On this day in 1993, Eddie Van Halen made a cameo appearance on “Cafe Americain,” the NBC sitcom starring his then-wife, Valerie Bertinelli.
Portraying a scruffy Paris street musician, Van Halen arrives in the show’s opening scene. Bertinelli enjoyed the opportunity to trade sitcom barbs with her then-husband of 12 years, a native of Amsterdam who forsakes English for their brief TV exchange.
“He speaks to me in Dutch, gives me lascivious looks and I get to throw him out of the cafe,” Bertinelli said, laughing, by phone from Los Angeles.
Though generally overlooked by critics, “Cafe Americain” was a modest success for NBC in a tough time slot.
A blithe screwball comedy, “Cafe Americain” made no pretensions to cutting-edge hipness. Bertinelli played Holly Aldridge, a resourceful, divorced American with Midwestern pluck who moves to Paris to begin a new life. She winds up working at the famed Cafe Americain, bantering with an amusing collection of oddball cafe regulars.
Bertinelli began her career as a teenager on “One Day at a Time” nearly 20 years earlier.
The above info is from a Chicago Tribune article from 1993.
Watch Ed’s brief appearance on the program, below.
