Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus: Good Morning, Vietnam

In 1965, United States Air Force Sergeant Adrian Cronauer transferred from Crete to Vietnam, taking a post at Armed Forces Radio. While in Saigon, he hosted a popular morning show, introduced every day at 6 AM with the greeting, “Good morning, Vietnam!” At one point, a restaurant he’d just left was hit by a terrorist bomb. Cronauer attempted to report this on air and got in trouble with his superiors. His tour of duty ended in 1966. These are facts. Everything else in Good Morning, Vietnam, the movie, maybe not so much.

After he returned home, Cronauer went from town to town, working at different radio stations up and down the dial. In the late 1970s, when the sitcoms M*A*S*H and WKRP In Cincinnati were at their peak, he struck upon the idea of turning his own Vietnam experiences into a TV show. But at the time, Vietnam was still considered a taboo subject, especially on network television and most especially as the setting for a comedy. The sitcom pitch went nowhere.