Airman who inspired ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’ dies at 79

NORFOLK, Va. — Adrian Cronauer, the man whose military radio antics inspired a character played by Robin Williams in the film “Good Morning, Vietnam,” has died. He was 79.

Mary Muse, the wife of his stepson Michael Muse, confirmed Thursday that Cronauer died Wednesday after a long illness. He had lived in Troutville, Virginia.

During his service as a U.S. Air Force sergeant in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966, Cronauer opened his Armed Forces Radio show with the phrase, “Goooooood morning, Vietnam!”

Williams made the refrain famous in the 1987 film, loosely based on Cronauer’s time in Vietnam.

When he went on the air in Saigon, Cronauer said, his purpose was to serve his Cronauer listeners.

The military wanted conservative programming. In the film, Williams quickly drops Perry Como and Lawrence Welk from his 6 a.m. playlist in favor of the Dave Clark Five.

Cronauer said he loved the movie, but he said much of the film was Hollywood make-believe.

“Yes, I did try to make it sound more like a stateside station,” he told The AP in 1988. “Yes, I did have problems with news censorship. Yes, I was in a restaurant shortly before the Viet Cong hit it. And yes, I did start each program by yelling, ‘Good Morning, Vietnam!’”

The rest is what he delicately called “good script crafting.”

“In many ways, I’m a very conservative guy,” he said. “A lifelong, cardcarrying Republican can’t be that much of an antiestablishment type.”

Cronauer was from Pittsburgh. He spent 21 years in television, advertising, teaching and freelancing before going into the legal profession. He went on to handle prisonerofwar issues for the Pentagon.

“I always was a bit of an iconoclast, as Robin (Williams) was in the film,” Cronauer told the AP in 1999. “But I was not anti-military, or anti-establishment. I was anti-stupidity. And you certainly do run into a lot of stupidity in the military.”