Was Pursued the Last Film seen by Jim Morrison?

He escaped into a movie house. 

[Morrison, The Lords] (1) 

The claim that Robert Mitchum's 'Pursued' was the last film Jim Morrison saw derives from the statement made on the day of his death to the French police by his girlfriend Pamela Courson. This statement was made to the Criminal Investigations Department, meaning the police must have regarded Morrison's death as suspicious. (2) 

 The statement was recorded verbatim by the police minutes. Courson describes the deceased as her "friend": 

 "Last night I had dinner with my friend ... I am not explaining myself properly ... I didn't have dinner last night, my friend went out to a restaurant on his own, probably in the area. When my friend came back from the restaurant, we both went to the cinema to see the film La Vallee de la Peur." (ib.) 

These two sentences are interesting, to say the least. She first states that she and the deceased had dinner together, and then changes that to say instead that they dined separately, or rather that Morrison ate out alone, and she "didn't have dinner". We assume Pamela meant she stayed at home while her "friend" dined in a restaurant without her. This sudden change of an alibi would have sounded suspicious to the police; - did she suddenly change it because she wasn't able to say what restaurant it was, or was she concerned that if the police checked the restaurant it would turn out that she didn't dine with Morrison after all? Being a distinctive redhead someone is likely to have remembered her being there or not. 

But in the next sentence she does give a concrete alibi. In the evening, she and Morrison went to see a movie together. Of course, in a darkened cinema no one is going to recall seeing her and Jim Morrison together. But why does Pam - who spoke no French - give the alternate French title for the film, and not the American title 'Pursued', which word ['pursued'] means the same in French anyway. She would have said "Pursued" and it would have remained 'Pursued' in the transcript. Only a French speaker would have said 'La Vallee de la Peur', as recorded in her statement. The film was not dubbed, but only subtitled. She would have watched it and listened to it in English. The title on the screen was clearly 'Pursued'. 

'Le Vallee de la Peur' is an alternative title, and means 'The Valley of Fear'. Presumably there was another French film called 'Pursued', and so it was released in France by this alternate title. However, the fact remains that Pamela would have gone to see the film as 'Pursued', and at a cinema which specialised in showing American movies. This suggests that some French words were put into her mouth - at the very least - by a French Speaker. It seems the French police were suspicious too, and they checked out the alibi. Contrary to what is usually said, the police did make a proper investigation of Morrison's death. 

However, this use of the alternate French title by a non-French speaker is puzzling. Morrison had hired a French-Canadian girl named Robin Wertle in early June to be his secretary at the apartment. Her duties were to see to the running of the flat, hiring cleaners, etc., to answer and respond to any mail, seek out opportunities for Morrison's films to be shown and to type up Morrison's hand written poetry and catalogue it. This means that she would quickly have become used to Morrison's handwriting. While she has been completely elusive since Morrison's death, she was one of the five mourners at his funeral at Pere Lachaise. She also bore an uncanny resemblance to Pamela Courson. 

[Robin Wertle, top, with Pamela Courson, bottom right, bathing Pam's dog Sage in 1972] 

 Being French-Canadian, Wertle spoke fluent French, but her English speech would have sounded American to French ears. Indeed, the French police regarded her as an American when they described the people at the apartment on the morning of Jim's death. Could she have 'forgotten' how to speak French that day and - for whatever reason - given the statement to the police as Pamela Courson? Essentially impersonating the girlfriend of her employer? 

If this were so, it would explain two things: why 'Pam' said La Vallee de la Peur, and not Pursued, and why the signature on that police statement is not Pamela Courson's, but Jim Morrison's version of Pam's signature. To explain, Morrison often signed checks with both his and Courson's names himself. The signature on 'Pam's' police statement is identical to Morrison's version of it as seen on those cheques. As Morrison's secretary, would Wertle have learnt Morrison's signature and signed for Pam in her absence, copying Morrison's version of it? This is the signature she inscribed on the police statement as 'P Courson'. 

[Comparison of signatures shows conclusively that Pamela Courson didn't sign her police statement following Jim Morrison's death] (3) 

Back to Courson's statement, where she goes on to describe where she and Jim had seen the film: 

"The cinema is beside the Metro Station Le Pelletier, I think it is called Action Lafayette." 

 [Above the Action Lafayette pictured close to the time that Morrison went there] 

[Map shows proximity of the Action Lafayette cinema and 17 rue Beautreillis, the apartment shred by Jim Morrison and Pamela Courson, and where Jim Morrison died on July 3rd 1971] 

In her statement Pamela said that she and Morrison "came back from the cinema around 1:00am". (2)

There are two discrepancies here. When the police checked the ticket stub it did correspond to a viewing of Pursued at the cinema, but it was a ticket for one, and it was for an afternoon show. The Action Lafayette was opened in 1966 by two young film buffs, Jean-Max Causse and Jean-Marie Rodon, who were fresh out of business school. Their concept was to show American movies in a theatre setting for other film-buffs to enjoy. They were still owners of the cinema in 1971, and recalled the police contacting them about Pam's alibi. 

 Film fan and Doors enthusiast Lisa Nesslson spoke to the couple in July 1996: 

"We didn't find out about it until a few days later. The police found a ticket stub in Morrison's pocket and traced it to our cinema," said Jean-Max Causse, adding, "But the cashier that day didn't recognise our illustrious customer. Morrison went to the movies incognito. We didn't realise who had come through our door until the police asked us to match up the numbers on the stub - that's how established that he'd been to an afternoon show and that's how we know exactly which film he saw." (4) 

The implication here is that not only did Morrison go to lunch on his own as Pamela said [after correcting herself], he also - contrary to her statement - went to see the film on his own, and in the afternoon, not in the late evening as Pam stated. 

 She said that they both came back from the cinema and got home at 1:00am By car the journey from the cinema to the apartment on the rue Beautreillis is around 15 minutes, by train maybe slightly more. She doesn't say what means of transport they used, and may have mentioned the metro only as a landmark. Perhaps she meant they stopped off on the way home, but even so, the film must have been something like a 10:30pm showing. 

These two discrepancies do throw some further doubt on her side of the story. 

 Ni paranoia ni insouciance ignorant la mort, 

mais une connaissance delicate et senssuelle de la violence dans un present eternal. 

Not paranoia or beyond grave carelessness, 

but a fine sensuous knowledge of violence in an eternal present. 

[Morrison, from Eye] (5) 

 Why the film 'Pursued'? Jim Morrison had by all accounts, felt 'pursued', particularly since the Miami trial which dominated most of 1970 for him, and left him appealing his conviction when he went to Paris, facing jail time on his return, given that he'd effectively skipped bail by going to Paris, and had something like ten brushes with the law before, and even after Miami. These were all listed on his FBI file, and it is said that his lawyer Max Fink was fully aware of the FBI's sinister 'interest' in his client. 

Morrison was deemed by the American State to be an anti-authority figure, hell bent on causing trouble, stirring up riots and behaving in an obscene manner in public. The 'little game' Morrison had played with the authorities in the hippie sixties had now turned seventies serious after Altamont, with the mysterious deaths of certain counter-culture figures and the Manson murders, all painting the rainbow black. Like Robert Mitchum's character, Jeb, in Pursued, Jim was a marked man. (6) 

Pursued is set in New Mexico, an area that permeates Morrison's poetry. It is the turn of the 20th Century, the era known as the Old West, or the Wild West, which was then drawing to a close. Mitchum's Jeb is actually an orphan, and his family was slaughtered in a feud. We are here reminded of Morrison's childhood memory of coming across a family of slaughtered Indians on the road - also in New Mexico. And while Morrison wasn't adopted, he always carried around an outsiders identity, telling the media at the start of his music career that his family were all dead. 

Morrison had noted the similarities between the American Western movie and the Tragedies of ancient Greek drama, where Fate moves inexorably. In Pursued, Jeb is adopted by a relative of the family who had slaughtered his own family, although at first he has no knowledge of this horror. An elder of that feuding family is hunting Jeb down to kill him, and as they get nearer he begins to realise he is being actively pursued. 

 In typically messy fashion Jeb falls in love with his adoptive sister, played by Teresa Wright. Theirs is a difficult relationship, to say the least, and fraught with obstacles, not least their own love/hate attitudes to each other. No doubt Morrison identified with this in terms of his own on/off partnership with Pamela Courson. 

[Teresa Wright & Robert Mitchum 1947 - Pam Courson & Jim Morrison 1967] 

 There is a startling moment in the movie when Jeb comes across some unmarked graves - those of his family, if he only knew. These graves bear a close similarity to the unmarked grave of Jim Morrison in a photo taken just after the funeral, by Pam Courson. 

Jeb kills his adoptive brother in self defence, and , earns the hatred of his lover, Teresa Wright's character. Despite this falling out, Jeb still pursues her. He is put on trial for the killing, like Morrison in Miami, but is acquitted ... for now. Pursuing Teresa, he talks her into marrying him, although she plans to kill him once they are married. There are echoes here of rumours that Pam Courson killed Morrison i Paris, to stop him leaving her. 

 In a scene very similar to that in Oliver Stone's film, The Doors, where Pam threatens to kill Jim Morrison - but can't go through with it, so too here. Jeb and Teresa fall back into each other's arms, and back in love. 

But Fate will not be thwarted. The posse of the feuding family come to kill Jeb, and after a shoot out [where the posse's call to "come out we know you are in there" is also found in Morrison's so-called Hitler poem], he is put on mock trial [perhaps this is closer to Morrison's Miami trial!]. Found guilty, he is hogtied and about to be hung on a tree. The scene here is very similar to the short promotional film the Doors did for their song Unknown Soldier in 1968, which has Morrison hogtied to a tree in a similar fashion. 

[Mitchum, left, in Pursued: Morrison, right, in the Unknown Soldier] 

These could be just amazing coincidences, or else Morrison had seen the movie Pursued before, and might have seen it as something of an omen that it was playing on July 2nd 1971. Did Morrison know that on that very same day his father - now a Rear Admiral in the US Navy - was giving the keynote speech at the decommissioning of his ship, the Bon Homme Richard, in Washington DC - a ship Jim had visited in 1964? 

NOTES

1. Morrison 1971 p. 19

2. Pamela Susan Courson statement to Police Officer Jacques Manchez of the Criminal Investigations Department. .July 3rd, 1971.  Statement given between 3:40pm and 6:40pm at Arsenal Police Station. in Seymore p 55-7, also plates 4-5.

3. Source for signatures and documents is mildequator.com. This issue was explored in a previous blog post: http://thenietzscheanjimmorrison.blogspot.com/2023/02/in-plain-sight-signature-that-denies.html

4. http://www.filmscouts.com/scripts/room.cfm?name=multimed/jim-mo08

5. Muller 1978 p. 218-9

6. Cf., Milton 2012 passim

BIBLIOGRAHY

The Lords and The New Creatures, Jim Morrison, Touchstone 1971

Une Priere Americaine et Autres Ecrits, Jim Morrison, Bilingual Edition, Herve Muller, Christian Bourgois 1978

The End: The Death of Jim Morrison, Bob Seymore, Onibus 1990

We Want The World: Jim Morrison, The Living Theatre and The FBI, Daveth Milton, Bennion Kearny 2012

FILMOGRAPHY

Pursued, directed by Raoul Walsh, starring Robert Mitchum & Teresa Wright. 1947

The Unknown Soldier, directed by Mark Abramson & Edward Dephoure, starring the Doors, Elektra 1968

The Doors, directed by Oliver Stone, starring Val Kilmer & Meg Ryan, 1991

Thanks to Lilith McGregor for ideas and discussions on this subject.