Pamela Courson

Pamela Susan Courson was born December 22, 1946 in Weed California. She was daughter of Columbus "Corky" Brimer Courson and Pearl "Penny" Courson. She had an elder sister, Judy. In the book "Angels Dance and Angels die" by Patricia Butler it says: "Kindergarten, the first day of school at Cambridge Elementary in Orange, California. [...] One little girl with carrot red hair and freckles was running away from the door where the teacher stood, but she didn't escape. She fell down and scraped her knee. It started to bleed, but she didn't cry. She kind of yelled, no tears, just bellowed. That little girl was Pamela Courson". This is Charlene Estes Enzler's written account of her first day of kindergarten. By the time Pam reached high school in 1960, she had no close friends. Fashion seemed to he a big part of Pam's life. Preach Lyrela recalls: "Pamela, at a social event - she would stop the party! People would just look at her because she was wearing the type of clothing that nobody else would dare to. She was always two or three years ahead of what was coming out in Orange County. She was very white and she wore stark white makeup, with the sorrowful stress on the eyes. She certainly had a mind of her own and was very different." Annette Burden liked Pam for the very fact she wasn't a typical teen: "Everyone else I knew was just Orange County, run-of-the-mill people, but I thought Pamela was absolutely great! She was a wild one and just had a wonderful sense of style and adventure, with this spark that was so exciting and fun. I thought she was really smart, but maybe other people didn't because she had that kind of mysterious thing about her. But I knew she was smart because she was so funny, her humor was so wry. Charlene Enzler remembers Pam in high school (ca.1962): "We all wore pastels and plaids, with full skirts and starched petticoats, but suddenly in our junior year, here was Pamela dressed all in black, her once-red hair dyed jet black as well." While beatniks may have been prowling New York's East Village for years by that time, they hadn't yet made it to Orange County. Pamela Courson was their first. In 1963 Charlene saw Pam for the last time and she realized Pam was different from the most of the kids in Orange, but was also quite nice. Pam was wearing her beatnik outfit and her hair (by this time back to her natural color) was worn long and parted straight down the middle "like a hippie". Pam left Orange High School in her junior year and transferred out of the district to Capistrano Union High School about twenty miles south of Orange. In any event, Jim Morrison called Pam his "cosmic mate" and dedicated his self-published books of poetry to her, as well as songs such as "Love Street". Although they were deeply in love, their relationship was tumultuous and they also fought and abused each other. She was the one and only woman who could and would stand up to Jim, for she could dish it out to him as well as he could to her. They both had flings on the side with other people but still they came back to each other in the end. Although they never married, Pam took the name Morrison later on in their relationship. Pam arrived in Los Angeles in 1966 when she was 19 and she met Mirandi Babitz, who became and important role model and a friend. According to Ray Manzarek, Pam met the Doors at the Sunset Strip club The London Fog early 1966: "Pam walked into the Fog and john Densmore certainly put the make on her and for the next week or so continued to put the make on her. I don't know what happened with that; I'm certain he would have loved to consummate the relationship, though I don't think they ever did. Whithin about one or two-week period Jim and Pam had looked into each other's eyes and realized that it wasn't going to be John Densmore at all, it was going to be Jim and Pam." The same striking looks that had made Pam an outcast in Orange served her well in Los Angeles. Ray Manzarek remembers Pam bringing a hot rod magazine into the London Fog one day shortly after she and Jim had started seeing each other. "She'd been coming to the club on sort of a relatively frequent basis, and the relationship was blossoming, and she brought a magazine in and was rather proud to show everybody that she was indeed on the cover of a magazine. She was a babe, a hot babe on a red car. As I recall she had on a two-piece bathing suit. It didn't do Pam justice, that's for sure. Didn't capture the sweetness of her." Mirandi recalls the meeting of Pam in the fall of 1966. "Pam and I were both taking art classes at Los Angeles City College. We were the two obviously hippie girls in this class - I had long straight brown hair with bangs and she had long straight red hair with bangs. She was real cute, a darling little thing. so we started sitting together and talking to each other and we became friends." The photographer Paul Ferrara remembers Pam as having "a fairy-tale quality, she had that persona. I think that's what Jim liked about her. she was like one of those people who's so blessed to begin with, whether it's beauty or whatever inside her, I think they're impervious and nothing really hurts them. they kind of walk around with a glowing shield. Pam was one of those." In early 1967, when The Doors returned from New York, Jim and Pam decided to take the next logical step in their relationship by moving together.The couple moved into one of three small apartments in a house on Rothdell Trail, perced on a hillside just adobe the Country Store. A number of other stars of the music scene lived in the neighborhood as well, such as David Crosby, John and Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliot and Frank Zappa. There was a feeling of community and creativity that flowed through the area. Pam testified, in writing: "Jim and I had discussed marriage on several occasions before this trip [Colorado tour, 1967], bu felt, as did his managers, that the attendant publicity to a publicly registered marriage would have a detrimental effect upon the image they were trying to develop on him". On Wednesday, June 26, 1968, Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson went to Los Angeles City Hall and took out what was rumored to be their second marriage license, though the first one, said to have been picked up in Mexico shortly after the couple first met, no one remembers ever actually seeing. But any thoughts of a June wedding expired along with the marriage license, which was allowed to languish and die, unused. That year, Pam met Christopher Jones, an actor who had lots of similarities with Jim Morrison and had just starred in the youth-oriented film "Wild in the Strets" and they dated for a short time during June and July 1968. When The Doors went to tour Europe Pam came along, choosing mostly to stay in Londonwhile the band toured. Jim and Pam seemed content enough together there. Ray was impressed by the domestic bliss the couple seemed to have fallen into at their furnished flat on London's Eton Square. "We visited them before we left London," says Manzarek, speaking of himself and his wife, Dorothy. "Jim and Pam made us a wonderful breakfast, a full English breakfast [...] It was the most domestic I'd ever seen them. And I thought, This is going to work out! This could work out! This is good!" But it wasn't good for long. Back in the States, Jim began rehearsals for the group's new album The Soft Parade, and Pam once again began seeing Christopher Jones, who went to London with her for the filming of Looking glass with Anthony Hopkins. they stayed at the London Hilton and for weeks everything was good until Christopher Jones wrote a letter to his ex-wife and a furious Pam left him. By November the Doors embarked a tour in the States and Pam hadn't come home yet. Without telling anyone where he was going, Jim went to London to get Pam back. When he located her, the couple reconciled on at least a provisional basis. In 1971, following the recording of L.A. Woman, Jim decided to take some time off and moved to Paris with Pam, in March. He had visited the city the previous summer and seemed content to write and explore the place. They took up residence in an apartment at 17 rue Beautreillis. Once in Paris, Morrison gained a great deal of weight and shaved off his beard. He admired the city's architecture and would go for long walks through the city. Once there, Pam encouraged him to write poetry. Paris was proving to be good for Jim, and in matter of weeks his physical appearance reflected that benefit. He and Pam were living without pressures, without schedules, traveling anywhere they liked, coming back only when it pleased them to do so. Later, remembering an excursion from Paris to Morocco, Pam said: "I woke up one morning and saw this handsome man by the pool, talking to two young American girls. I fell instantly in love with him. Then I realized it was Jim. I hadn't recognized him. He had got up early and shaved his beard, and he was so lean from losing so much weight, he seemed a new man. It was so nice to fall in love again with the man I was already in love with." Jim had also made the first tentative steps towards bridging the chasm that had so long existed between him and his parents. Alain Ronay, Jim's French-born friend from UCLA, stayed with Jim and Pam in Paris for a few weeks and remembers an evening Jim spent recounting affectionate, funny stories about his father. Pam used to call the Morrisons to let them know that she and Jim were looking forward to seeing them as soon as they got back to the States. For the first time, Jim began talking about having children. Pam loved to travel so while in Paris they went to Spain, Corsica and they planned to go to London and Switzerland. Sadly the excursion to London was cut short when Jim's asthma once again flared up. On July 2, 1971 Jim and Pam went to see a movie. After the movie, they returned to their apartment in Paris. Jim went to bed and awoke sometime later coughing and complaining of chest pains. He then decided to take a bath. At approximately 5:00 a.m. on July 3, 1971, Pam found Jim dead in their bathroom. Per the stipulation in his will, which stated that he was "an unmarried person", Courson inherited his entire fortune, yet lawsuits against the estate would tie up her quest for inheritance for the next two years. After Pamela received her share of Morrison's royalties, she never renewed contact with the remaining Doors members. After Jim's passing, Pam returned to the States and went to live with her friend publicist Diane Gardiner who kept Pam out of the public eyes with the help of the journalist Ellen Sander. Ellen remembers Pam: "She had a very lyrical, high-pitched voice; she was pretty, she was sweet - I never heard her say any unkind word about anybody, which impressed me. sweet-needy. That's my description of her. She was sweet and needy." Pam told Ellen, who was seven months pregnant: "I wish we'd had a baby. I wish I was pregnant too". Ellen recalls: "She was devastated about what had happened and what was going to happen to her." Pam stayed with Ellen for weeks at her home in Sausalito, but then she moved with Diane Gardiner at Muir Woods and with Sage as well, the golden retriever she had shared with Jim and she usually visited her old friend January Jensen who lived near by. She stayed there over a year. January Jensen recalls: "Pam once told me "You know, I just have no desire to live without Jim; I can't live without him" and I said "C'mon now!" and I gave her a big hug, I knew what she was feeling". As a twenty-four-year-old in Paris, Pam had held the world in her hands, facing an ever brightening future with the man she loved. At twenty-five, she was back in California, alone, left with nothing but a dry handful of torturous memories and half live dreams. And regrets, so many regrets. Randy Ralston was a twenty-three year old film student attending at UCLA who met Pam at Cafe Figaro in Beverly Hills. Randy Ralson Recalls: "As soon as we [Randy and his friend George] sat down at our table, I noticed a girl sitting alone, giving me some eye dalliance. So I immediately got up and went over and introduced myself and said, "would you like to join us?" She was the slender, attractive young woman with her vivid red hair cut just above her shoulders. Pam told them she had some films Jim did in their trips to Europe but she hadn't a projector, so Randy - with the projector in his hand- took Pam at her house. He recalls: "She had a lovely house, a big Spanish-style place. Not only is she beautiful, but a rich girl to boot." They spent long time watching the Super 8 films again and again and Pam invited Randy to stay all night at her home. The next morning seemed idyllic to Randy: "We woke up in the morning and she fixed breakfast. She fixed bacon and eggs and squeezed orange juice, and we sat and fed the birds outside the window." That day Pam went to live with Randy. "We had great time, we cooked, we sat in the backyard. We would eat gourmet food, we would go to the movies, we would walk Sage in the park. I like to do yoga, and she would encourage me to keep up my routine of morning and evening meditation, and going to play tennis and stuff like that. It was pretty idyllic." they spent great time together until one day they heard a song by The doors on the radio, then Pam got depressed and after that, Pam's mood would brighten temporarily, but then she would sink into depression once again. Randy Ralston didn't realized Pam was Jim Morrison's widow so he didn't understand her, but he got tired of her changing moods and they split up. Pam left home and went to live in an apartment she found on Sycamore. Pam call him and she asked him if he wanted to go with her to a concert at the Palladium. Randy Ralston went with Diane Gardiner to pick up Pam. Randy recalls: "She was all dressed up and looked unbelievably gorgeous. It was bizarre. Diane would be whispering in my ear as people came up to pay homage to Pamela, the rock and roll princess. She really wanted me to know who I'd thrown out of my house." Little by little Randy met again with Pam to see his and her films, to listen to the music, to parties... At one point Randy and Pam went to Las Vegas with an other couple and they talked about getting married: "We always were really very enamored of each other, but I don't think anybody could fill the boots of Jim Morrison. I don't think there was any guy who could do that in her life for her." In December 1973 Randy and Pam were preparing things to make a camping trip, they were very happy until Pam talked about her family. She had made a trip to Utah to meet her sister Judy and she had told to her parents bad things about Pam, Pam felt so hurt and she decides not to spent Christmas with her family, Randy tried to convince Pam to go with her family but she had made the decision of staying with him. Pam turned twenty-seven that month. On April 25, 1974, Pam died of a heroin overdose at the Los Angeles apartment she shared with two male friends. She was twenty-seven, the same age at which Jim Morrison died. Her parents intended that she be buried next to Morrison at Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, and listed this location as the place of burial on her death certificate, but due to legal complications with transporting the body to France, her parents had her remains buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California, under the name "Pamela Susan Morrison". After her death, her parents Columbus and Penny inherited Morrison's entire fortune, but their executor ship of the estate was later contested by Morrison's parents, George and Clara Morrison. In her funeral, The Doors told that nobody wore black clothes. Ray Manzarek played some songs that Jim composed thinking about Pam such as "Orange Country Girl". Nobody commented any thing related to Jim or Pam's life and death, they just remain there, in silence.