Mamie Van Doren - Cont.

Modamag.com: And once two of you were gone Hollywood said this is as good of a time to end it. Mamie: Yeah. I was having so much grief over Vietnam. I would see things about all these pilots, and cages and devastation and Hollywood parroted that we shouldn’t be over there, we shouldn’t be doing this. Well maybe we shouldn’t, but we’ve got to support them. I put myself out when I’d go on TV and I’d say "we’re over there, let’s support them." They would get pissed off at me.

Modamag.com: They as in Hollywood. Mamie: Yeah. I couldn’t get jobs because of it. Modamag.com: Because you supported our troops. Mamie: Exactly. I wrote a letter to President Nixon. I told him I had been asked to go over there. He wrote me back, a very nice letter, which I still have today.

Modamag.com: Why did you not travel with the U.S.O.?

Mamie: Because they wouldn’t go where I thought we needed to go. They wouldn’t go any place that they didn’t think was really secure.

Modamag.com: Let me read to you an excerpt from your Vietnam Diary.

"My thoughts are back home. I have been here only a few weeks, but I am very, very homesick for my son, Perry, and my mother and father. They did not want me to come here and risk my life. And they could not understand why I insisted. I had felt that I could come to Vietnam and end my life in a blaze of glory. Now I marveled at the stupidity of my suicide mission. What was I trying to prove?"

Modamag.com: Did you really go to Vietnam on a suicide mission?

Mamie: Yes.

Modamag.com: Can I ask why?

Mamie: I can’t talk. I just can’t talk. It was a terrible time in my life. I just wanted to disappear I guess. Thinking about it now it’s so stupid. But at the time I didn’t know which way to go. I had my son, I knew that. I took out an insurance policy for him. So he was well taken care of, and my mom and dad.

Modamag.com: Sometime after that entry you took an opportunity to ride in an Army Cobra helicopter. Years later you would go on to write about your experience that night and the (then) unrealized or revelation it brought about in your life. Let me read… "I did not have an answer that night for what it was I had to prove. It would be years before I realized that the ride into the night in the Cobra with Bo was really affirmation: Show me that I am chosen. I suddenly realize that I want to live. Show me that I will." "I came to Vietnam wanting to die. But I had seen enough death. Young men were taking my place in coffins, unwillingly. Now, what had begun for me as a suicide mission, would be a desperate struggle to survive."

Modamag.com: Again, if you will Ms. Van Doren, your thoughts?

Mamie: Well, my thoughts are that I am a very lucky women to be here today. And there must have been a reason for that. I’ve tried to figure out what the reason was, and I guess it was to carry on for the other two. That’s what I thought.

Modamag.com: To carry on for Marilyn and for Jayne?

Mamie: Yeah. And to pave the way for all the other gals who are now making their way.

Modamag.com: The night that you did this show out in the field and were offered the ride in the Cobra helicopter, as you and I have talked about, it would be years later before you realized that this ride was really an affirmation that you wanted to live.

Mamie: It was a moment of truth.

Modamag.com: While entertaining the troops in Vietnam you did two shows a day, and in between shows you took extra steps like taking time to visit the wounded servicemen in the hospitals, instead of resting up. You wrote: "There is no way to be prepared for viewing the results of war. Nothing in the experience of the average person offers a hint about the various horrors that can be wrought on the human body by explosives and howling bits of metal. When confronted by the reality of battlefield injuries, the mind tries to reject what the eyes see."

Modamag.com: Your first visit to a field hospital was pretty earth shaking wasn’t it?

Mamie: I had visited numerous hospitals, even during the Korean War. There was a lot of frostbite, because it was could in Korea. This was just the opposite, it was hot and muggy and jungle rot and stuff like that. They have different wards. When you can smell the gangrene it really makes you want to puke. It’s really hard on you. The worst was the burn ward. I had never experienced that one. A nurse warned me it wasn’t a pleasant sight. My hairdresser told me I shouldn’t go. I went in to this room where the burn victims were. This one guy was completely burned. He had been in a tank or something. The whole body was burned except for around his eyes. He could see. The smell of the flesh was so bad. There was a basin with water in it… it was just so incredible. The room was dark. The shades had been pulled down. You couldn’t see but the whites of his eyes. I remember bending over, telling him I loved him. I think I even kissed him on his bandages. His eyes rolled around, it was just incredible. It was something I’ll never forget. I don’t know whatever became of him. They were so young to die. I got so sick I had to leave.

Modamag.com: But you went back.

Mamie: I went back to the other ones. I got enough, I don’t know where it came from, but I got enough whatever you call it, inside me. I asked the nurse, "My God how do you do this everyday?" The nurses were like angels.

Modamag.com: In another chapter you wrote:

"My 1968 tour also included visits to Okinawa, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tokyo, and Bangkok. I played dates in nightclubs as well as service clubs. I became intimately acquainted with the Asia. But I told myself that for all its beauty and fascination, I wouldn't go back there until the war ended. I was wrong. I would return in 1971."

Modamag.com: Why the second tour?

Mamie: Well, I felt I hadn’t finished the job. I wanted to go further, I wanted to go to the DMZ, to Quang Tri, and I wanted to go higher maybe up towards North Vietnam.

Modamag.com: But not for a "suicide mission"?

Mamie: (slight chuckle) Things were pretty bad when I got back.

Modamag.com: In your personal life?

Mamie: Yeah.

Modamag.com: So you think that at this time when you return in 1971 the thoughts of this "suicide mission" are still in your mind.

Mamie: Yeah, I did. I always had that in the back of my mind. I had moved to Orange County, here to Newport Beach and then I got married. My marriage really had a bad ending; he was killed in an automobile accident.

Modamag.com: This was your marriage to?

Mamie: The baseball player Lee Myers. He was killed in April of ’71. I had had it. I had really had it. We had been separated and I was devastated over my second attempt at marriage. That’s when I strung out to go to Vietnam again.

Modamag.com: At what point did you realize you wanted to live, to go on?

Mamie: It was afterwards when I got sick. I saw all these kids in the hospital in ’71. When I talked to my mom and my dad on the HAM radio in the hospital; hearing their voices, my son, I realized I wanted to get home. You look outside the hospital and see tanks there you just say "I want out of here, I want to go home". I had done all I could do. My fear was that I would get it flying out of there on a 130 on a medivac. And when we lifted off, the wheels weren’t touching the ground anymore, I prayed to God and said thank you. If I was going to die, I die I didn’t want to die in Vietnam.

Modamag.com: What was life like for you after returning home;

Mamie: I lived with my mom and dad for two years and my son Perry attended Glendora Military Academy. I never wanted to leave my mom and dad again, and my son of course. This time drew me closer to them. Nothing else mattered, Hollywood wasn’t worth it. All I cared about was being alive and being healthy again.

Modamag.com: This period of your life, would you say you spent it rediscovering yourself as well as being a mom?

Mamie: Oh yes. I discovered that having my son was the best thing I could ever have. At the time I had my son, the secretary to the head of Universal Studios came to my hospital room. I thought she was bringing me flowers. She said that the studio would not pick up my contract because of (me) having a child and being married; sex symbols didn’t do that. But it was the best move I ever made. I wasn’t going to have an abortion. In those days they wanted you to have an abortion, and I didn’t do that. I did things that nobody did. Of course I did get pregnant before getting married, but I insisted in going through with having the child and getting married.

Modamag.com: Now you made some movies after coming back from Vietnam. Is this what you did to pay the bills?

Mamie: I worked dinner theaters and nightclubs; singing and dancing. I worked Vegas several times.

Modamag.com: Out of all the motion pictures you have appeared in, which one would you credit as your best performance ever?

Mamie: Well the one I had the most fun in was "Untamed Youth". I got to dance and do rock ‘n roll, to sing and everything I wanted to do in a picture. The acting was secondary but, I got to work with Eddie Cochran. The best acting I did I think came with [Clark] Gable in "Teacher’s Pet".

Modamag.com: Where does Mamie Van Doren go from "Slackers"?

Mamie: I’ll leave that to the big guy up there. I don’t know. I take one day at a time. As far as my career is concerned, if that is what you want to call it, they know where to find me. So far that has not happened, but I would like to get my life story on the screen, so when I pass one day people might say, gee she wasn’t such a bad girl after all (laughing).

Today Ms. Van Doren spends her time being a good mom, a loving wife and attending Hollywood functions. She has also sets time aside to pursue projects with Julie Strain and other celebrities. If you want to know where to find her, go to her website at http://www.mamievandoren.com. Members will be pleased to learn that Ms. Van Doren, one of Hollywood’s original Blonde Bombshells, still has what it takes.