TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).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