Adrian Cronauer — the real-life, Air Force DJ who entertained American troops and was loosely portrayed by Robin Williams in the smash movie “Good Morning Vietnam” — died Wednesday at the age of 79 in Troutville, Virginia.
His death was confirmed by Jeff Hunt, a longtime Roanoke radio announcer who hired Cronauer at Roanoke FM station WPVR, The Roanoke Times reported.
A former U.S. Air Force sergeant, Cronauer co-authored the original story for the 1987 film for which Williams was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor.
The movie was “the first film that began to show Americans in Vietnam as they really were instead of a bunch of murderers and rapists and baby-killers and dope addicts and psychotics. That was sorely needed at the time,” Cronauer told The Military Times in 2014.
But the flick took many liberties, particularly with Williams' character becoming pals with a Vietnamese boy who turns out to be a Viet Cong insurgent radical and is kicked out of the service.
“If I did half the things he did in that movie, I’d still be in Leavenworth and not England,” Cronauer told Stars and Stripes in 2004. “No, I was not thrown out of Vietnam. I did not have, as far as I knew, any friends who were Viet Cong.”
The movie also depicted Cronauer as a leftie, when he was actually a registered Republican.
As well, Cronauer’s radio broadcasts were not as frenzied as portrayed by Williams, who begins each of his radio broadcasts shouting, “Goooooood morning Vietnaaaaaam!”
Cronauer also served as a confidential advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2009 and was on the board of directors for the National D-Day Memorial.
He was also a voiceover artist performing in radio and television commercials and authored a textbook on announcing. He appeared in the 1994 movie “Street Fighter,” with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue.
Cornauer said he was stunned by Williams’ death by suicide in 2014.
“There's a British phrase that I've heard that describes it: ‘Gobsmacked.’ It just hit me. The guy was only 63-years-old … He should have had a lot more to do,” he told The Military Times, according to USA Today.
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