UCLA Launches Drive to Restore Ray Manzarek/Jim Morrison Filmwork

LOS ANGELES, CA -- The UCLA Film & Television Archive has announced a crowdfunding campaign seeking to raise $65,000 to restore 1960s film work by Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison, founding members of legendary '60s rock band The Doors.

Before launching the band in Venice, Calif. in 1965, Manzarek and Morrison were aspiring filmmakers at UCLA. Manzarek, who would have turned 80 on Tuesday, attended UCLA from late 1961 to 1965 and graduated with a master's degree in film. Morrison, who died of heart failure in 1971, was a student at the university from 1964 to 1965, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in film.

While Morrison's own film project has been lost to time, the UCLA Film & Television Archive holds original prints of two films directed by Manzarek and two films that involved Morrison as camera or sound person, as well as a fifth film in which Manzarek plays the second lead.

According to UCLA, Manzarek's student work indicates the keyboardist possessed the sort of talent that could have led to a career in film, had he not joined Morrison in forming The Doors in the summer of 1965.

One of the first public appearances of The Doors, in fact, took place at ``Op, Pop & Kicky Flicks,'' a student film event at UCLA's Royce Hall in December 1965. The program included Manzarek's lost silent, eight-minute film, ``Who and Where I Live."

The Ray Manzarek & Jim Morrison Preservation Project, which so far has raised $1,425 toward its goal, ends on March 15. More information is available at https://spark.ucla.edu/project... .

City News Service contributed to this report/Image via Shutterstock