The Maasai are a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting northern, central and southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, near the African Great Lakes region. Their native language is the Maasai language, a Nilotic language related to Dinka, Kalenjin and Nuer. Except for some elders living in rural areas, most Maasai people speak the official languages of Kenya and Tanzania—Swahili and English.
William Franklin Holden was an American actor and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Stalag 17 (1953) and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for the television miniseries The Blue Knight (1973).
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.
Robert James Brown was an English actor, best known for his portrayal of M in the James Bond films from 1983 to 1989, succeeding Bernard Lee, who died in 1981.
Amboseli National Park, formerly Maasai Amboseli Game Reserve, is a national park in Loitoktok District in Kajiado County, Kenya. It is 39,206 ha (392.06 km2) in size at the core of an 8,000 km2 (3,100 sq mi) ecosystem that spreads across the Kenya-Tanzania border. It harbours 400 species of birds including water birds like pelicans, kingfishers, crakes, hamerkop and 47 raptor species. The local people are mainly Maasai.
Carl William Demarest was an American actor, known especially for his roles in screwball comedies by Preston Sturges and as Uncle Charley in the sitcom My Three Sons from 1965-72. Demarest, who frequently played crusty but good-hearted roles, was a prolific film and television actor, appearing in over 140 films, beginning in 1926 and ending in the late 1970s. Before his career in movies, he performed in vaudeville for two decades.
William Carey Loftin was an American professional stuntman, stunt coordinator and actor in the U.S. film industry. He is considered to be one of the film industry's most accomplished stunt drivers. In a lengthy career spanning 61 years, his body of work included classic films such as Thunder Road, Bullitt, Vanishing Point, Duel, and The French Connection. He was posthumously inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2001.
Parley Edward Baer was an American actor in radio and later in television and film. Despite dozens of appearances in television series and theatrical films, he remains best known as the original "Chester" in the radio version of Gunsmoke, and as the Mayor of Mayberry in The Andy Griffith Show.
Jonathan Hale was a Canadian-born film and television actor.
Walter Lawrence Burke was an American character actor of stage, film, and television whose career in entertainment spanned over a half century. Although he was a native of New York, Burke's Irish ancestry often led to his being cast in roles as an Irishman or Englishman. His small stature and distinctive voice and face also made him easily recognizable to audiences even when he was performing in minor supporting roles.
Peter Paul Fix was an American film and television character actor who was best known for his work in Westerns. Fix appeared in more than 100 movies and dozens of television shows over a 56-year career between 1925 and 1981. Fix portrayed Marshal Micah Torrance, opposite Chuck Connors's character in The Rifleman from 1958 to 1963. He later appeared with Connors in the 1966 Western film Ride Beyond Vengeance.
William Hickman was an American professional stunt driver, stunt coordinator and actor. His film career spanned from the 1950s through to the late 1970s, and included films such as Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups.
The White Masai is a 2005 film directed by Hermine Huntgeburth and starring Nina Hoss and Jacky Ido. The screenplay concerns Carola, a woman who falls in love in Kenya with Maasai Lemalian. The film is based on an autobiographical novel of the same name by the German born writer Corinne Hofmann. In the film version, names have been changed from those in the novel.
The Lion is a 1958 novel by French author Joseph Kessel about a girl and her lion.
Unconquered is a 1947 American historical epic adventure film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard. The supporting cast features Boris Karloff, Cecil Kellaway, Ward Bond, Howard da Silva, Katherine DeMille, C. Aubrey Smith and Mike Mazurki. Released by Paramount Pictures, the film depicts the violent struggles between American colonists and Native Americans on the western frontier in the mid-18th century during the 1763 Pontiac's Rebellion, primarily around Fort Pitt. The film is characterized by DeMille's lavish style, including colourful costumes and sets, thousands of extras, violence, and sensationalism.
I Thank a Fool is a 1962 British Metrocolor crime film directed by Robert Stevens and starring Susan Hayward and Peter Finch. It was made by Eaton and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in CinemaScope and produced by Anatole de Grunwald from a screenplay by Karl Tunberg based on the 1958 novel of the same title by Audrey Erskine Lindop. The music score was by Ron Goodwin and the cinematography by Harry Waxman.
Jack the Giant Killer is a 1962 American heroic fantasy adventure film starring Kerwin Mathews in a fairy tale story about a young man who defends a princess against a sorcerer's giants and demons.
Tarzan and the Slave Girl is a 1950 American adventure film directed by Lee Sholem and starring Lex Barker as Tarzan, Vanessa Brown as Jane, and Robert Alda as big game hunter Neil. The fourteenth film of the Tarzan film series that began with 1932's Tarzan the Ape Man, the plot involves a lost civilization in Africa, a strange illness, and an evil counselor manipulating a prince into kidnapping large numbers of local women.
David William Lister Read was an author of autobiographical works which reveal a profound knowledge of Maasai history. He lived the life of a "white Maasai" and could speak their language before his own native English. Born in Nairobi, Read spent his formative years in what is now Tanzania, a country to which he would always return. Read spent his final years in Momella near Arusha in northern Tanzania, where he continued to work on his writing until his death.
