Land Rover commercial with an excellent soundtrack, but a little controversy over how ‘snobby’ Land Rover owners treat the man at the Dry Cleaners.
The TV ad’s soundtrack music is the title song written by composer John Barry, “Born Free” became a pop hit for Matt Monro (who sang the song in the film), for pianist Roger Williams, and for The Hesitations. Andy Williams also covered the song, and released an album of the same name.
The version of the song appears to be a mix version sung by James Darren and possibly clips from the original soundtrack. ‘Born Free,’ and its musical score by John Barry, won numerous awards.
The cinema film ‘Born Free’ is a 1966 British drama starring British actors and wildlife campaigners 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 wilderness of Kenya. The screenplay, written by blacklisted Hollywood writer Lester Cole (under the pseudonym “Gerald L.C. Copley”), was based upon Joy Adamson’s 1960 non-fictional book Born Free.
In 1934, Cole joined the American Communist Party. He became one of the Hollywood Ten, who refused to answer questions before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about their Communist Party membership. Cole was convicted of contempt of Congress, fined $1,000 and sentenced to twelve months confinement at the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Connecticut. He served ten months.
As a result of Cole’s refusal to testify, he was blacklisted. Between 1932 and 1947 Cole wrote more than forty screenplays that were made into motion pictures. After his blacklisting, just three screenplays were made into films, only after friends, and wife Gerald L.C. Copley, Lewis Copley, and J. Redmond Prior, submitted the screenplays under their names. Born Free was his most well-known work.
John Barry – Born Free – Original Soundtrack.