TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111389/11138900.014

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                                                                                VIDEO, Page 92

COVER STORY: "Let's Get Busy!!"


Hip and hot, talk host Arsenio Hall is grabbing the post-Carson
generation

By Richard Zoglin


    Just a few minutes before the TV taping is to start on this
sunny Tuesday afternoon, an earthquake strikes San Francisco.
But the only tremor felt by the crowd filing into a Paramount
sound stage 350 miles to the south is one of anticipation. Two
women from New Orleans are congratulating themselves on getting
into the show twice in three days (they stood in line for
tickets at 7 a.m.). A couple of teenage guys from Orange County
are making time with two girls they met in line. A twentyish
blond from Los Angeles sings the praises of the young comic she
is waiting to see: "He's young, he's hip, he's personable, he's
humble. He's just himself -- that's the biggest compliment you
can pay him."

    Arsenio Hall, at the same moment, has no inkling of the
earthquake either. (The news reaches him later, midway through
the show, though he doesn't mention it on the air.) With minutes
to go before his 5:15 deadline, he is in his dressing room,
slipping into a stylish double-breasted jacket, glancing briefly
at his cue cards and getting some final dabs of makeup. With
only seconds to spare, he bops downstairs, wades through a
phalanx of enthusiastic staffers, then darts behind a blue
translucent curtain. The band blares, the announcer wails. Hall
sinks to one knee for a few seconds of silent prayer. Then he
slides over to his mark and assumes his opening pose: head
bowed, legs apart, hands pressed together.

    And suddenly the earth really rocks.

    Hall raises a clenched fist and rotates it in a circle,
inspiring the crowd to respond with its trademark barking
chant: "Wooh! Wooh! Wooh!" He races over to bandleader Michael
Wolff and greets him by touching index fingers. (No
old-fashioned high-fives on The Arsenio Hall Show.) He bounds
in and out of the audience, paying special attention to the
folks in the bad seats behind the band. By the end of his
opening monologue, the crowd is wired. Johnny Carson signals the
start of his show with a decorous golf swing. Hall launches the
proceedings with a cry of "Let's . . . get . . . BUSY!!"

    We are seeing the future of the TV talk show, and it is,
well, funky. The Arsenio Hall Show, a weeknightly joyride on 167
stations nationwide, is less a talk show than a televised party:
hip, hyperkinetic and hot. The host can't sit still, and the
crowd can't get enough of him. At any moment, Hall might race
into the studio audience in response to a shouting fan, or sidle
over to his five-piece house band ("my posse") for some
impromptu jamming. Meanwhile, as late-night's first successful
black talk host, he has turned his guest couch into TV's
liveliest melting pot. Rap groups get as much attention as
Hollywood legends; George Hamilton or Glenn Close might find
themselves rubbing elbows with one of the Jacksons -- Jesse or
Bo. And when things get slow, Eddie Murphy or Mike Tyson could
drop in unannounced. Man, this show is loose!

    Since its debut last January, The Arsenio Hall Show has
passed both Pat Sajak and David Letterman in the ratings, to
take the No. 2 slot behind Carson's venerable Tonight show.
Hall's show ranks No. 1 among the important under-35 audience.
"I take the view that the public has elected me as a new
late-night talk-show host," he says enthusiastically. "I've
worked all my life preparing for it, putting together a platform
-- my kind of guests, my kind of music, what I think is funny.
I've been warming up in the '80s, but I'm really for the '90s.
I'm the talk-show host for the MTV generation."

    The TV industry is getting the message. Rather than merely
redistribute the existing late-night audience, Hall's show has
attracted new viewers. Some urban contemporary radio stations
have noticed a drop in their listenership when Hall is on the
air. The inevitable TV imitators are starting to appear, notably
The Byron Allen Show on CBS, a Saturday-night talk show with
another black comic as host. Even fuddy-duddies like Carson and
Sajak seem to be feeling the heat. Would rock acts like Simply
Red and Stevie B. have been booked in the days before Hall?

    Not that Carson is in imminent danger of losing his title
as late-night king. After soaring during the summer, Hall's
ratings have slacked off a bit this fall. (The kids who
constitute his main audience, explain show executives, have gone
back to school.) Through it all, Tonight's ratings have remained
relatively stable. "This race is not a sprint, it's a marathon,"
notes Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment.
"Whatever burns the brightest, fades the fastest."

    Complacency would be a mistake, however: Hall's popularity
may signal a geologic shift in late-night TV. The rise and fall
of potential rivals to Carson -- from Alan Thicke to Joan Rivers
-- has become an industry joke. But Hall is the first to catch
on, and he has done it by reaching out to a new group of
viewers. It is not Carson's audience, Hall likes to point out,
but Carson's audience's children. "The Tonight show is an
institution,'' says Steve Allen, who started it all back in
1954. "But with each tick of the clock, its advantage
disappears. The Tonight show audience is dying every day." No
need to convince Mel Harris, president of Paramount Television,
the company that syndicates The Arsenio Hall Show. "In the
1960s, Johnny Carson started with a young audience that stuck
with him for 20 years," he says. "Arsenio's is the new
generation."

    Hall has a new-generation approach to stardom as well: try
to do it all. At 30, he is not only the headliner but also the
executive producer of his show. He hires the staff, okays the
guests and even wrote the theme music. (He has a substantial
share of the show's profits.) He has recorded a comedy-music
album, Large and In Charge, scheduled for release later this
month. On it he performs in the persona of an alter ego, a fat
rapper named Chunky A, whom Hall played as a "guest" on his show
last May. He has made a video as Chunky A, now airing on MTV.
A movie career, meanwhile, has sprouted almost effortlessly.
Last year Hall co-starred with his best pal Eddie Murphy in
Coming to America, the No. 2 box-office hit of 1988. Next week
he will be back onscreen with Murphy in Harlem Nights.

    With his all-gums smile, flattop hairdo and exuberant,
affable manner, Hall seems like an overgrown kid surveying a
roomful of candy. His conversation is frank, unaffected,
headlong. "When I'm on the air, I'm happy," he says, relaxing
in his mirrored office on the Paramount lot, a muted TV set
overhead tuned in to MTV. He is dressed in his typical off-hours
duds: baseball cap, Reebok T shirt and unlaced sneakers. "I was
born to do this. When I'm in the spotlight, I'm gone. I love it
more than anything in the world. When everyone is barking and
screaming, it's the best feeling I've ever felt, like a
three-point jumper with one second left in the championship game
against Boston. Better than an orgasm."

    The show, for both good and ill, reflects that boyish,
MTV-inspired energy. To his credit, Hall has shaken some of the
dust off the stodgy talk-show format. His set has no desk;
instead, Hall interviews guests on a modish chair-and-sofa
ensemble, leaning forward intently. There is no Ed McMahon-style
sidekick; Hall prefers to trade quips with the crowd or play
around with the band in recurring bits like the "poetry
moments," featuring various sidemen reading silly verse.
Musically, the show has brought on a host of rock performers --
Kool Moe Dee, Living Colour, Winger -- who rarely get exposure
on mainstream TV. And in contrast to the carefully stage-managed
routines on the Tonight show, Hall's manic energy sends a signal
that just about anything can happen at his nightly party. "There
used to be a feeling that late at night people wanted to be put
to sleep by a talk show," says producer Marla Kell Brown, 28.
"But I don't think that's true for our generation. We want high
energy."

    Hall's one concession to talk-show tradition is to perform
an opening monologue. His topical jokes are lame compared with
Carson's or Jay Leno's, but he exposes himself in a way those
cool satirists never do. Talking about Ralph Abernathy's book,
in which the former civil rights leader made allegations about
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s sexual escapades, Hall barely
disguised his anger. "He's just jealous," said Hall. "Probably
hasn't been with three women in his life . . . Martin's still
my hero. Right on!"

    With guests, too, Hall often drops the reserve that talk
hosts are supposed to maintain. Impulsive, sometimes off-color
remarks frequently slip out. When actress Sally Kirkland told
Hall she thought he was wonderful, he replied, "I can tell --
your nipples are hard." (Even Hall admits that one crossed the
line.) An interview with filmmaker Spike Lee last June turned
into a testy debate over remarks Lee had made criticizing Eddie
Murphy for not helping blacks get more top jobs in Hollywood.
"It takes time," said Hall, springing to his friend's defense.
"And the change doesn't occur any quicker if you go to the
Caucasian journalists looking to stir up conflict and tell them
what you think about your black brother." (The dispute didn't
end there. Lee later called Hall an Uncle Tom, and Hall canceled
Lee's next appearance on the show. The two have since patched
up their differences -- or at least agreed to keep them
private.)

    Most of the time, however, the conversation on The Arsenio
Hall Show is just what you'd expect from a talk show that bills
itself as a party: lots of small talk, much of it boring. Hall's
show-biz gush rivals Merv Griffin's or Rivers' at their most
unctuous. His treatment of guests is overly deferential, his
questions stultifying softballs. ("Let's talk about pet peeves,"
ran a setup for Kirstie Alley.) The talk on Carson's Tonight
show may be programmed and artificial, but at least it gives the
illusion of a real conversation. Hall seems tied to preset
questions and often appears disconnected and unresponsive. Too
many comments elicit a blank "mmm-hmmm," followed by an awkward
silence.

    But, hey, do his fans care? At a time when most talk shows
have moved into controversial issues (Phil, Oprah, even Rivers)
or anti-talk-show parody (Letterman), Hall has returned the
genre to its original raison d'etre: old-fashioned, unapologetic
stargazing. His innovation has been to set the show-biz plugs
to a bracing rock beat. And if you prefer a little more
substance with your MTV flash, boy, are you stuck in the '80s.

    Hall bridles at the criticisms his show has received. "One
critic accused me of fawning over second-rate talent. How dare
he! In the ghetto the game is respect. If I book you, I'm
committed to you. I'm an entertainer, not a tough interviewer.
My philosophy is to leave my ego at the door and get the best
out of my guests." Yet Hall concedes that his interviewing
skills need work. He is currently being coached by New York
City-based media consultant Virginia Sherwood. Among her tips:
ask more follow-up questions and avoid overusing words like
interesting.

    The press's fixation on race nettles Hall even more. Though
he takes pride in giving exposure to many black performers ("I
have a commitment to correcting the wrongs of TV history"), Hall
insists he is doing a show for everybody, black and white. "I'm
out to bring the ghetto to the suburbs and the suburbs to the
ghetto. I want (rapper) Tone-Loc and Major Ferguson, Fergie's
dad, on the same couch. Most white people have never been to a
party at a black person's house. I hope they say, `This one
looks nice -- maybe I'll try it.'"

    In addition to his tiff with Spike Lee, Hall has been
embroiled in a feud with Willis Edwards, president of the
Beverly Hills-Hollywood chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. When Hall's
show began, Edwards complained publicly about the scarcity of
blacks in key behind-the-scenes positions. (Hall's producer and
director, as well as the vice president of his production
company, are all white women.) According to Hall, after making
the statements Edwards asked for a $40,000 contribution to his
organization, a request that Hall told a reporter "sounds like
extortion to me." Edwards denied asking for money and slapped
Hall with a $10 million slander suit.

    No wonder Hall sometimes feels besieged. "My manager told
me not to be angry, but I am," he says. "I give 110%. I resent
the fact that (for some white critics) I have to be whiter to
be a star. And then there are the jabs from my own people, the
implication that I have to be unfair to whites to make blacks
happy. I am angry. I'm on a tightrope, and people are punching
me from every direction."

    Hall has done some punching of his own, especially at his
rival on CBS, Pat Sajak. Both Hall and Sajak launched new talk
shows at the same time last winter, but it was the white-bread
Sajak, host of the top-rated game show Wheel of Fortune, who got
most of the attention. "Sajak was always the golden boy," gripes
Hall, "though nothing on paper makes him more eligible for that
title." Sajak's CBS show, after a strong start, has been sinking
in the ratings. "As long as there's an alternative to Sajak,"
offers Hall, "the public will always take it."

    He has kinder words for Leno, Carson's regular fill-in and
current heir apparent: "He's a pure funny man, more exciting
and interesting than Sajak." Hall also praises David Letterman
for "forcing America to loosen its collar a bit and not take
things too seriously." Hall's top praise, however, is reserved
for Carson: "He has an incredible understanding of when he's
needed and when he's not. He'll insert comedy when there's a bad
guest and stay out of Robin Williams' way. Doing a talk show for
him is like a snooze alarm on a clock: he can find it in the
dark. He doesn't care about numbers or competitors. It's like
Tyson: nobody can beat him but him."

    Hall's admiration for Carson has a long history. Growing up
in an inner-city neighborhood of Cleveland, Hall used to set up
chairs in his basement and pretend he was Johnny. Years later,
between appearances on Hollywood Squares and The Match Game, he
sneaked into Carson's NBC studio, sat in his chair and practiced
saying, "We'll be right back." Says Hall without a trace of
irony: "Johnny is the architect of all my dreams."

    Dreams like that were a way of escaping from a grim ghetto
childhood. At four, Hall recalls sitting on the toilet and
watching a rat run between his legs. His next-door neighbor was
shot during a pickup football game. Hall recently returned home
for a visit and reflected on the fates of his high-school
classmates. "Von is dead, killed in a fight over a girl.
Weathersby is dead, killed over an argument over `last call' in
a bar. Freddie's in jail. Jack was picked up for selling cocaine
and hanged himself in the prison cell. Tyrone, the star
basketball player, is in jail on two counts of murder. `Yo,
man,' I said to myself. `Nobody got out but you.'"

    Hall's father, a Baptist preacher, was an old-fashioned
disciplinarian who forbade dancing in the house and made his
son dress up for dinner. He had frequent fights with Hall's
strong-willed mother Annie, many of them over which radio
station to listen to. (Dad liked gospel and Harry Belafonte; Mom
preferred the Top 40.) "It wasn't unusual for me to see my dad
go for a gun during the arguments," he recalls. "It wasn't just
screaming -- much deeper and more traumatic. I developed a rash
and started sleepwalking. They'd find me in the garage in the
morning, sleeping in the car."

    When he was five, his mother walked out, taking Hall and
moving in with his grandmother, who lived around the corner.
Thereafter Hall's childhood was a disjointed and lonely one.
"Teachers would write on my report card, `Arsenio needs
attention. Is there anything you can do about it?'" Yet his
grades were good, and he avoided drugs in high school -- though
he admits to a rebellious period as a senior. "You couldn't get
close to him," remembers Marjorie Banks, his old Sunday school
teacher and the wife of former Chicago Cubs star Ernie Banks.
"When you talked to him, he'd see you and yet he didn't see you.
His mind was always on something else."

    Show-biz stirrings came early. As a teenager, Hall hired
himself out as a magician at parties and played drums and bass
guitar in a couple of groups. He started college at Ohio
University and finished at Kent State, where he majored in
speech communication and played the lead in the musical Purlie
Victorious. After graduation, Hall went to work in Detroit for
Noxell, the makers of Noxema skin cream. But one evening after
tuning in to a Tonight show segment, he decided the moment had
come "to do what I'd been dreaming about." He quit his job the
next day.

    His climb up the show-biz ladder had few missteps. He moved
to Chicago and began honing a stand-up act in comedy clubs.
"Even then he seemed to have something extra," says Art Gore,
a friend from those days. "He had a rapport with the people; he
could adjust his comedy to fit the audience in the club." In
1979 singer Nancy Wilson hired Hall to emcee her stage show in
Chicago. When she arrived late, he had to improvise with the
audience for 20 minutes. It went well, and Wilson hired him as
her regular warm-up act. Hall soon moved to Los Angeles and
started picking up work opening for other singers, from Robert
Goulet to Tina Turner.

    In 1984 Hall landed a job that provided a strange foretaste
of his current success: as Alan Thicke's sidekick on the much
ballyhooed, short-lived Carson challenger, Thicke of the Night.
Thicke remembers the young comic fondly. "I think I recognized
that if anyone was going to be the Jackie Robinson of late
night, it was Arsenio," he says. After the show flopped, says
Thicke, "I know writers who removed my name from their resumes.
Arsenio remained a friend in failure, and you learn to
appreciate those people in a year like that."

    Hall did not stay out of the talk-show ring for long. In
1986 he joined Marilyn McCoo as co-host of Solid Gold, a
syndicated music show. Then he got a call from the Fox Network,
asking him to be a last-minute replacement for Frank Zappa as
fill-in host of The Late Show, which had just dumped Rivers, its
original star. Hall's stint went so well that he was asked back
twice the following week. Soon he was doing the program full
time.

    Hall's hip, high-intensity style increased the ratings of
the troubled show, but it was too late. Fox had already decided
to scrap the program in favor of a new late-night entry, The
Wilton North Report. "I was able to do a lot of stuff because
the Fox executives weren't watching," says Hall. "No one cared."
When Wilton North was a quick failure, Fox asked Hall to return.
But by this time his attention was elsewhere, notably in movies:
he had just shot Coming to America, the first of a three-picture
deal with Paramount. Hall turned down the Fox offer.

    But a better one was in the offing. Last year Paramount
proposed another late-night talk show; Hall would be executive
producer as well as star, and he would be guaranteed time off
to make movies. He was still reluctannt. But a guest appearance
with Carson on Tonight got his talk-show juices flowing again,
and he finally agreed.

    "Arsenio eats, sleeps and breathes the show," says Cheryl
Bonacci, vice president of Arsenio Hall Communications, which
was formed last year to handle his TV and record affairs. "When
he's not doing that, he's sitting in his house writing songs.
Things like going out just aren't important to him right now."
Hall usually arrives at the office around 11, conducts personal
business and prepares for the late-afternoon taping. After the
show, he reviews the tape with producer Brown, who worked with
him on The Late Show. Most nights he watches the show again at
home by himself, then takes a look at Carson, Sajak and
Letterman before going to bed, usually around 2 a.m., with a
talk-radio station droning in the background. Says he: "I can't
go to sleep without it."

    Brown and Bonacci are two of his relatively few close
friends. Another is Murphy, whom he met at Los Angeles' Comedy
Store in 1980. "Eddie's the brother I never had," says Hall. "We
share intimate secrets. We cry together. There's no
competitiveness between us. When I called and told him I had
been signed by Paramount, he couldn't have been happier." Though
Hall has been linked with Murphy's so-called black pack -- a
group of young black performers and filmmakers, among them
actor-directors Robert Townshend and Keenen Ivory Wayans -- Hall
says the others are only casual friends.

    Speculation about Hall's girlfriends has ranged from
Dynasty's Emma Samms (they dated a few years ago, says Hall, but
are no longer involved) and Newhart's Mary Frann (too old for
him, he insists) to singer-choreographer Paula Abdul ("just very
good friends"). Hall refuses to identify the current "special
woman" in his life and claims to spend much of his time after
hours by himself. "My life is in front of people," he says, "so
when I go home, I don't want to hear voices."

    Home is a relatively modest four-bedroom house in the San
Fernando Valley, decorated in blue and filled with electronic
gear. ("I'm very high-tech oriented. I wouldn't have a TV
without doors that open electronically.") His garage houses two
cars: a white 1986 Jaguar XJS and a Mustang convertible. He
stays in close touch with his mother, who is a big fan ("No one
barks louder at my show than my mom") and for whom he bought a
condo in West Hollywood. For relaxation, Hall tried painting for
a while but gave it up; took tennis lessons but "hated them."
Says he: "I'm not an outdoor person at all."

    Which pretty much leaves work. In addition to the
five-day-a-week grind of his show, Hall has taped some antidrug
commercials and is working with Reebok to promote a shoe that
would "pay tribute to antiapartheid awareness." He co-wrote and
co-produced his new Chunky A record album. Its cuts include a
comic rap number, a satire of raunch rock ("Let me check your
oil with my dipstick") and a straight-faced antidrug anthem
titled Dope, the Big Lie.

    After meshing amiably with Murphy in Coming to America (in
which he played multiple roles, ranging from a grizzled
barber-shop customer to a fiery evangelist), Hall seems poised
for a movie breakthrough. In Harlem Nights, which Murphy wrote
and directed, Hall is onscreen for only a few minutes, as a
gangster who "hates Eddie's guts." He is currently talking with
producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (Beverly Hills Cop)
about starring in an action-comedy, which would probably be shot
next fall. "By then," Hall says, "either I'll have a grasp on
what I'm doing or be sharing a condo with Dick Cavett
somewhere."

    No sweat; he already seems to have a pretty good grasp on
the success that has engulfed him. Hall claims he would be happy
doing his talk show forever, but he seems fully tuned in to the
precariousness of fame in a medium that chews up stars like M
& M's. "One bad show, and I'm mentally packing a U-Haul," he
says. "But I don't want to start playing it safe. I accept the
fact that I can't have it forever. Ali was the greatest, but
someday someone beat him, and someone beat the guy who beat him.
When I was in high school, J.J. Walker was the hottest. Recently
I saw a (cable) special in which people walked by him and joked,
`That's Arsenio Hall.' Because I'm hot, and he's not."

    "It's scary," he muses, glancing at the rock video playing
silently on the TV screen overhead. "Someday I'll be the punch
line."


-- Dan Cray and Elaine Dutka/Los Angeles