Pamela courson net worth at death

PamelaSusanCourson

Daughter of Columbus Brymer Courson Jr. and Pearl Maria (Schmidt) Courson

[sibling(s) unknown]

Wife of James Douglas Morrison — married [date unknown] [location unknown]

[children unknown]

Profile last modified | Created 22 Jun 2022

This page has been accessed 1,237 times.

Biography

Pamela Susan Courson (December 22, 1946 – April 25, 1974) was a long-term companion recognized by the courts as the common law wife and named as heir 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.

Rock Music Figure. She was the longtime girlfriend and alleged wife of rock singing icon Jim Morrison of the band "The Doors." Born in Weed, California, she met Jim Morrison when she was 19 while an art student at Los Angeles City College. She would be his girlfriend for the next 5 years until his death in 1971. Pamela took the name Morrison later on in their relationship. On July 2, 1971, Jim and Pamela 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, Pamela found Jim dead in their bathroom. Pamela died April 25, 1974, in her Hollywood apartment of a heroin overdose. Despite the fact that her parents were going to have her buried with Jim at Pere-Lachaise cemetery (Paris, France), and the fact that her father listed it as the place of burial on her death certificate, there was too much red tape involved in transporting a body to a foreign country for burial. Her parents had her cremated remains buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California.

Jim Morrison's girlfriend (or common-law wife in the eyes of the courts), Pamela Courson, inherited his entire estate. Jim Morrison's Last Will and Testament. Pamela Courson was his longtime girlfriend and confidante (who was ultimately deemed his common-law spouse), and she was listed as the sole heir to the estate. However, his siblings were named as alternate beneficiaries if she did not live for at least 90 days after Morrison's passing. Mar 28, 2024[1]

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

Main article: Jim Morrison § July 3, 1971: Death 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 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, that 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.

Rock Music Figure.

She was the longtime girlfriend and alleged wife of rock singing icon Jim Morrison of the band "The Doors". Born in Weed, California, she met Jim Morrison when she was 19 while an art student at Los Angeles City College. She would be his girlfriend for the next 5 years until his death in 1971. Pamela took the name Morrison later on in their relationship. On July 2, 1971, Jim and Pamela 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, Pamela found Jim dead in their bathroom. Pamela died April 25, 1974, in her Hollywood apartment of a heroin overdose. Despite the fact that her parents were going to have her buried with Jim at Pere-Lachaise cemetery (Paris, France), and the fact that her father listed it as the place of burial on her death certificate, there was too much red tape involved in transporting a body to a foreign country for burial. Her parents had her cremated remains buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California.

First meeting with Jim Morrison[2]

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, perched 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], but 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 Streets" 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 London while 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. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Marie Christine Taylor

Sources

Connections to Kings: Pamela is 22 degrees from Martin King, 18 degrees from Barbara Ann King, 18 degrees from George King, 19 degrees from Philip King, 21 degrees from Truby King, 20 degrees from Louis XIV de France, 22 degrees from King Charles III Mountbatten-Windsor, 18 degrees from Amos Owens, 21 degrees from Gabrielle Roy, 24 degrees from Richard Seddon, 29 degrees from Pometacom Wampanoag and 36 degrees from Charlemagne Carolingian on our single family tree. Login to see how you relate to 33 million family members.