Pamela Courson

Pamela Susan Courson (December 22, 1946 – April 25, 1974) was a long-term companion of Jim Morrison, singer of the Doors.

Courson stated she discovered Morrison's body in the bathtub of a Paris apartment in 1971. She died three years after him, in 1974.

Early life and involvement with Morrison

Courson was born in Weed, California. Her father, Columbus "Corky" Courson (1918–2008), had been a Navy bombardier (attaining the rank of Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve) before he became a junior high school principal in Villa Park, California. Her mother, Pearl "Penny" Courson (1923–2014), was a homemaker who did interior design. After she died at age 90 in 2014, her New York Times obituary described her as a regular reader of that newspaper and a "connoisseur of the arts." Courson had one sibling, a sister named Judith, who died in 2018. She attended Orange High School in Orange, California.

It has been rumored that Neil Young wrote the song "Cinnamon Girl" about her, as well as "The Needle and the Damage Done", but both have been denied.

One biography states that Courson and Morrison met at a lesser-known nightclub called the London Fog on the Sunset Strip in 1965, while she was an art student at Los Angeles City College. In his 1998 memoir, Light My Fire: My Life with The Doors, keyboardist Ray Manzarek states that Courson and a friend saw the band during their stint at the London Fog.

Courson's relationship with Morrison was tumultuous with loud arguments and repeated infidelities by both partners. From 1969 to 1971, Courson operated Themis, a fashion boutique that Morrison bought for her with his royalties from the album Strange Days.

Death of Morrison

Courson stated that on July 3, 1971, she awoke to find Morrison dead in the bathtub of their apartment in Paris. The coroner's report listed his cause of death as heart failure, although no autopsy was performed. Under Morrison's will, which stated that he was "an unmarried person", Courson was named his heir, and therefore in line to inherit his entire fortune. Lawsuits against the estate would tie up her quest for inheritance for the next two years.

Death and estate controversy

After Morrison's death, Courson continued to live in Los Angeles. Former Doors employee Danny Sugerman became friendly with her in Los Angeles during this time and later wrote in Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess about an experience of taking quaaludes and snorting heroin with Courson.

On April 25, 1974, Courson died of a heroin overdose on the living room couch at the Los Angeles apartment she shared with two male friends. Like Morrison, she was 27 years old when she died. Her cremated remains were interred in the mausoleum at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California. The plaque reads "Pamela Susan Morrison 1946–1974", even though "Morrison" was never part of Courson's legal name. Several months after her death, her parents inherited her fortune. Jim Morrison's parents later contested the Coursons' executorship of the estate, leading to additional legal battles. In 1979 both parties agreed to divide the earnings from Morrison's estate equally.

Friend Diane Gardner is quoted as saying in the book Break on Through by Riordan and Prochnicky:

Pam was one of the funniest people I ever met. She was beautiful, she looked like the Snow Queen and yet she did things like collect Lugers. She had a vicious sense of humor. She loved travel because she said you never had to think about it. When you were traveling and you were a tourist, you got up and life happened to you. I liked her. She was the most dangerous girl I ever met. After Jim died and we were both just out of our heads we would do things like go to Tijuana and get crazy. We'd check into sleazy hotels and go down to Rosarito Beach and drink everything in sight. One time this guy that was with us yelled some really bad things to La Policia and they came after us. One guy was trying to take the keys to Pam's new VW away, so I hit him over the head with my shoe. And we had to pay off on our MasterCard. We ran it through at a hotel and they actually let us charge our bribe. I don't behave like that normally. Pam had that kind of effect on me.

In popular culture

Courson was portrayed by Meg Ryan in Oliver Stone's 1991 film The Doors.