BORN FREE
Virginia McKenna was one of Britain’s biggest movie stars of the 50s and 60s, starring in films like A Town Called Alice and Carve Her Name With Pride . She also got to know Yul Brynner pretty well, playing opposite him on stage in The King and I hundreds of times.
The mane role she’s remembered for, however, is Born Free, based on the true story of Elsa the lioness, orphaned as a cub, raised by humans then released back into the wild. McKenna starred as naturalist Joy Adamson with husband George played by McKenna’s own husband, the late Bill Travers, the pair becoming animal rights activists.
In response to the death of an elephant they’d appeared with in An Elephant Called Slowly, the couple, with son Will, founded Zoo Check, which evolved into the Born Free Foundation in 1991 and still fights the corner for conservation and an end to animals in captivity.
Recently celebrating her 90th birthday, she talks to The 55 years ago.
