‘SNL’ spoofed me and my column — but 35 years later I’m still here
‘Night’ watch gets Posted
This is “Saturday Night Live’s” 50th anniversary. They peed on me long ago. It was no mazel tov. Since I still have that same Gucci jacket I wore when they urinated on me, maybe that’s a small mazel-tov-let.
My late husband was — like our friend Ronald Reagan — president of USA craft union AGVA, that’s American Guild of Variety Artists. Reagan out west for Screen Actors Guild. Joey Adams on the east. We were for variety performers.
1961 President Kennedy sent Joey with a troupe to Southeast Asia. Entertain. Make them like us. They liked us. But “SNL” wouldn’t know all this.
Their photo hangs in my personal toilet. May it flush forever. The show’s still here. Me, too. Vietnam, too. My rethinking that newly reminds me of those tough times we had.
Saigon’s Tan Son Nhat airport a state of emergency. A grenade hit near our Air France arrival. Nobody thought we would make it. Viet Cong wars were in play. The north, Commies. South, anti-Commies. Armed terror. Guerilla warfare.
Driving past Cua Dong Cho-Moiu, the block of bazaars, our Army escort veered off, waved goodbye — and our troupe was left alone.
Bomb squad on Night 3. Barricades. Americans killed in dark streets. Interpreters rehearsed us. Only sound? Our hearts beating.
Left behind we saw old-fashioned silver-rimmed Ben Franklin eyeglasses. And tortoise shell compacts, handbags.
The Mekong overflows annually. Transport was canoe. No lanes. No streets. Muddy brown water. Benches pushed together to make beds. A bamboo house floated downstream. Grass leaf huts floated alongside.
‘Live’ & limp
Afternoons in Vietnam, we did hospital shows. Arranged by USIS in collaboration with the Vietnamese American Association. Our tour was four months. We were 35 people.
The hospital? Three patients to one bed. A nun outside the adobe church read, in English, “Thank you for caring. And thank America for their help.” Viet Cong patients were cared for — but chained to their beds.
The orphanage. Six hundred children at Quoc-Gia — in a tiny courtyard outside Saigon — standing at attention holding handmade signs in front of Co-Nhi-Vien singing “God Bless America.”
Did I take sick? Yes. Did smartass US reporters trash us? Yes. Did I work alongside Doctors Without Borders? Yes. Did I navigate their infamous 75-mile snake-ridden/poison-ridden/grenade-ridden Cu Chi tunnel? Yes.
But here I am — 64 years later — thanking NY Post editor Steve Lynch for suggesting I do this column . . . And to “SNL’s” once a week producer — whatever his name is — who creates this spotlight with such A-1 four-star adored names as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Steven Seagal.
And whatever he might say about me — I wish him the same.
In keeping with the harmony of this column, there’s the leopard who complained to his keeper: “Every time I look at my wife I see spots in front of my eyes.” The zookeeper replied: “But you’re a leopard, aren’t you?” Said the leopard: “Yes, but my wife is a zebra.”
