Bebe Buell recalls John Travolta's secret audition to play Jim Morrison in 'The Doors': 'He channeled him like nothing I'd ever seen'

It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison in The Doors. While the Oliver Stone-directed rock biopic was critically panned, even the most diehard Doors fans tend to agree that Kilmer absolutely transformed into the Lizard King, delivering a powerhouse performance that transcended the film’s flawed script.

But Kilmer apparently was not the first choice for the role. According to the book Stone: A Biography of Oliver Stone, Stone initially offered the part to Ian Astbury of the Cult, who turned it down. (Astbury later became the lead singer of Doors members Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger's revival group the Doors of the 21st Century, from 2002 until Manzarek's death in 2013.) Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Timothy Hutton, Charlie Sheen, Jason Patric, and Richard Gere were all reportedly considered to play Morrison as well.

But rock muse, recording artist, and writer Bebe Buell, who in the 1980s was managed by the Doors’ second manager, Danny Sugerman, revealed this week on the Totally ‘80s podcast that Sugerman actually had his hopes pinned on another A-list actor.

“Danny was a colorful character, that's for sure,” Buell said of her late manager, who was "passionate" about the famous Doors biography he co-authored, No One Here Gets Out Alive, being adapted for the screen. “He was really, really, really gung-ho on getting that Doors movie made. But believe it or not, his first choice for Jim was not Val Kilmer. It was John Travolta.”

While Travolta had enjoyed huge success in musical movies like Grease and Urban Cowboy, he may not have seemed right to play the ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll shaman; Astbury and other charismatic rockers who expressed interest in the role, namely U2’s Bono and INXS’s Michael Hutchence, were on the surface a much better fit. Sugerman himself initially balked at the Travolta idea, telling the Los Angeles Times in 1990 that he thought Grease producer Allan Carr — who was attached the project in the early '80s before Stone came on board, and obviously had connections to Travolta — would not be "sensitive to the story of the Doors."

However, Buell told Totally ‘80s host and Yahoo Entertainment music editor Lyndsey Parker that a decade before The Doors finally hit the big screen, she witnessed Travolta’s unofficial audition firsthand — “It was a private meeting, and I wasn't even supposed to know that John Travolta was at [Sugerman's] house” — and she insisted that this proposed casting “wasn't as wacky as it sounds.”