1. William Inglis Lindon Travers was a British actor, screenwriter, director and animal rights activist.
40 Facts About Bill Travers
1. 2.
Bill Travers was born in Houghton-le-Spring, City of Sunderland, County Durham, England, the son of Florence and William Halton Lindon-Bill Travers, a theatre manager.
3.
Bill Travers enlisted as a private in the British Army at the age of 18, a few months after the outbreak of the Second World War, and was sent to India then under British Raj rule.
4.
Bill Travers was commissioned a second lieutenant in the British Indian Army on 9 July 1942.
5.
Bill Travers was promoted war-substantive lieutenant on 7 January 1943 and to acting major on 20 September 1944.
6.
Bill Travers served in the Long Range Penetration Brigade 4th Battalion 9th Gorkha Rifles in Burma, attached to Orde Wingate's staff, during which he came to know John Masters, his brigade major.
7.
Bill Travers later joined Force 136 Special Operations Executive and was parachuted into Malaya.
8.
Bill Travers was responsible for training and tactical decisions with the main resistance movement, the communist-led Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army.
9.
Bill Travers was one of the first allied operatives to enter the Japanese city of Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb.
10.
Bill Travers wrote about his experience in his diary, registering profound horror at the destruction and loss of life.
11.
On 7 November 1946, Bill Travers was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire "in recognition of gallant and distinguished service whilst engaged in Special Operations in South East Asia".
12.
Bill Travers began working on stage in 1949 appearing in John Van Druten's The Damask Cheek, and a year later made his film debut in Conspirator.
13.
Bill Travers had unbilled parts in Trio and The Wooden Horse.
14.
Bill Travers appeared in Hindle Wakes, The Planter's Wife, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, It Started in Paradise, Mantrap, Street of Shadows, and The Square Ring.
15.
Bill Travers was in "The Heel" for Douglas Fairbanks Presents.
16.
Bill Travers was a supporting player in Counterspy, and appeared in Romeo and Juliet as Benvolio, and in Footsteps in the Fog starring Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons.
17.
Bill Travers's breakthrough came when he was cast in the title role of Geordie, directed by Frank Launder.
18.
Bill Travers followed this as the romantic lead in a remake of The Barretts of Wimpole Street, opposite Jennifer Jones.
19.
Bill Travers briefly returned to Britain to make a comedy, The Smallest Show on Earth, with his second wife Virginia McKenna, whom he had married in 1957.
20.
Bill Travers returned to the UK in March 1957 to attend to divorce proceedings and marry Virginia McKenna after which he went back to America in October, for "A Cook for Mr General" for Kraft Theatre on TV.
21.
Bill Travers tried to get up a war film set in Greenland, The Sledge Patrol, but it does not appear to have been made.
22.
Bill Travers and Launder tried to repeat the success of Geordie with The Bridal Path, but the film was not a success.
23.
Bill Travers then starred in a race car drama for MGM, The Green Helmet, and a comedy with Spike Milligan, Invasion Quartet.
24.
Bill Travers was in a Broadway production of A Cook for Mr General.
25.
Bill Travers starred in a TV adaptation of Lorna Doone.
26.
Bill Travers returned to Hollywood to do some episodes of The Everglades, Rawhide and Espionage.
27.
Bill Travers's most famous film role was that of game warden George Adamson in the highly successful 1966 film Born Free, about which experience the two co-wrote the book On Playing with Lions.
28.
Bill Travers co-starred with McKenna and the experience made him and his wife conscious of the many abuses of wild animals in captivity that had been taken from Africa and other natural environments around the world.
29.
Bill Travers received an offer to play a support role in Duel at Diablo ; during filming he broke a leg and dislocated a shoulder.
30.
Bill Travers played the title role in a British TV version of The Admirable Crichton, alongside his wife, and had a small part in Peter Hall's adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
31.
Bill Travers teamed up with James Hill, the director of Born Free, to make the documentary, The Lions Are Free, which both men directed.
32.
Bill Travers worked as an actor only on Rum Runners with Brigitte Bardot and Lino Ventura.
33.
Bill Travers directed and appeared in a documentary, The Lion at World's End, about Christian the lion, an animal bought in Harrods and then returned to Africa.
34.
Bill Travers was reunited with James Hill on The Belstone Fox and co-wrote a documentary, "The Wild Dogs of Africa", for The World About Us.
35.
Bill Travers later produced "The Baboons of Gombe" for the same show.
36.
Bill Travers appeared in "Tramps and Poachers", an episode of To the Manor Born.
37.
The importance of animal rights led to Bill Travers and his wife becoming involved in the "Zoo Check Campaign" in 1984 that evolved to their establishing the Born Free Foundation in 1991.
38.
Bill Travers spent his last three years travelling around Europe's slum zoos and a TV documentary that he made exposed the appalling suffering of thousands of animals.
39.
Bill Travers died from a coronary thrombosis in his sleep at his home in the village of South Holmwood, near Dorking, Surrey, aged 72.
40.
Bill Travers's widow, Virginia McKenna, carries on his work to help suffering animals, as does their son, Will Travers, who is president of the Born Free Foundation.