Christian was a
lion originally purchased by
Australians John Rendall and Anthony
"Ace" Bourke from Harrods
department
store of London
in 1969 and
ultimately reintroduced to the African wild
by conservationist George
Adamson. One year after George Adamson released
Christian to the wild, his former owners decided to go looking for
him to see whether Christian would remember them. Surprisingly, he
did, and with him were two lionesses who accepted the men as
well.
Early years
Christian
was originally acquired by Harrods from the now-defunct zoo park in Ilfracombe
. Rendall would later recall that the
department store was eager to sell the cub, which had escaped from
his cage one night and destroyed the merchandise in the carpet
department. Rendall and Bourke purchased Christian for 250
guineas.
Rendall and Bourke, along with their friends Jennifer Mary Taylor
and Unity Jones, cared for the lion where they lived in London
until he was a year old. As he got larger, the men moved Christian
to their furniture store – coincidentally named Sophistocat – where
living quarters in the basement were set aside for him. Rendall and
Bourke obtained permission from a local vicar to exercise Christian
at a church graveyard, and the men also took the lion on day trips
to the seaside.
Christian's growing size and the increasing cost of his care led
Rendall and Bourke to understand they could not keep him in London.
When
Bill Travers and
Virginia McKenna, stars of the film
Born Free, visited Rendall
and Bourke's furniture store and met Christian, they suggested that
Bourke and Rendall ask the assistance of
George Adamson.
Adamson, a Kenyan
conservationist, who together with his wife
Joy raised and released Elsa the Lioness, agreed to reintegrate
Christian into the wild at his compound in the Kora National
Reserve
. Virginia McKenna writes about the
experience in her memoir
The Life in My Years, published
March 2009.
Adamson introduced Christian to an older male lion, "Boy", who had
been used in the movie
Born Free and who also featured
prominently in the documentary film
The Lions Are Free,
and subsequently to a female cub Katania in order to form the
nucleus of a new
pride. The
pride suffered many setbacks: Katania was possibly devoured by
crocodiles at a watering hole; another female was killed by wild
lions; and Boy was severely injured, afterwards losing his ability
to socialize with other lions and humans, and was shot by Adamson
after fatally wounding an assistant. These events left Christian as
the sole surviving member of the original pride.
Over the course of a year, as George Adamson continued his work,
the pride established itself in the region around Kora, with
Christian as the head of the pride started by Boy.
Reunions
1972
When Rendall and Bourke were informed by Adamson of Christian's
successful reintroduction to the wild (reported in some newspaper
articles to be in 1971, and by George Adamson to be 1972,) they
traveled to Kenya to visit Christian and were filmed in the
documentary
Christian, The Lion at World's End (released
in the U.S. as
Christian the Lion). According to the
documentary, Adamson advised Rendall and Bourke that Christian
might not remember them. The film shows the lion at first
cautiously approach and then quickly leap playfully onto the two
men, standing on his hind legs and wrapping his front legs around
their shoulders, nuzzling their faces. The documentary also shows
the female lions, Mona and Lisa, and a foster cub named
Supercub welcoming the two men.
1973
Rendall details a final, largely unfilmed reunion that occurred
(reported in some newspaper articles to have been in 1974, and by
George Adamson to have been in 1973). By this time Christian was
successfully defending his own pride, had cubs of his own and was
about twice the size he was in the earlier reunion video. Adamson
advised Rendall that it would most likely be a wasted trip as he
had not seen Christian's pride for nine months. However, when he
reached Kora, Christian and his pride had returned to Adamson's
compound the day before their arrival.
Rendall describes the visit he and George Adamson made:
The second reunion lasted until the next morning. According to
Rendall that was the last anyone saw of Christian.
George Adamson counted the days from the late spring 1973 final
reunion. He notes in his book
My Pride And Joy that after
97 days, he stopped counting.
Viral video and planned film
A
viral video of the 1972 reunion,
edited from the documentary, was first posted on a fan web site in
2002. From there it was picked up by a MySpace user and then picked
up from MySpace and posted on
YouTube where
it became a worldwide sensation, more than 30 years after the
event. As of July 2009, several versions of the video have been
viewed millions of times on YouTube, the original one garnering
over 12 million. Various news sources have since tracked down
Rendall and Bourke for their current perspective on the events
surrounding their life with Christian.
In September 2008,
Sony Pictures
announced that it was interested in obtaining the rights to the
story of Christian’s life for the purpose of making a feature
film.
References
- Bourke has been erroneously cited in various sources as
Berg
- Christian: The Lion at the End of the World,
documentary film
- Adamson, George. My Pride and Joy, caption to hugging
reunion picture, page 224
- Adamson, My Pride and Joy, chapter 12 (1971-1973),
page 231
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