Chris Noel

Short Biography

Born in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 2, 1941, actress and radio personality Chris Noel started her career as a successful teenage model in Florida in the 1950s and then moved to New York following high school in 1959. While modeling in New York, Noel tried out for and became a cheerleader for the New York Giants in the early 1960s. Saving her money, in 1963 she moved to Hollywood to try her hand at acting and soon landed a role in the Allied Artists comedy/drama Soldier in the Rain (1963; with Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason). In 1964 she signed a contract with MGM; her first feature for the studio was a supporting role in the comedy Honeymoon Hotel (1964; with Robert Goulet and Nancy Kwan). Shortly after arriving in Hollywood, she became an item with actor Hugh O'Brian, whom she met when acting alongside him in a stage production of Mr. Roberts. Noel dated O'Brian off and on for several years. In the mid 1960s, she enjoyed quite a bit of success as an actress, landing starring roles in Get Yourself a College Girl (1964; with Mary Ann Mobley and Nancy Sinatra), Beach Ball (1965; with Edd Byrnes and Aron Kincaid), and Wild Wild Winter (1966; with Gary Clarke and Don Edmonds).Wanting to go on a USO tour with her then-boyfriend, singer Jack Jones, initially Noel was turned down because she didn't have an immediately recognizable name. Instead, she applied for a deejay position with Armed Forces Radio in 1966 and got the job. Her radio show, A Date with Chris, was a big hit with military personnel serving in Vietnam and all across the globe. Noel toured Vietnam extensively and was often near battle lines. She met Green Beret Captain Ty Herrington, a paratrooper, on a tour of Vietnam in late 1967, and the couple married in January 1969. Sadly, Herrington, who also had a career as a recording artist, took his own life Nashville in December 1969. Shortly after the death of her husband, Noel's tenure on Armed Forces Radio ended. In the early 1970s, with no films on the horizon, she left Hollywood to rebuild her career in New York but had no luck. The unpopularity of the Vietnam war and her association with it rendered Chris Noel's acting career nearly over. She landed a big role in the low-budget shocker The Tormentors (1971; with Anthony Eisley and James Craig), but the filmmakers ran into cash flow problems and the film sat on the shelf for 15 years, finally being released to video in 1986. Noel married a wealthy Texan in the 1970s, but the marriage folded after a few years, as did a third marriage. She began a comeback in the early 1980s with a role in the made-for-TV film Detour to Terror (1980; with O.J. Simpson and Anne Francis), but anxiety brought on by a serious bout with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) resulting from her war experiences landed her in a psychiatric hospital for an extended stay. Eventually, she gave up her acting career ambitions and has devoted her time and energies to helping homeless veterans, founding Cease Fire House, a Florida homeless shelter for veterans, in 1993, along with her fourth husband, Florida lawyer Reid Moore. Since the 1980s, Chris Noel has written several books about her years as an entertainer and her war experiences; see the Books Available section for more information.