Joy Adamson
Encyclopedia
Joy Adamson (born Friederike Victoria Gessner) was a naturalist, artist, and author best known for her book, Born Free, which describes her experiences raising a lion cub named Elsa
Elsa the lioness
Elsa the lioness was raised by game warden George Adamson and his wife Joy Adamson in Kenya. Elsa and her two sisters, 'Big One' and 'Lustica', first came under the care of the Adamsons when only a few weeks old. They had become orphaned when George was reluctantly forced to kill their mother...

. Born Free was printed in several languages, and made into an Academy Award-winning movie of the same name.

Early life

Adamson was born to Viktor and Traute Gessner in Troppau
Opava
Opava is a city in the northern Czech Republic on the river Opava, located to the north-west of Ostrava. The historical capital of Czech Silesia, Opava is now in the Moravian-Silesian Region and has a population of 59,843 as of January 1, 2005....

, Silesia
Austrian Silesia
Austrian Silesia , officially the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia was an autonomous region of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Austrian Empire, from 1867 a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary...

, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

 (now Opava
Opava
Opava is a city in the northern Czech Republic on the river Opava, located to the north-west of Ostrava. The historical capital of Czech Silesia, Opava is now in the Moravian-Silesian Region and has a population of 59,843 as of January 1, 2005....

, Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

), the second of three girls. 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

Adamson is best known for her conservation efforts associated with Elsa the Lioness
Elsa the lioness
Elsa the lioness was raised by game warden George Adamson and his wife Joy Adamson in Kenya. Elsa and her two sisters, 'Big One' and 'Lustica', first came under the care of the Adamsons when only a few weeks old. They had become orphaned when George was reluctantly forced to kill their mother...

. In 1956, Adamson's husband, George Adamson
George Adamson
George Adamson , also known as the "Baba ya Simba" , was a British wildlife conservationist and author...

, 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 realized that the lioness was protecting her cubs which were later found nearby. Taking them home, he and Joy raised the cubs. Early on, George attended to their physical needs while Joy and her pet Pati-Pati, a rock hyrax, raised them. Joy named them "Big One", "Lustica" and "Elsa".

After six months, caring for the cubs became increasingly difficult for the Adamsons and their staff. The two larger cubs, Lustica and the Big One, were sent to a zoo in Rotterdam
Diergaarde Blijdorp
Diergaarde Blijdorp is a zoo in the northwestern part of Rotterdam, one of the oldest zoos in the Netherlands...

. The Adamsons kept Elsa. They decided to set her free rather than send her to a zoo, and spent many months training her to hunt and survive on her own. They were successful in the end, and Elsa became the first lioness successfully released back into the wild, the first to have contact after release, and the first known to have cubs. The Adamsons kept their distance from the cubs, getting close enough only to photograph them.

In January 1961, Elsa died from disease resulting from a tick bite. Her three young cubs became a nuisance, killing the livestock of local farmers. The Adamsons, who feared that the farmers might kill the cubs, were able to eventually capture them and transport them to neighboring Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...

 where they were promised a home at a national park. In The Story of Elsa, a compilation of the books about Elsa, Joy Adamson wrote: "My heart was with them wherever they were. But it was also with these two lions here in front of us; and as I watched this beautiful pair, I realized how all the characteristics of our cubs were inherent in them. Indeed, in every lion I saw during our searches I recognized the intrinsic nature of Elsa, Jespah, Gopa and Little Elsa, the spirit of all the magnificent lions in Africa".

Writer and celebrity

Using her own notes and George's journals, Joy wrote Born Free to tell the lions' tale. She submitted it to a number of publishers before it was bought by Harvill Press, part of HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...

. Published in 1960, it became a bestseller, spending thirteen weeks at the top of The New York Times Best Seller list and nearly a year on the chart overall. The success of the book was due to both the captivating story of Elsa, and the dozens of photographs of her. Readers had pictures of many of the events of Elsa's life leading up to her release. Subsequent books were also heavily illustrated.

Born Free received largely favorable reviews from critics. Adamson worked closely with publishers to properly promote the book, which contributed to the Adamsons' new-found international celebrity.

Joy Adamson would spend the rest of her life raising money for wildlife, thanks to the popularity of Born Free. The book was followed by Living Free, which is about Elsa as a mother to her cubs, and Forever Free, which tells of the release of the cubs Jespah, Gopa and Little Elsa. She shared book proceeds with various conservation projects.

Hit film

The 1966 film Born Free, starring husband-and-wife actors Bill Travers
Bill Travers
William Lindon-Travers was an English actor, screenwriter, director and an animal rights activist, known professionally as Bill Travers.-Life and career:...

 and Virginia McKenna
Virginia McKenna
Virginia A. McKenna OBE is a British stage and screen actress, author and wildlife campaigner.-Early career:McKenna trained as an actress at the Central School of Speech and Drama then worked on stage in London's West End theatres before making her motion picture debut in 1952...

, and filmed in the bush over the course of many months, was a worldwide hit. The stars became acquainted with the real Adamsons, and the couples remained friends for life, working for wildlife causes. Travers and McKenna decided to do all of their own scenes with the lions in the film in order to recreate the close relationship that Joy and George Adamson had with Elsa. This was a serious commitment and risk on the actors' part, and one that made the film more realistic. "Born Free", which went on to win two Academy Awards (both for music) is widely considered to be a family classic. Six years later, Susan Hampshire
Susan Hampshire
Susan Hampshire, Lady Kulukundis, OBE is an English actress, best-known for her many television and film roles.-Early life:Susan Hampshire was born in Kensington, London, the youngest of four children. She had two sisters and one brother...

 took over the role of Joy Adamson in Living Free, a film based on the third “Elsa book”, Forever Free. The theme of the film, "Born Free
Born Free (song)
"Born Free" is a popular song with music by John Barry, and lyrics by Don Black. It was written for the 1966 film of the same name and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song....

", which appeared on the film's soundtrack album, was also a popular hit.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the filming of Born Free was that some of the lions used for the film had been freed, similarly to Elsa. This story was told in a documentary produced by Bill Travers, titled The Lions Are Free.

Pippa and Penny

During Elsa's lifetime, Joy and George Adamson needed each other to educate her, but after she died and her cubs were taken in by the park, their interests went in separate directions, as did their lives. While neither divorced nor legally separated, their conflicting interests (George wanted to continue to work with lions and she with cheetahs), made it necessary for them to live apart (though they sometimes spoke of living together again, it never happened). Every year, they got together for Christmas, and they remained on good terms.

While television specials kept the Adamsons' cause in the spotlight, Adamson spent her last ten years traveling the world, giving speeches about the perils faced by wildlife in Africa. A book of her paintings was published. She rehabilitated a cheetah and an African leopard. Pippa the cheetah was raised as a pet and given to Adamson at the age of seven months in hopes that she could also be released. Pippa had four litters before her death. Adamson wrote The Spotted Sphinx and Pippa's Challenge about Pippa and her cheetah family. Later, Adamson reached her goal of many years, when she obtained an African leopard cub. Penny was eight weeks old when a ranger acquaintance of George Adamson found her in 1976. Penny had a litter of two cubs before the publication of Queen of Shaba, Joy Adamson's posthumous and final book.

Murder and legacy

On 3 January 1980, in Shaba National Reserve
Shaba National Reserve
Shaba National Reserve is a protected area in northern Kenya to the east of the Samburu and Buffalo Springs national reserves. Together, the three reserves form a large protected area....

 in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

, Joy Adamson's body was discovered by her assistant, Peter Morson (sometimes reported as Pieter Mawson). He mistakenly assumed that she had been killed by a lion, and this was what was initially reported by the media.

Police investigation found that Adamson's wounds were too sharp and bloodless to have been caused by an animal, and concluded that she had been murdered. Paul Nakware Ekai, a discharged labourer formerly employed by Adamson, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to imprisonment at President Daniel arap Moi
Daniel arap Moi
Daniel Toroitich arap Moi was the President of Kenya from 1978 until 2002.Daniel arap Moi is popularly known to Kenyans as 'Nyayo', a Swahili word for 'footsteps'...

's pleasure. He escaped capital punishment because the judge ruled that he might have been a minor when the crime was committed.

Joy's widower, George Adamson, was murdered nine years later, in 1989, near his camp in Kora National Park
Kora National Park
Kora National Park is located in Coast Province, Kenya. The park covers an area of 1,788 square kilometres. It is located 125 kilometres east of Mount Kenya. The park was initially gazetted as a nature reserve in 1973...

, while rushing to the aid of a tourist who was being attacked by poachers. He is credited with saving the tourist's life.

In addition to Joy's books about big cats, a book of her artwork was published, as was an autobiography entitled The Searching Spirit. George Adamson's second autobiography, My Pride and Joy, was published in 1986.

Personal life

Joy Adamson married three times in the span of ten years. Her first marriage was to a Jewish Austrian, Viktor von Klarwill (Ziebel), who sent her to Africa to find a safe place for the two of them to live out World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Later, she met and married the botanist Peter Bally, who gave her the nickname "Joy". She met her third husband, game warden George Adamson
George Adamson
George Adamson , also known as the "Baba ya Simba" , was a British wildlife conservationist and author...

, while on safari in the early 1940s. They made their home together in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

. Joy Adamson appeared in "The Bargain" and "Death Walks by Night," two second-season episodes of the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 television crime drama The Vise, which were broadcast in 1955.

During her lifetime, Joy created more than 500 paintings and line drawings; many of the plants had never been photographed or accurately drawn in color.

Books by Joy Adamson

  • Born Free: A lioness of two worlds
    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 wilds of Kenya. The movie was produced by Open Road Films Ltd. and Columbia...

    (1960) ISBN 1-56849-551-X
  • Elsa: The Story of a Lioness (1961)
  • Living Free: The story of Elsa and her cubs (1961) ISBN 0-00-637588-X
  • Forever Free: Elsa's Pride (1962) ISBN 0-00-632885-7
  • The Spotted Sphinx (1969) ISBN 0-15-184795-9
  • Pippa: The Cheetah and her Cubs (1970) ISBN 0-15-262125-3
  • Joy Adamson's Africa (1972) ISBN 0-15-146480-4
  • Pippa's Challenge (1972) ISBN 0-15-171980-2
  • Peoples of Kenya (1975) ISBN 0-15-171681-1
  • The Searching Spirit: An Autobiography (1978) ISBN 0-00-216035-8
  • Queen of Shaba: The Story of an African Leopard (1980) ISBN 0-00-272617-3
  • Friends from the Forest (1980) ISBN 0-15-133645-8

Books by George Adamson

  • My Pride and Joy
  • Bwana Game - The Life Story Of George Adamson - Collins@Harvill Press, London, 1968

Books by others

  • Wild Heart: The Story of Joy Adamson, Author of Born Free by Anne E. Neimark

Films

  • Born Free
  • Elsa & Her Cubs - 25 minutes; Benchmark Films Copyright MCMLXXI by Elsa Wild Animal Appeal and Benchmark Films, Inc.
  • Joy Adamson - About the Adamsons - Producer-Benchmark Films, Inc.
  • Joy Adamson's Africa (1977) - 86 minutes
  • The Joy Adamson Story (1980) - Programme featuring interviews with Joy Adamson about her life and work in Austria and in Africa, and her famous lioness Elsa. Director: Dick Thomsett Production Company: BBC

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK