00:00There's the lore surrounding the 1971 death of Doors frontman Jim Morrison here in Paris.
00:08And that surrounding the 1987 theft of a bust that was sculpted and put up in tribute at his gravesite at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in the east of the French capital.
00:22For years, it's been a tourist destination. Financial police happens upon the missing bust during a raid of an apartment.
00:33Sonange Moujean has more.
00:43Little did Jim Morrison know that his lyrics of Break On Through was heard in this clip.
00:48They'd take on a whole other meeting of a break-in in the night that led to a breakthrough by police.
00:55On May 19th, Paris's anti-fraud department posted on social media that while working on another case, they'd found something out of the ordinary.
01:03A tease that then revealed in the following slide the long-lost sculpted bust from Jim Morrison's grave.
01:10With its nose still broken off and still coated in graffiti from Doors die-hards, the statue has been missing since 1988, when it was stolen from the Paris Père Lachaise Cemetery.
01:22For indeed, people are strange. Some nab things from cemeteries.
01:25It was a mega fan of the Doors who came to Père Lachaise one night, broke off the bust, and then attached it to a moped scooter and sped through the cemetery at the crazy speed of 70 kilometers per hour.
01:39It was completely out of this world.
01:41Sculpted by the Croatian artist Mladan Mikulin, the bust was affixed to the singer's grave on the 10th anniversary of his death, which occurred in Paris on July 3rd, 1971, when the rock star was just 27.
01:57The grave, with and without the bust, has become a beloved tourist stop, a hello-I-love-you place for devoted fans.
02:04Père Lachaise, the world's most visited cemetery, now has added security.
02:09And for flocking fans, the resolved mystery was a light-my-fire moment.
02:14It's incredible, this story of finding it again so many years later.
02:17French officials have not yet announced whether the bust will be returned to Morrison's grave, or whether this is the end of a 37-year-old case.
02:28And for more, let's go to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
02:30Anaïs Grateau is an art historian, head of the Henry Clay Frigg Fine Arts Library at the University of Pittsburgh.
02:36Thank you for being with us here on France 24.
02:40Thanks for having me.
02:41So they find this bust, apparently they also found it in Andy Warhol.
02:45The financial police were looking for, according to newspaper Liberation,
02:49had gone on a raid because the owner of the apartment, or the occupant of this apartment,
02:57had cooked the books for selling his company.
03:01And this is how it was found, it's 37 years later.
03:05Your thoughts on this bust, the story we heard about it being driven away on a moped,
03:10being stolen on a moped, even that is the subject of dispute.
03:15Yeah, and, you know, like the anecdote itself is absolutely exquisite.
03:22So I used to work as a tour guide, and one of my favorite things to do was taking people to see Père Lachaise.
03:29And what I'm thinking, as a former tour guide, is like, what a good anecdote to tell.
03:36And the story of Jim Morrison being buried at Père Lachaise is full of good anecdotes.
03:42So I'm delightful that the bust was found.
03:45But then the art historian side of me also wonders, okay, so what's next now?
03:52So it was mentioned that we don't know if the bust is going to be returned to Père Lachaise.
03:57And it really questions, like, what do we want the grave of Jim Morrison to be?
04:02Do you want it to be, you know, like a beautiful grave, almost pristine, because now, like, it's often really hard to access the grave, because there is fencing.
04:15So do we want something pristine, maybe with the bust put there again?
04:20Or do we want to preserve the ritual in itself?
04:27And so if you want to preserve the ritual in itself, it means allowing people maybe, like, to be close to the grave, to touch it, in extreme cases, steal from it.
04:36So it's a good question to ask ourselves, like, what do we want places dedicated to memory to look like?
04:45Yeah, because when you look at the bust itself, it's still got all this graffiti on it.
04:48And like you say, the site's been cleaned up.
04:51I can remember in years past, people would leave cigarettes on Jim Morrison's grave as a sign of respect for him.
04:58So it harks back to a time of counterculture, shall we say, if not drug culture.
05:05Exactly.
05:06So I remember, actually, the very first time I saw it.
05:09So at the time, I had no idea who Jim Morrison was.
05:12And my dad had to tell me.
05:15And it was in the, I think, early 90s.
05:18So the bust was already missing.
05:20And again, I didn't know who Jim Morrison was at the time.
05:23And what I remember, though, is being very impressed, almost a little scared, because there was a group of people around the grave, some of them listening to music, other smoking cigarettes and other substances while sitting on the grave, drinking whiskey out of the bottle.
05:47So it was definitely something I will always remember.
05:51And then the first time I went back as an adult, years and years later, I was really, I was very excited.
05:59I really wanted to, like, live this moment again.
06:03And when I arrived, it was so shocking to me to see it, like, pristine, cleaned up.
06:09And people are still, you know, like, leaving little notes, leaving photos, or, like, doing graffitis on the nearby graves, which is another issue, or on the trees.
06:21But it's definitely a very different place now.
06:24Sign of the times.
06:25It's been cleaned up.
06:26And Anaïs Grateau, Florence Villeminot, and Ginny Gadula for France 24, devoted six months ago, an entire show to the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
06:35Turns out Jim Morrison's not only the famous resident of Paris's most famous cemetery.
06:43Let's take a look.
06:45Père Lachaise is a secular cemetery and the final resting place of many of France's cultural elite, from Marcel Marceau to Molière.
06:53Composer Frédéric Chopin, artist Gertrude Stein, and dancer Isadora Duncan are among the many international artists buried here as well.
07:03Many tombs offer clues as to what their owners did while living.
07:08Author Honoré de Balzacs features a book and a plume.
07:12Painter Jericho has an artist's palette.
07:15And singer Alain Bachung, part of a vinyl record.
07:18His tomb is covered with kisses, as was that of playwright Oscar Wilde, before being protected behind glass.
07:26One of the most popular stars at Père Lachaise is Jim Morrison, the frontman for The Doors.
07:32His fans used to leave graffiti and beer bottles.
07:36Now they fill a nearby tree with chewing gum.
07:39Antoine Parmentier brought the potato to France in the 18th century, and his grave is covered with spuds.
07:45But perhaps the cemetery's strangest tradition is linked to a 19th century journalist named Victor Noir.
07:53A life-size bronze statue of the moment he was assassinated marks his grave, with a very noticeable bulge in his trousers.
08:01Legend has it, leaving a flower in his hat and rubbing the protrusion will increase fertility and greatly improve your sex life.
08:10So, Anaïs Grateau, there's sex, drugs, and rock and roll at the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
08:18Oh, yeah.
08:19I mean, that's why it makes it such a wonderful story.
08:21And, yeah, the place, Père Lachaise, is, sure, it is a cemetery, but it's also, to me, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world.
08:34It's an amazing green space in Paris, and it's an open-air museum.
08:40And it's also, like, a place full of, like, thousands and thousands of stories.
08:47If you're an animal lover, it's also, like, the best place in Paris to see foxes, like, going around.
08:54So, there is only a good thing there.
08:57Is it like you just described it, because it's this green space with these beautiful sculptures?
09:03Or is there, for tourists, a fascination with the dead?
09:09So, there is definitely a fascination for the dead.
09:12And, you know, like, the idea that a lot of people going to Père Lachaise really want to see celebrities, which I, dead celebrities, which I completely get.
09:22And, but then, for a lot of people, there is this idea to go to a space that's beautiful, that's peaceful, thousands of trees everywhere.
09:35And, you know, you don't have, if you want to see beautiful French sculpture, especially from the 19th century, you don't need to buy a ticket to go to a museum.
09:43You can just, like, wander through this nice little cobblestone streets, and art is all around you.
09:49Is there an equivalent in other major Western capitals to the Père Lachaise?
09:55So, Père Lachaise is really, when it was created in the early 19th century, it was really one of its kind.
10:01It's really, like, the first cemetery in the modern term, meaning that the space is designed for the dead, but also for the living.
10:11And so, a lot of visitors in Paris are going to be inspired by what they see.
10:15And actually, even where I live now, in the U.S., we do have cemeteries inspired by Père Lachaise.
10:23We call this trend the rural cemetery.
10:27And where I am, in Pittsburgh, of all places, we do have one of the most beautiful ones in the entire U.S.
10:34But this being said, it's rather unusual.
10:37One final question, Anaïs Grateau, what's your religion?
10:41Should that bust of Jim Morrison return to the Père Lachaise or not?
10:45So, I don't have any good answer for you.
10:50I can tell you, though, that the fence around the Oscar Wilde sculpture, sure, preserves the sculpture.
10:58But I think there is something very romantic and exciting in the ritual that people create with the artworks they can interact with.
11:08And same thing with public art.
11:09You know, if you want your art to be outside and be interacted with, at one point, you have to roll the dice and see what happens.
11:17All right, Anaïs Grateau, many thanks for being with us from Pittsburgh, the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris' 20th arrondissement.
11:26Stay with us.
11:27We're going to go see the seventh art in a moment.
11:30We're going to Cannes.
11:32Eve Jackson has the latest from the world's most famous film festival.
