In the 1970s, Charlotte Stewart was best known for her role as Walnut Grove schoolteacher, Miss Beadle, on the first four seasons of Little House on the Prairie. But several years before she landed the role on the beloved NBC drama series, Stewart was a California boutique owner living a free-spirited lifestyle.
During her wild days, she had flings with actors Mike Connors, Jon Voight, Richard Dreyfuss, and composer Johnny Mandel, she once told Pop Culture Classics.
Speaking with The Sun in 2024, Stewart, now 84, revealed that she also had a special relationship with late Doors frontman Jim Morrison in the early 1970s, not long before his death.
“We were friends,” Stewart said of the “Light My Fire” singer, who died in 1971. “We were drinking buddies back in the ‘70s.”
“He called me up one day, and he said, ‘I got to get out of town.’ And I said, ‘OK,’” she recalled. “He picked me up, and he didn’t even know where he wanted to go. So, we just drove up Highway One. I took him to San Simeon, the Hearst Castle. We went to Cambria. We spent four days on the road and came back to Los Angeles. He dropped me off, and I never saw him again. Within six months, he was dead.”
“We were best friends with benefits,” she added. “He was a good friend, and I miss him terribly. And I’m sorry he had such a really hard ending.”
Charlotte Stewart Met Jim Morrison at Her Clothing Store
Photo by Estate of Edmund Teske/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
During a previous appearance on Oprah: Where Are They Now?, Stewart revealed how she happened to meet the mysterious rock legend known as the Lizard King.
“I had a clothing store called the Liquid Butterfly,” she said. “One day, I came in and there was Jim Morrison. He was just standing in my store, looking out the window.”
Stewart noted that Morrison was a “quiet guy” off stage, but that they would meet up for long talks. “We used to go down the street, close to where my store was, and sit at a bar and talk… On more than one occasion, I would help him home, either to his or mine,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for romance, I wasn’t looking for a partner. I was just kind of a buddy that he could talk to. Well, I call it a ‘buddy with benefits,’ if you know what I mean.”
She also shared details of the idyllic road trip she took with the singer, recalling that he had a lot of paparazzi following him at the time and simply “wanted to get away.”
“We hopped in his car, and we drove up the coast of California, stopping in little bars and pool halls all the way,” she said. “We went up to Cambria … took the bus up to the Hearst Castle and nobody recognized him at all.”
“We had a very nice time,” she said. “He dropped me off, and I never saw him again. I think I was one of the last people to spend some personal time [with him]. He left soon afterward for Paris and, as you know, he died there.”
Charlotte Stewart Shared a Theory on Jim Morrison’s Mysterious Death
Morrison died on July 3, 1971, at 27 years old. The “Wishful Sinful” singer was found dead in a hotel bathtub by his longtime companion, Pamela Courson. His sudden death, not long after the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin at that same age of 27, remains one of the biggest mysteries in rock and roll.
While his cause of death was listed as heart failure, no autopsy was performed in France. In a 2017 interview with Fox News, Stewart shared her own theory on what had happened to Morrison.
“He had extremely high blood pressure,” she said. “He had rheumatic fever as a child, and he had an enlarged heart. And his face was always beet red. You know, blood pressure red. And I think that’s what probably killed him. He was in the bathtub, probably in hot water. He’d probably been drinking as he always did. And his heart gave out.”
Speaking with Pop Culture Classics, Stewart said she had a feeling Morrison would not live a long life. “He was only 27,” she said. “I didn’t think he was going to live long. He was starting to put on weight. And there were all these incidents during the concerts where he would either fall off the stage or just pass out and not be able to go on. So, when they said, ‘Oh, drug overdose in Paris,’ I don’t think so. I think he died of an old heart.”
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