About Chris Noel

Chris Noel is a retired entertainer (actress, radio personality, author) and veterans advocate known for her memorable movie roles and televison appearances, and for broadcasting to American and allied troops in Vietnam on the American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN) and worldwide on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) - a program that became the most listened to radio show in the world.

Chris Noel starred or co-starred in twenty movies with MGM and Paramount, including films with such icons as Elvis Presley, Steve McQueen, Dennis Hopper, and Jackie Gleason.

It was Christmas 1965 when the course and meaning of Chris Noel’s life forever changed. She, Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax, and other celebrities were invited to visit grievously wounded troops at Letterman Army Hospital at the Presidio in San Francisco and at the Naval Medical Center (also known as Balboa Hospital) in San Diego. She stayed cheerful and strong for the double and triple amputees in the gangrene wards, but what she saw and heard there affected her deeply. Chris Noel decided she needed to do more.

“When I left I was so numb. It was like, Dear God, please help me do something for these young people. Please help me.”

Not long afterward, an unforseen opportunity arose. Chris Noel auditioned and was hired to host a new AFRTS radio show. She became the first woman broadcaster on Armed Forces Radio since World War II, thereby putting her Hollywood acting career in the background.

Chris Noel’s hugely popular radio show, A Date with Chris, was recorded in Hollywood. Her cheery yet sultry voice aired weeknights on more than 300 AFRTS radio stations around the world, including AFVN, the military’s radio network in Vietnam, from 1966 to 1971 (over 1,000 shows).

Anyone serving in the armed forces in Southeast Asia or most anywhere in the world knew the name Chris Noel. Still today, she is beloved and fondly remembered by millions of US military personnel who served during that time.

Opening each show with her signature greeting “Hi, Love,” Chris Noel brought the troops a much welcome touch of home. She played the top hits of the day, read from the thousands of moving letters she received from servicemen, and affectionately dedicated the songs they requested.

Chris Noel radiated a “girl next door” charm that connected with each listener in a warm, personal way. Many GIs said her voice gave them hope and helped them cope with the hardships of war. She made them feel loved and not forgotten despite the social unrest and anti-war fervor that led to widespread reports of returning troops being treated with scorn.

The impact A Date with Chris had on troop morale was immense. The Pentagon noticed. In 1966, they asked Chris Noel to visit the troops in Vietnam during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. From 1966-1969, she enthusiastically volunteered (without pay) for what would be the first of eight or more tours to Southeast Asia, entertaining grateful troops with a song, dance, friendly chat, or autographed picture.

Always making it her priority to visit hospitals, she would spend hours on end comforting the sick and wounded with her compassionate smile, a tender hug, and words of encouragement. Chris Noel loved the troops and the troops loved her.

Not satisfied with just performing “in the rear with the gear,” Chris Noel insisted on going to forward operating bases to be with the troops. She bravely helicoptered into combat zones, at times encountered enemy ground fire, mortar, and sniper attacks, and once crash landed (due to her Huey’s hydraulic system failure) in a rice paddy near a suspected Viet Cong village.

Chris Noel’s fresh and heartening voice on the radio countered the demoralizing effects of Hanoi Hannah’s communist propaganda broadcasts. Well aware of the impact Chris Noel’s radio program and personal presence in Vietnam was having on US troop morale, the Viet Cong placed a $10,000 bounty on her life.

Famed AP reporter and war correspondent Hugh A. Mulligan wrote about Chris Noel from Vietnam in early 1967 in a letter to John Charles Daly, which led to Noel’s appearance on Daly’s television program What's My Line?

“This is the hardest working gal I ever saw out here. She's been just about everywhere - out with the line companies, helicoptering all over the place, signing endless photos for the guys, dancing with them, attending their parties, etc. I have yet to see a gal who could walk into a crowded mess hall and put the troops at ease so quickly."

Chris Noel performed in Cu Chi, Vietnam with Bob Hope's USO show and on US Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, like the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga. She also visited our troops stationed in Thailand, Japan, South Korea (DMZ), the Phillipines, and Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Chris Noel still suffers the debilitating effects of Agent Orange and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to her harrowing experiences during the Vietnam War, above all the tragic death of her husband of just eleven months, Green Beret Captain Ty Herrington.

Her Hollywood career never fully recovered after the Vietnam War. The societal trauma of the war fomented an anti-military sentiment that prevailed for many years. Nowhere was that attitude more prevalent than among the Hollywood elite.

Although Chris Noel’s acting career faded, her dedication and devotion to the well-being of our troops never waned and remains unwavering to this day. Service to veterans became her life mission.

“I just think that war is hell, no matter who is fighting or where the wars are. But sometimes I think you have to have war in order to have peace,“ Chris Noel says. “What you really need to know is how important our veterans are when they come back. How they should be treated with dignity, because that’s what they gave to you; their dignity. And they made a vow that they would give up their life for you.”

In 1981, when a group of veterans went on a hunger strike at the Los Angeles Veterans Hospital, President Ronald Reagan asked trusted Chris Noel to act as intermediary, and she helped negotiate an end to the strike.

Chris Noel received the Distinguished Vietnam Veteran award in 1984 from the Veterans Network for her contributions during the war, and she was the 1992 recipient of the VFW Gold Medal of Merit.

In 1993, Chris Noel founded the Vetsville Cease Fire House shelters, which eventually grew to eight locations in Florida. Today one shelter remains in operation in Boynton Beach. The shelter helps disabled, homeless, and hungry veterans by providing emergency residential lodging, food, clothing, and employment opportunities to veterans of the Vietnam, Gulf, and Afghanistan wars. Vetsville has been open every day for over thirty years and has provided nearly 100,000 nights of sanctuary.

In testimony before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs in 2002, Chris Noel told lawmakers, “Veterans by definition are Americans who have fought and served to protect the very freedoms that American society enjoys today. Why, then, is it that so many of them are in dire need of benefits from the society which they served and protected? There are military veterans with the highest military decorations eating out of dumpsters. Why is this allowed to continue?”

In 2011, Chris Noel was interviewed at length on videotape for the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center, created by the United States Congress in 2000 to collect and preserve firsthand remembrances of U.S wartime veterans.

Chris Noel’s dear friend Nancy Sinatra wrote: “There is no way to thank Chris for all she has done for our troops and veterans. Nobody knows how many people she has helped over the years, in the decades since the Vietnam War. But she has never looked for glory or gratitude anyway, so it’s a moot point. Unselfish dedication is such a big part of who she is.”

Today, at age eighty-three and living in her hometown of West Palm Beach, Florida, Chris Noel remains active with Vetsville and is still a champion for veterans with mental and physical disabilities, including those suffering the permanent effects of PTSD and Agent Orange.

BOOKS AND DVD BY CHRIS NOEL

  • Matter of Survival: The “War” Jane Never Saw - Hollywood Actress Working for Pentagon in Vietnam

  • Vietnam and Me (Chris Noel’s personal memoir of the war)

  • Confessions of a Pin-Up Girl: The Hollywood Sex Symbol Who Became a Vietnam Icon

  • A Blonde Bomb Goes to Vietnam (DVD)

INDEX OF ASSOCIATED LINKS