DANNY ARNOLD BACK IN BUSINESS : HE DECIDES HE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT TV

After a heart attack in 1979 and a subsequent by-pass operation, Danny Arnold, co-creator and producer of ABC’s “Barney Miller,” concluded that death is nature’s way of telling one to slow down. He thought it wiser to slow down of his own accord.

So in 1982, a year after ceasing production of his hit comedy series after eight seasons, he dropped out of TV. Now, he’s back, albeit at a far slower, self-imposed pace. He’s under contract to ABC to develop not one but three comedy series.

He also has formed a new company, Tetragram Ltd., which in addition to producing the three series also will syndicate them should they stay on ABC long enough to be become worth syndicating. He said that would require a minimum of four seasons.

Arnold, 60, cited four reasons for his return:

----Boredom: “I got involved in a lot of businesses that I really didn’t know very much about, or care about--mainly investments and the hotel business. Nothing creative.”

----A feeling of terror when friends thought he had retired: “That’s sort of akin to saying, ‘I guess it’s all over for you, you have nothing more to do but sit around in comparative luxury, waiting to die.’ ”

----An unexpected phone call last summer from Lewis H. Erlicht, then president of ABC Entertainment (a post now held by Brandon Stoddard). He asked Arnold if he’d like to try making a sitcom he had proposed--and gotten rejected--10 years ago.

----A lawsuit against Columbia Pictures Industries that Arnold filed in federal court last year. It seeks up to $70 million damages and alleges fraud, anti-trust violations and breach of contract in Columbia’s syndication of “Barney Miller.”

Columbia calls the allegations “completely without merit,” including the producer’s contention that the company reduced the value of “Barney Miller” by tying the show’s sale in syndication to less popular TV series, programs and feature films.

The suit, which has yet to go to trial, prompted Arnold’s decision to form his own program distribution works. He said that it is his way of saying never again will he depend on outsiders to syndicate a series he has created and produced.

(Such a do-it-yourself step is unusual but not unprecedented. Norman Lear did it in the ‘70s, starting with his syndication of “Sanford and Son” after its NBC run, then with four other network and two off-network series that his company made.)

In Arnold’s view, the fact that his new company has control over both production and syndication means “we’re not going to be stuck with inferior shows. Because we’re not going to make ‘em.” He grinned. “At least, we’re not going to try to make ‘em.”

His first ABC venture, as yet uncast but scheduled to start production in January, is “Joe Bash.”He acknowledged that it doubtless will be called a variation on “Barney Miller”--it’s about two New York beat cops--although it is not that.

He described the two other series as a fantasy and a romantic comedy, respectively. He declined to go into detail, lest other parties pinch the ideas and hawk them as their own.

“That’s the terrible part of this business now,” the producer sighed. “You’re either involved in origination, duplication, or out-and-out thievery.”

A former comic from New York, Arnold has been in the business as a film editor, then as an actor, writer and producer, ever since leaving the Marines after World War II duty in the South Pacific as a rear gunner on Marine SBD dive bombers.

As producer, writer, or both, he has seven television sitcoms logged, starting with the last season of “The Real McCoys” in 1963. “Barney Miller,” which he created with Theodore J. Flicker, was his biggest success.

That success exacted its price, though. Arnold, compulsively involved in almost every facet of “Miller” during its ABC years, said he found himself working 19 to 20 hours a day, leaving his house at 3:30 a.m. and not returning until 10 or 11 at night.

“I also was drinking a lot, smoking a lot, eating a lot,” he said. “I was 45 pounds overweight. What happened (his heart attack) was inevitable. People who knew me were not at all surprised, because I know that one day they were going to carry me out of there. It was just a question of how long I would last.”

He probably wouldn’t have returned to television had not Erlicht called just when he was getting the itch to write again. But agreeing to anything, Arnold said, he sought and got assurances that ABC would go along with restrictions that he was imposing on himself. He wanted to be certain that he would limit his workload.

“I have to be in a position where I have to depend on other people,” he said. “So I said what that means is that the only way I’ll go back is with a group of shows” that he would create and oversee, but not be so heavily involved in production as in the past.

So now, he said, he’s back in television. He still works at the same high level of energy of his “Barney Miller” days, he added, “but only for a few hours now. The tank is empty after four or five hours.”