Saving Private Williams...

What if, instead of going to college in order to avoid the draft, Robin Williams had, in fact, gone on to serve in Vietnam? Would he have still gotten into comedy? What effect, if any, would the experience have had on his life and/or career?
 
If he has been drafted he'd probably be more likely to serve his time somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Or perhaps West Germany, or Sourh Korea. Service in Vietnam is probably less likely of all of th options.

Plenty of great comedians had prior military service, The Goons come to mind, so I suspect that Williams would still become one. Military life would probably give him a wealth of material.
 
And here was me thinking that it was all about Kenneth Williams finding himself doing something more dangerous than drawing maps in WW2...

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I imagine Robin Williams returning from 'Nam and starring in a series of movies about a Special Forces commando whose comedy is misunderstood.
 
You learn so much fascinating stuff when you try to Google the "right answer" to these sorts of things. For example, in 1969, Williams got a really high number in the (first) draft lottery and wouldn't have had to have served. I also learned that they screwed up running the lottery the first time around. According to Wikipedia:

People soon noticed that the lottery numbers were not distributed uniformly over the year. In particular, November and December births, or dates 306 to 366, were assigned mainly to lower draft numbers representing earlier calls to serve (see figure). This led to complaints that the lottery was not random as the legislation required. Analysis of the procedure suggested that mixing 366 capsules in the shoe box did not mix them sufficiently before dumping them into the jar.

As far as Williams was concerned, it might have derailed his career. Again, according to Wiki, he studied drama at a community college in California for three years. It was only after that he got accepted into Julliard.

He came from a miiddle-class background and he probably wouldn't have gone to Vietnam, much less serve in a combat unit. But those years he spent as a typist in West Germany might have been too much to lose, simply by virtue of the fact he wasn't learning how to perform on stage.
 
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