Here’s a weird one: weirdo Doors frontman Jim Morrison, native of Florida, the weirdest state in the Union (well, it is!), stars in a promo film for Florida State University. Morrison’s character gets a bummer of a letter informing him that he has been rejected from FSU, and later meets with an administrator who gives him the lowdown. Of course, as one YouTube commenter quips, “when one door closes, The Doors open” (heh). So, fine, Morrison didn’t need Florida State—he lived fast, died young, and left the most famous grave in history.
But as his fans know, the well-read Morrison was no intellectual slouch; he started the Doors while studying film at UCLA, to which he’d transferred from Florida State, where he enrolled in 1962. In addition to getting cast in the promo above, while at FSU Morrison got arrested for a school prank (see his ’63 mugshot at left), made some short films, and did his share of carousing. One fellow student, Gerry McClain, remembers Morrison from his FSU days in an interview with the site American Legends:
He hung around with a bohemian crowd: people who liked to wear pants with holes in them. Jim posed as a model for the art department, and they would all sell blood to the Red Cross to get a few bucks. Once, I saw Jim go around the college coffee shop eating scraps off tables. I felt he–and the others–were living an image–the starving young artist.
But Morrison wasn’t exactly a starving artist. He was, in fact, the son of Rear Admiral George Stephen Morrison, commander of the U.S. Naval forces in the incident that sparked the Vietnam War. Weird, right? Watch the elder Morrison and Jim’s sister Anne in interview remembrances of Jim in the video below.
Related Content:
See Jimi Hendrix’s First TV Appearance, and His Last as a Backing Musician (1965)
A Young Frank Zappa Plays the Bicycle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)
Jimmy Page, 13, Plays Guitar on BBC Talent Show (1957)
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Washington, DC. Follow him @jdmagness
Jim influenced my art my entire life with his macabre and surreal lyrics and poetry. You can see my portrait of the Lizard King I created in memoriam recently on the 40th anniversary of his death. It’s on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/07/celebration-of-lizard-king-jim-morrison.html
Impressive! I love reading news that isn’t anywhere else!
I may know of a person who could be a son of his before he was famous that know one knows about I suppose unless the mother is still alive…interested email me, not a hoax…
Hemingway from a “Moveable Feast” about a beautiful girl who walks into a Parisian cafe…
“I have seen you beauty and you belong to me now…You belong to me and all of Paris belongs to me.”
Jim Morrison,
“My eyes have seen you”….
Coincidence ?
Like it or not he was an a weirdo with NO TALENT AT ALL.So why would anyone romanticize him?I’m not joking,why would they?
Losef,
You obviously never heard any of their music, and you are a loser and a troll. Jim Morrison’s legacy and music will live on forever.