Elsa the lioness

Elsa (c. January 28, 1956 – January 24, 1961) was a Kenyan Masai lioness 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 weeks 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.

Her story is told in several books by the Adamsons, as well as the motion picture Born Free (1966).

Life

Elsa and her sisters were orphaned on February 1st, 1956 after George Adamson was forced to kill their mother when she charged him—​​in defense of her three cubs, he later realized. The Adamsons then adopted the 4 day old cubs.

While Elsa lived in many ways like a domesticated pet when she was small, Joy Adamson, whom Elsa trusted the most, considered her relationship with Elsa to be that of equals. Indeed, after sending the other two to a zoo, Joy was fiercely determined to give Elsa the education she needed to hunt and live in the wild. Her efforts paid off, earning Elsa worldwide fame at the time, when her early life's story was published in the book Born Free. When Elsa was three years old, she brought three cubs of her own to show to the Adamsons, whom the Adamsons named "Jespah" (male), "Gopa" (male), and "Little Elsa" (female). The life of Elsa and her cubs is covered in the book, Living Free, published not long afterwards.

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 movie 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 score by John Barry, won numerous awards.

Plot

When George Adamson is forced to kill a lioness out of self-defense, he brings home the 3 orphaned cubs she had been trying to protect. The Adamsons tend to the three orphaned lion cubs to young lionhood, and, when the time comes, the two largest are sent to the Rotterdam Zoo, while Elsa the Lioness (the smallest of the litter) remains with Joy. When Elsa is held responsible for stampeding a herd of elephants through a village, John Kendall, Adamson's boss gives the couple three months to either rehabilitate Elsa to the wild, or send her to a zoo. Joy opposes sending Elsa to a zoo, and spends much time attempting to re-introduce Elsa to the life of a wild lion in a distant reserve. At last, Joy succeeds, and with mixed feelings and a breaking heart, she returns her friend to the wild. The Adamsons then depart for their home in England; a year later, they return to Kenya for a week, hoping to find Elsa. They do, and happily discover she hasn't forgotten them, and is the mother of three cubs.

Joy Adamson

Joy Adamson (born Friederike Victoria Gessner; 20 January 1910, Opava – 3 January 1980 Shaba National Reserve) 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.

Adamson was born to Victor and Traute Gessner in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic), the second of three daughters. Her parents divorced when she was 10, and she went to live with her grandmother. In her autobiography The Searching Spirit, Adamson wrote about her grandmother, saying, "It is to her I owe anything that may be good in me". As a young adult, Adamson considered careers as a concert pianist, and in medicine

Elsa and her cubs

Joy Adamson is best known for her conservation efforts associated with Elsa the Lioness. In 1956, Joy's 3rd husband, George Adamson, in the course of his job as game warden of the Northern Frontier District in Kenya, shot and killed a lioness as she charged him and another warden. George later realized the lioness was just protecting her cubs, which were found nearby in a rocky crevice. Taking them home, Joy and George found it difficult to care for the all the cubs needs. The two largest cubs, named "Big One" and "Lustica" were passed on to be cared for by a zoo in Rotterdam, and the smallest "Elsa" was raised by the couple and their pet rock hyrax, Pati-Pati.

Elsa

Elsa may refer to:

Names

Places

ELSA (acronym)

Other

See also

George Adamson

George Adamson MBE (3 February 1906 – 20 August 1989), also known as the Baba ya Simba ("Father of Lions" in Swahili), was a British wildlife conservationist and author. He and his wife, Joy, are best known through the movie Born Free and best-selling book with the same title, which is based on the true story of Elsa the Lioness, an orphaned lioness cub they had raised and later released into the wild. Several other films have been made based on Adamson's life.

Life

George Alexander Graham Adamson was born 3 February 1906 in Etawah, then British India. Educated at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, England, he first visited Kenya in 1924. After a series of jobs, which included time as a gold prospector, goat trader, and professional safari hunter, he joined Kenya's game department in 1938 and was Senior Game Warden of the Northern Frontier District. Six years later, he married Joy. It was in 1956 that he raised the lioness cub, Elsa, who became the subject of the 1966 feature film Born Free.