russ Mayberry | Dale Eunson | December 9, 1974 |
13 | "The Devil Leopard" | Gary Nelson | David Chantler | December 30, 1974 |
The complete series Born Free was released in DVD format on August 7, 2012, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment via its "manufacture on demand" program. [1] It was later re-released by Mill Creek on September 25, 2018. [2]
The Partridge Family is an American musical sitcom created by Bernard Slade, which was broadcast in the United States from September 25, 1970, to August 24, 1974, on ABC.
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.
Susan Hampshire, Lady Kulukundis, is an English actress known for her many television and film roles. She is a three-time Emmy Award winner, winning for The Forsyte Saga in 1970, The First Churchills in 1969, and for Vanity Fair in 1973. Her other television credits include The Pallisers (1974), The Grand (1997–98) and Monarch of the Glen (2000–2005).
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.
Diana Muldaur is an American film and television actress. Muldaur's television roles include Rosalind Shays on L.A. Law and Dr. Katherine Pulaski in the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. She also appeared in two episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series in the late 1960s, playing two different roles. She has been nominated for an Emmy twice, as a supporting actress on L.A. Law in 1990 and 1991.
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.
It Takes a Thief is an American action-adventure television series that aired on ABC for three seasons between 1968 and 1970. It stars Robert Wagner in his television debut as sophisticated thief Alexander Mundy, who works for the U.S. government in return for his release from prison. For most of the series, Malachi Throne played Noah Bain, Mundy's boss.
Meru National Park is a Kenyan national park located east of Meru, 350 km (220 mi) from Nairobi. Covering an area of 870 km2 (340 sq mi), it is one best known national parks in Kenya. Rainfall in this area is abundant with 635–762 mm (25.0–30.0 in) in the west of the park and 305–356 mm (12.0–14.0 in) in the east. The rainfall results in tall grass and lush swamps.
Gidget is an American sitcom television series by Screen Gems about a surfing, boy-crazy teenager called "Gidget" and her widowed father Russ Lawrence, a UCLA professor. Sally Field stars as Gidget with Don Porter as father Russell Lawrence. The series was first broadcast on ABC from September 15, 1965, to April 21, 1966. Reruns were aired until September 1, 1966.
Gary Ennis Collins was an American actor and television host. Throughout his career, he won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1984 and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985.
Planet Earth is a 1974 American made-for-television science fiction film that was created by Gene Roddenberry, written by Roddenberry and Juanita Bartlett. It first aired on April 23, 1974 on the ABC network, and stars John Saxon as Dylan Hunt. It was presented as a pilot for what was hoped to be a new weekly television series. The pilot focused on gender relations from an early 1970s perspective. Dylan Hunt, confronted with a post-apocalyptic matriarchal society, muses, "Women's lib? Or women's lib gone mad..." The film also stars Diana Muldaur, Ted Cassidy, Janet Margolin, Christopher Cary, Corrine Camacho, and Majel Barrett. Marc Daniels directed the film.
Dan August is an American drama series that aired on ABC from September 23, 1970, to April 8, 1971. Burt Reynolds played the title character. Reruns of the series aired in prime time on CBS from May to October 1973 and from April to June 1975.
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.
Gary Hodges is a British artist and publisher much admired internationally for his graphite pencil wildlife art. His original drawings and limited edition prints have sold widely in the UK and throughout the world and is collected by large numbers of ordinary citizens, many not previously seeing themselves as "art collectors". During his career he has sold over 110,000 limited edition prints from 130 editions. His popularity has influenced and encouraged many other artists to develop intricate styles with pencil. He has a close connection to various environmental and wildlife conservation groups for whom he provides considerable financial support.
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.
Born Free: A New Adventure is a 1996 American television adventure film starring Jonathan Brandis and Ariana Richards. The film was written by John McGreevey and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. It was first aired on ABC on April 27, 1996. The film was shot entirely in South Africa.