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.

In the Northern province of Kenya, British Game Warden George Adamson is forced to kill a man-eating lion and his lioness.

George Adamson served as chief technical advisor on the film and discusses his involvement in his first autobiography, Bwana Game (UK title, 1968), known in the US as A Lifetime with Lions.

[3] According to Ben Mankiewicz, who introduces the film on Turner Classic Movies, the production unit mainly used wild lions.

[citation needed] The making of the film was a life-changing experience for actors Virginia McKenna and her husband Bill Travers, who became animal rights activists and were instrumental in creating the Born Free Foundation.

[5] Vincent Canby waxed enthusiastic about the film, writing in The New York Times, "Almost from the opening shot – a vast expanse of corn-coloured African plain where lions feed on the carcass of a freshly killed zebra – one knows that Joy Adamson's best-selling book Born Free has been entrusted to honest, intelligent filmmakers.

In 1974, a 13-episode American television series was broadcast by NBC, titled Born Free, starring Diana Muldaur and Gary Collins as Joy and George Adamson.

The series was later followed by the 1996 television film Born Free: A New Adventure directed by Tommy Lee Wallace and starring Linda Purl and Chris Noth.

It spawned a TV series in 1998, but none of the episodes aired in the U.S. To Walk with Lions (1999), directed by Carl Schultz, depicts the last years of George Adamson's life as seen through the eyes of his assistant, Tony Fitzjohn.

[16] It explores the story behind the book 'Born Free' about the lives of Joy and George Adamson with the orphaned lion cub Elsa.

[17] This episode, narrated by actor Richard Armitage, looked back at Elsa's life and legacy, and the work done by George Adamson to rehabilitate lions into the wild following the making of the Born Free film.

[18] A slightly shortened version of this episode, this time narrated by the conservationist Chris Morgan, under the title Elsa's Legacy: The Born Free Story was also shown as part of the Nature TV series , released on PBS stations in January 2011.