We all have a mad, booze-soaked anecdote in our back pockets, but very few can compare to John ‘Chickie’ Donohue's madcap story.
It was such a good yarn that Pabst Blue Ribbon made a short documentary about it in 2015, Chickie wrote a book about the experience, and it’s now been turned into a feature film featuring Zac Efron as Chickie, alongside Russell Crowe and Bill Murray. That film is The Greatest Beer Run Ever, and encapsulates just how far a man is willing to go for a drink with his friends, and to which the only correct response is to raise your own glass to Chickie. Cheers for your services to the sesh.
What happened on 'the greatest beer run ever'?
In 1967, 26-year-old Chickie was out for a drink in a bar in his native New York. He was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and had served as a merchant seaman, and one of his friends – the former Colonel George Lynch (played by Bill Murray in the film) – comments that he wished he could buy all the guys in their neighbourhood still serving in Vietnam a beer. Chickie had already been to Vietnam twice, so said: “Sure, next time I go to Vietnam I’ll buy the guys a drink”. Somehow, presumably after a couple more drinks, this escalated to Chickie taking an 18-pack of beer down to the port and attempting to hop on the SS Drake Victory with his seaman papers and a list of friends’ names to present with a drink. “I didn’t think I could do it, honestly,” he admits in the documentary.
But coasting on through with his charm (and a back story about looking for his step-brother as their mother had died) it was next stop Qui Nhon. Despite walking into a war zone, Chickie was still styling it out and turned up wearing a checked shirt, white jeans and a baker boy cap. “He looked like he was going golfing,” said Tommy Collins (Archie Renaux), the first of his friends on the list he bumped into and cracked open a bevvie with.
He then blagged his way onto a military plane to the north of the country – specifically, Quang Tri province – to find Rick Duggan (Jake Picking). Duggan's response was similar to that of the rest of the gang: “What the hell are you doing here?”. The other troops, said Duggan, were also dumbstruck by his arrival: “You don’t have to be here and you’re here? Why is this happening? I don’t understand.” Duggan also, wisely, threw a poncho over Chickie’s get-up to camouflage him a little.
Chickie had to sleep in tents in an ambush perimeter, right on the line, and firing soon began. “That night I thought, yes, this might have been a dumb thing to do,” he said. Duggan told his lieutenant that they had to get Chickie out of the front line (“What’s he gonna do here, be the company mascot?” he quipped) and he was helicoptered back to Qui Nhon. However, his ship had already departed. He was now stranded in a war zone, alone, without even a change of clothes.
But the men rallied around and managed to get Chickie sent to Saigon, and he was straight out to Long Binh to cross off one more name on that list: Bobby Pappas. While partying with Pappas, Chickie casually told him: “Oh, the fighting’s over, that was just to get to the negotiating table”. Job done, he headed back to Saigon to work out how to get a passage back to the US.
A few nights later, Chickie saw the “sky lit up to the north of Saigon like one big fireball”. The troops in Long Binh had been hit. Despite the danger, once again Chickie pulled it out for his pals and hitch-hiked back to Long Binh, but when he found Pappas was still alive, Pappas was furious at him. Chickie recalled in the short film: “He screamed at the top of his lungs: ‘You effin’ this and that… you told me the effin’ war was over – look at this place’.” He added he was happy to get a pasting from his mate, as he was just so grateful to find him alive: “I thought he was dead and here he was calling me every rotten name in the book, and it just made me happy.”
Chickie managed to get back on a boat from Saigon that took him back home, 8,000 miles, to Inwood, New York, and he’s gone down in history as not only undertaking the wildest challenge to crack open a cold one, but as one of the best friends in existence too. Puts that much-moaned about run to the off-license into perspective…
The Greatest Beer Run Ever will run at selected cinemas and on Apple TV+ from 30 September
