"Born Free" (1966)

 

Recently, the Phoenix Zoo closed, another victim of the pandemic.  My husband and I are members of the zoo, and live close enough to walk, if we choose to make the thirty-minute hike.  Although we visit there maybe only four times a year, we love all of our visits.  Especially enjoyable are the early morning hours, when many of the animals are out and active; and the night strolls of the colorful Zoo Lights event, during the winter months around the holiday season.

Before it reopened  with the typical list of (barely enforced) safety measures in place, the closing of the Phoenix zoo made me sad, and fittingly nostalgic.  Yet another one of my favorite getaway places was off-limits, further limiting those unique opportunities for enriching the mind and the senses, enrichment that makes life more meaningful.

To deal with these feelings, I regressed to memories of childhood zoo visits.  The Chicago area, where I was raised, has two world-famous zoos:  Lincoln Park Zoo, located near Lake Michigan in the same-named neighborhood; and the sprawling Brookfield Zoo, situated in a working-class western suburb about a mile from where I grew up.

Between grade-school field trips and family outings, I might have visited the zoo seven or eight times a year, during the fleeting Spring and Summer months (we never went in the winter).  Each time, I felt a giddy sense of awe,  a renewed thrill of seeing exotic animals from around the world, which I had only seen from pictures in books and on television, and that I would never find roaming the parks and forest preserves of Chicago.  

No matter how many times I saw a lion or a giraffe, a flock of flamingos or a plodding bear, I was filled with respect and affection for them, and I never grew tired of them.  I still don’t.

While the zoo was still a Covid-memory and off-limits, I decided to have another look at a movie I had not seen in many years, one that seemed appropriate to this precise circumstance: “Born Free”.

“Born Free” was a rite-of-passage for most middle-class suburban kids during the 1960s.  Parents everywhere took their children to packed theaters to see this wondrous, true story about George and Joy Adamson, a husband-and-wife team of British naturalists working in Kenya. George is a senior game warden and conservationist, and Joy is a naturalist and artist.

When a notorious man-eating lion and his mate are killed by humans in self-defense against an attack, George and Joy rescue and raise one of the three orphaned lion cubs. They name her Elsa.

The film is a simple chronicle of the adventures they share with Elsa, in scenes filled with laughter and danger, as Elsa grows into a beautiful lioness who is nevertheless attached to,  and dependent on, her human companions. As Elsa matures, and starts to display some of her natural instincts, George and Joy make the heartbreaking decision to prepare Elsa to return to the wild, where she can live free, rather than in captivity in a zoo.

I remember as a youngster being absorbed by the film. I loved watching the antics of Elsa and the other animals, and fascinated by their natural behaviors.  I was also moved deeply by the film's bittersweet resolution, and the way the film tugged at the heartstrings, even though I knew even then that boys were not supposed to cry at movies. 

But there are two components of “Born Free” that are especially memorable from my first viewing as a nine-year-old.

First is the opening scene, which traumatized me, before the lion cubs appeared in their playful frolicking.  A group of Kenyan women, gathered at the local brook to wash their clothes, are stalked by the killer lion who, it turns out, is Elsa’s sire.  One woman looks up and screams, as the lion lunges toward her.  

We do not see the woman attacked.  Instead, we see the rapidly moving water, as a pile of clothing floats by; and then the water flows red.  This was terrifying for me as a child and a testament to the power of suggestion in films, especially those meant for young viewers.

The second most memorable component of “Born Free”, which still resonates, is its score.  The title song, and the heart-rending music by the great John Barry, were everywhere on radio and TV, and were covered by many popular singers and orchestras of the day.  The song from “Born Free” was an indelible part of my life's soundtrack.  It stirs up my memory of this tale of human-animal friendship and survival.  The song and the score were tremendous smash hits, and won the film its two Oscars.

The film played in theaters when audiences were more open to stories about wild creatures.  Animals appeared more frequently in movies than they do now, and stories about nature were regularly on TV, especially live-action shows like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, Jacques Cousteau ‘s oceanography specials, and fictional series like “Daktari”, inspired by another big zoo-hunter movie, Howard Hawks’ “Hatari”, from 1962.  Movie screens also featured a steady diet of Disney nature documentaries for years, which always brought crowds of families.

“Born Free” was, and still is, the most powerful, entertaining and popular of its kind.  I still lose myself in Elsa’s story today, but I also have more perspective on it as a piece of filmmaking.  The film was based on Joy Adamson’s international best-selling book, a narrative with photographs about her odyssey with Elsa the lion. As simple and compelling as the story is, this film must have been a really complicated shoot.  

Credit is due to director James Hill for solving what must have been a series of logistical nightmares, working on a remote location, battling heat and insects, wrangling the animals to get the behaviors necessary to tell the story, and deliver a family-friendly yet powerful finished work.  George Adamson himself acted as advisor to the project.

Playing George and Joy Adamson, Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers were themselves a married couple who appeared in a few films together. Their portrayals were so natural and heartfelt (especially McKenna) that they nearly stole the show from the fictional Elsa!  It’s not easy to incorporate so much of one’s self into a dramatized character based on an actual person.  Both McKenna and Travers triumphed with strong performances, and their characterizations introduced generations to the Adamsons and their important work for wildlife.

These two actors would forever be associated with “Born Free”, and in turn the experience changed their lives.  After “Born Free”, McKenna and Travers became avid animal activists, and eventually created the Born Free Foundation, which sought to advocate for wild creatures and prevent their captivity.  They also created the Zoo Watch, in which they would visit zoos to check on conditions in which wild animals were kept captive.

Although I didn’t know it then, “Born Free” helped change me, too.  Identifying so closely with a cuddly creature who evolved into a magnificent animal, and who would never again be happy with human companionship—in fact, whose instincts might make her dangerous to humans—planted in me the seeds of affection respect for animals  If it worked on me in sentimental ways, it was all for good.

“Born Free” was such a milestone in my early moviegoing life, that today I choose to overlook my feelings of ambiguity about the film’s message of freedom balanced against my love of visiting the zoo.  It’s ironic that a zoo was considered too confining for a creature like Elsa who was more or less domesticated, but “Born Free” had the best intentions at heart, so irony has no place as I watch it today.  

And today especially, zoos like the Phoenix zoo are painstaking in creating the most spacious, natural-feeling environments for the animals in their care.  Captivity, yes.  Confinement, no.

Watching “Born Free” today in a less innocent time (for me anyway), and in a world that is more divided and complicated partly due to the pandemic, I have to consider the very idea of freedom, and of what it means to live free.  Elsa, even when she adjusted to a free life in the wild, had to observe hierarchies and certain rules of behavior just to stay alive.  Whether you abide by the rules of the jungle or, in a modern society, the Rules of the Road, ignoring them could be deadly.

Living with this virus, too, requires adherence to a certain set of rules, whether it be distancing or mask-wearing, or whatever is recommended to avoid catching it. So many have misconstrued these rules as a threat to one’s personal freedom.  But not observing them, like not stopping for a red light, might have lethal consequences.

Animals have more common sense, I think.