Bill Travers; ‘Born Free’ Star, Animal Conservationist

Bill Travers, who co-starred in the 1965 movie “Born Free” and was so moved by the experience that he devoted much of his later life to animal conservation, has died.

The Born Free Foundation said the actor and animal conservationist was 72 and died in his sleep Tuesday. No cause of death was given.

Travers and his actress wife, Virginia McKenna, played George and Joy Adamson, the couple who taught dozens of lions orphaned or born in captivity to survive in the wild, starting with Joy Adamson’s pet lion cub Elsa.

After the film’s success, Travers and McKenna set up the Born Free Foundation to support animal rights and conservation. Their son, William Travers, 35, is the chief executive of the foundation in Coldharbour, 25 miles south of London.

In 1969, a documentary by Travers and McKenna called “The Lions Are Free,” about the lives of the lions they had turned loose, was shown on U.S. television.

Among Travers’ other film roles was “Wee Gordie” in 1956, in which he played the strongest man in the world, and “Bhowani Junction,” starring Ava Gardner, also in 1956.

The 6-foot, 4-inch actor also was seen in “The Browning Version,” a British-Italian production of “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” and the 1968 version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Their real-life “Born Free” counterparts came to violent ends.

George Adamson, a former game warden, was killed in 1989 by armed bandits at his home on a remote game reserve in Kenya. Joy Adamson, the author of “Born Free,” was killed nine years before in a wage dispute with a servant.