Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Cafe Americain

Cafe Americain aired from September 1993 until February 1994 on NBC.

Holly Aldridge ( Valerie Bertinelli), was a flighty young divorcee from Minneapolis seeking adventure in glamorous Paris in this quaint, rather old-fashioned comedy. It was all rather like a 1950's MGM musical without the music-naiive American damsel faces mixups and struggles with the language, cranky French Landladies, suave roues who had only romance on their minds. Holly ostensibly came to take a job translating English to English (sic) for a French firm, but when that fell through she stumbled into the Cafe Americain, a fabled hangout for oddballs and expatriots. Among the habitues were Margaret ( Lila Kaye), the worldly no-nonsense owner, who gave her a job; Fabiana (Sofia Milos), an egocentric supermodel;Marcel( Maurice Godin), a suaave Frenchman ( and mineral water salesman), with eyes for Holly; Madame Ybarra (Jodi Long), regal former first lady of an unspecified Asian country whose husband had been deposed; and Steve ( Graham Beckel), a grumpy American businessman.

Holly lived in a tiny Apartment that was once Balzac's closet. In one concession to the 1990's, she videotaped letters home to her sister. Two leftover episodes of this series were aired on May 28, 1994. Then we bid adieu to Holly.

A Review From USA TODAY
Published: September 17, 1993

French Dip

Valerie Bertinelli is heroically perky in Cafe Americain ( **NBC, Saturday at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT), bubbly and babbling as she tries to keep this labored sitcom aloft.

Even she can't help but wince and cringe by the third or fourth time she spills drinks on a cute businessman ( Maurice Godin) who fractures his American idioms. A newly divorced Minnesotan who heads hopefully to Paris, poor Val loses her money and her job, and ends up at a dingy bar for dissolutes and exiles when not griping to her camcorder.

Vive la Valerie, but Cafe Americain is no bonbon.

It's not bon at all. It is-how you say?-a steen-ker.

An Article From USA TODAY
Published: September 24, 1993

Upbeat Bertinelli hoped folks warm up to 'Cafe'

By Donna Gable
USA TODAY

NEW YORK-" Hey you wanna go shoe shopping? There's this great store on West Broadway and they're open 'till 8:30" squeels a make-up free, J. crew-clad Valerie Bertinelli.

She bounces up, scurries into the bedroom, rifles through the open garment bag on the floor and produces a pair of Doc Martens-style black boots.

" Aren't they great? I love them. I got them here in March and need another pair."

Bertinelli -TV's all-American girl next door- is in town to tout her new series, Cafe Americain on NBC.

The sitcom-about an American divorcee serving up drinks in a Paris cafe-premiered last week at No. 25, paired with the debut of The Mommies.

Saturday, Cafe takes its regular 8:30 p.m. ET/PT time slot up against the return of CBS' Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. In a bid to boost viewership, NBC airs the preview again tonight at 10:30.

Though reviews have been less than enthusiastic, Bertinelli promises that, like a fine French wine, " the show gets better" with age.

Besides, " you can't believe everything you read."

Like tabloid reports that her " loving husband" of 12 years ( rocker Eddie Van Halen) is about to leave because of her alleged " weight problem."

" God, that drives me crazy," she says, running her hands through her long, dark chestnut locks.

" First of all, I'm five pounds within my pre-pregnancy weight," she says. " And even if I was fat, Ed wouldn't leave me because he's not a cad."

Ah, life in the spotlight, she sighs.

Bertinelli has percolated on TV since 1975, when Norman Lear cast her as a teen-ager on One Day at a Time, which remained in the top 20 for most of its 9 seasons.

A succession of TV movies and miniseries followed.

Nov. 9, she stars in CBS' movie Murder of Innocence, about a young woman's descent into insanty.

But her favorite project is still in development: her 2 1/2 -year-old son, Wolfgang ( " the most adorable little child in the world"), named for his guitar-wiz dad's idol, composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

He often shows signs of being a chip-off-the-old pick, she says, often plucking one of the pint-size guitars strewn throughout their San Fernando Valley, Calif., home.

" I called home last night and Wolfie sang me the Barney song-the whole song, in key and everything. Ed and I were both in tears."

For Bertinelli, Cafe is more than a chance for another hit series: " It's a chance to work at a job I love and still go home at lunch, make dinner for my family and give my son his bath at night. "

But if the show fails, she says, all is not lost.

" I'm totally blessed," she beams. " Life is wonderful."

An Article from USA TODAY
Published: January 18, 1994

'Cafe' imitates life for actress Lila Kaye

By Donna Gable
USA TODAY

Like her character in Cafe Americain, British actress Lila Kaye has wilted away many an hour in the company of luminaries and legends.

Margaret, the brash cafe owner in the NBC sitcom, has fed ( and in some cases bedded) such notables as Ernest Hemingway and Charles de Gaulle.

During Kaye's real life salad days at Le Petit Club Francaise , a famed literary haunt in London, she rubbed elbows with the likes of British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber who scored Cats, Evita and Phantom of the Opera.

The only difference deadpans Kaye, " is that I wasn't meeting and greeting. I was peeling vegetables in the 'hole.'" While she was working as a cook's assistant " sweating away" in the kitchen, she recalls, " Andrew Lloyd Webber came down to give us tips. He gave me a fiver ( five pounds). It was the most beautiful fiver I've ever had in my hands."

When she came face to face with the imposing de Gaulle, she says, " He said something in French and I just nodded my head. I was overwhelmed by him."

On tonight's show ( 9:30 ET/PT), Kaye takes a short trip down de ja vu lane when a young girl talks Margaret into hosting a literary night at Cafe Americain.

" There are many experiences that I call on in my own life to compare with Margaret's" says Kaye, who based her alter-ego on " Fat" Mary Sheedy, " a friend of my mum's" who ran a pub.

" Mary had such a way with her," says the 61 year old actress. " She had a big beautiful, wonderful face. She was sexy, vivacious, maternal...I tell you, when she died, the whole of Brighton turned out for Mary Sheedy's funeral."

She also sang like an angel, she adds, a trait she'd love to incorporate into her Cafe character.

" Why shouldn't Margaret sing?" she askes. " She's known all the great jazz people."

And what would Mary Sheedy think of all this? " She'd love it! She'd say, ' You're on the right track, there girlie,'" she chortles. " Ah , Mary...without her, I don't know what I'd be."

For more on Cafe Americain go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_Americain