For seven years, three months, the Jean London Show entertained three quarters of a million servicemen/women stationed at the Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, CA. The Show became the "longest running, only sustaining, monthly Show in the history of the American Armed Forces."

It was my task to function as the co-producer/director of the Shows. It is my pleasure now to share with you my personal recollections of those years . . . a look back as we made history. It is my hope that my memories will bring back some of the smiles to the hundreds of thousands of faces that participated in the 80-plus Shows . . . and, from the nearly 300 stars and performers who entertained over those years.

As nearly 40 years have passed, I still remember the smiles, cheers, laughter and applause of the Show audiences. We still remember the pain of War and shall never forget the sacrifices of our American military personnel.

Okay? Think of this site as a big little book with a great big photo gallery. It’s a book because I didn’t want it to become a simple Guinness statistic thing for Archival history; that never reveals the heart. SO! - - - -

Are you ready to dare to proceed?

GREAT!

I hope you’ll enjoy the memories from this book

Those years of ’66 through ’72 were rough years. Thinking retrospectively, maybe that’s why we felt it was so important for us to do the Shows. It brings to my mind the old song lyric: ‘give me a kiss to build a dream on . . . my imagination will feed my hungry heart’ - - - it was my task as Show director to try and give the audience that ‘something’ that might provide a fantasy to help them through the crap of reality we were living with. We were all in the same boat together: the audience was in fatigues and we were in crazy Hollywood costumes, not wanting anyone to know about our ‘fatigues’ we wore back home. We never promoted it from the stage, although the Brass all knew, but Jean and I were a married couple. We just accepted the thought that probably most in the audiences knew too. She spelled her last name ‘London’ and I spelled mine ‘Lundon’ - - but that’s how it goes in Hollywood.

Like most of the troops we’d talk with, we also were proud of where we came from: we were both born and raised on farms in Eastern South Dakota; Jean in Milbank and me in Beresford. We met in Minneapolis in ’63 and married a year later, moving to Los Angeles after the wedding. Jean was graduated from Grace Kelly’s alma mater, the Caroline Leonetti School of Modeling and studied acting under the great actor and coach, Francis Lederer, at his American National Academy of Performing Arts in L.A. Jean also was a student of producer/actor/director Tom Laughlin of "Billy Jack" fame plus a year of study in comedy with Tommy Noonan.

When the Shows began, she picked up the tag of ‘the Angel of Camp Pendleton’ and ‘the Marine’s Everything Girl’ but the men in the audience probably didn’t know her Beauty Queen titles. So many actresses have begun their careers as Beauty Queen title holders. And, for those of you with daughters, AKA future beauty queens, I hope this little insight on Jean might reveal that dreams of becoming a beauty queen, no matter how one might appear as a child, are possible . . . and, should your daughter become one, it could be the first steps to greater probabilities; maybe entertaining hundreds of thousands of Armed Forces personnel!

Click here for Beauty Titles Photos!

SO HOW DID A SHOW LIKE THIS COME ABOUT?

As I begin this web site, I wish to tell you up front that the recording of history is never a completely accurate science . . . and I already have learned in going over the hundreds of photos, that I am unable to even remember some of the names of the faces in those photos. Should you find I have skewed a fact, it is hoped you might also go to the page of this site where you may respond and make the correction. My memories of this time have been dimmed over the past nearly forty years since we began the Shows and I have been grateful for the scrapbooks to help me out. My passion and desire is to make sure this page of history will be a part of the total record from the Vietnam era.

Like so many things of real worth in life, the Show seemed to just fall into place and happen. It’s like one of those things we think was just meant to be, as we look back now. I had to make a business trip back to Minneapolis, MN and happened to sit next to a Marine who said he had to be heading soon to Vietnam. Into our conversation, he asked me what I did. When I told him Personal Management and Public Relations for entertainers, he asked if it might be possible for me to bring some stars down to Camp Pendleton to meet him and his buddies before they shipped out; they’d never met a star in person and it would be a nice send-off for them.