The Happiest Man in Show Biz

Arsenio Hall Engraved nameplate on a dressing room door at Fox Broadcasting . . .

We Be Havin’ a Ball . . . engraved on a nameplate just below it.

Night after night, he presided over the hippest party in town, strutting out in front of an adoring audience and dancing on virtually every racial stereotype around.

Comic Arsenio Hall, who replaced Joan Rivers as the final host of Fox Broadcasting’s ill-fated “The Late Show” until it ended Dec. 10, would joke about the size of his rear end, his penchant for discussing clothes with his black guests, the fact that his white producer asked him not to wear his diamond-stud earring, the way the brothers and sisters in his audience shouted at him as if they were attending a church revival meeting and the likelihood that Don King has a white hairdresser with an ultra-Caucasian sense of humor.

As a television interviewer, Hall proved himself at once totally slick, totally vulnerable and totally unpredictable. When guest Gloria Steinem, for instance, protested that there was no reason for him to feel intimidated while interviewing her, he responded that she didn’t fully understand the problem: the type of “girls” he dates communicate in phrases such as “take me shopping.”

And when author Jackie Collins innocently inquired if 30-year-old Hall had ever considered marriage, he thought for half a second, smiled, and looked straight into the camera. “Yeah,” he said, “one time when this girl called me up and told me she was pregnant.”

Audiences loved it--and they were astounded when Hall and “The Late Show” were suddenly taken off the air.

However, according to a Fox spokesperson, “The Late Show” was canceled before Hall agreed to perform as host for its last 13 weeks. Though Hall says Fox made him four separate offers to stay with the network--including one to appear on “The Wilton North Report” which replaced “The Late Show”--he was already scheduled in January to start filming “The Zamunda Project,” which he co-developed and will co-star in with his friend Eddie Murphy in New York. Thus all the offers were turned down.

In the time since “The Late Show” stopped taping, Hall says he’s been busy “doing every charity I thought I could--Comic Relief, the juvenile diabetes telethon, cystic fibrosis” and being fitted with costumes and latex masks for the various characters he’ll play in the movie.

“And me and Eddie grabbed a couple of girls and we went to Hawaii for a week,” he says. “We want to write a part for (comic) Louie Anderson into the movie. (Director John) Landis has already cast the movie, but we want to add Louie. We think he’s really funny.” Hall says he’s had a field day turning down offers from several networks. “HBO offered me basically anything I want to do, a talk show, a series. There was interest from two of the three (major) networks, but when I signed a contract with Fox to do ‘The Late Show’ I agreed not to do a talk show for another network for one year.”

Lately, he complains, he’s had to change his home telephone number because of renewed wooing from the folks at Fox. “Big Fox executives have been calling my house and trying to strike up a deal with me. I want them to talk to my manager.”

The Cleveland-born comic says he would love to return to television if the offer’s right and calls the period he spent doing “The Late Show” “the best time of my whole life.”

Indeed, things got so silly on the show that Hall, who has a bachelor’s degree in communication from Kent State University, frequently opened the program with the phrase “We be havin’ a ball,” which he overheard one night backstage. He swiftly told the white man who uttered it, “I’ll be the one in charge of the black English.”

He even laughed when some viewers wrote the Fox network to complain that his show was “too black” (particularly after the raucous night he had with Laker Magic Johnson, “Dynasty” actress Emma Samms and heavyweight champ Mike Tyson all singing, “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In” with Little Richard).

On subsequent shows, Hall continued to whoop it up--literally--with his trademark “dog chant.” The sound, typically accompanied by an arm cranking in a circle, consists of “roooff, roooff, roooff, roooff, roooff” noises, barked in place of spontaneous laughter or applause. “Late Show” studio audiences got into barking to the point of occasionally disrupting the show, and Hall reports that he’s heard the chant is now showing up at concerts around the country. “Even white guys like (comic) Sam Kinison have told me people are doing it at their shows,” he says.

When Hall suspected the dog chant or race jokes were getting to be too much for certain sub-groups in his national audience, he simply recommended that his armchair critics send their letters to “I Hate That Negro, Box. . . .”

The mail really poured in, however, when Fox began airing promos for the program that would replace “The Late Show. “

Fans began flooding the network with letters and petitions to keep Hall on the air. Some didn’t stop with the mails. A few women called the studio and tried to get through to Hall’s dressing room by claiming to be his friend Patti LaBelle or his idol Janet Jackson. (Fast-thinking staffers foiled impersonators by asking them to name their managers.)

The comic says that even brasher women sent him photographs of their breasts or a gift wrapped with a pair of panties, a condom and the location of their seat in the audience.

For several weeks in New York, disc jockey Fred (Bugsey) Buggs of WBLS asked his listeners to write Fox Broadcasting to keep Hall on the air--until it was learned that Hall had previously committed himself to co-star in “The Zamunda Project.”

Hall, it turned out, was still havin’ a ball. By the time “The Late Show” was off the air, he had signed an exclusive two-picture deal with Paramount with an option for a third film.

In Hall’s dressing room, an hour before one of the final tapings, a visitor is meeting the comic for the first time and is mentioning that he comes across as the happiest man on television.

He looks pleased this evening as he takes a sip of Jack Daniels and Diet Coke, but offers an immediate correction.

“No,” he says, “I’m the happiest guy on the planet. “

An hour and a half later, he had modified the line and was telling the nation’s TV viewers, “You know, they say I’m the happiest man in show biz. . . .”

There was no evidence anywhere in sight to dispute that contention. Everything Hall said and did during the taping--from the delight that radiated from his face to his impromptu dance steps to the warm-hearted bear hugs he wrapped around many of his guests--seemed to confirm it.

As it turns out, Arsenio Hall is also a convincing actor.

Somewhat hung over and fortified with a fresh bloody Mary, at lunch a few afternoons later he is saying that he didn’t arrive back at his West Hollywood condo until 7:15 a.m., after a night on the town with his friend Murphy.

Now, over a 1 p.m. lunch at a Sunset Strip restaurant, Hall is revealing he may not be the happiest guy on the planet after all. Though he re-emphasizes that hosting “The Late Show” proved to be far and away the most fulfilling period in his life, he also admits that the large amounts of his time and energy the show required destroyed his two-year relationship with a woman he once expected to marry.

In an earlier interview, Hall had talked very little about his girlfriend, describing her briefly as “a disco cutie.”

“She’s young,” he added, writing off the fact that she didn’t understand the pressures he was under, “but she’s very pretty so I put up with it.”

Today, though, Hall has no interest in playing happiness king. He’s willing to talk about the breakup with his girlfriend, a fashion designer from Cuba.

“We’d be fighting (on the set) up until one minute before the show started,” he recalls, adding that their exchanges became so disturbing that his producer stopped allowing the woman’s calls to be put through to his dressing room.

In the end, Hall says, he realized that he was not being supported by his girlfriend at a time when he most needed her help and understanding.

How does a person manage--in 60 seconds--to completely transform from having an all-out fight to hosting an all-out party?

Hall himself is not really sure how he does it, only that there is a sharp difference.

“I see this confident, arrogant stage person and I don’t understand how he gets it,” he says, watching a tape of the previous night’s show in his dressing room. Then he points out that when he steps into the flashier clothes he wears onstage, they help him to get into the part. “I do this magic thing in my head, I mentally become that guy. . . .

“You never see me in a pair of leather pants outside of TV,” he continues, still dressed in the sort of nondescript outfit he favors offstage (a T-shirt, baseball cap and baggy pants).

“It’s a big problem with girls. They expect me to dress like this guy, always have everything together. I hate to say it, but I’m a bum. I have fights with Eddie (Murphy) about my attire. My friends call me an underground hermit because I won’t go out much. I just like to stay home and hide behind the answering machine and watch TV with the remote control. I make a living being in front of people. Being out with them isn’t fun for me.”

When you watch the way that Hall moves offstage--shoulders slightly hunched, his body hanging back when he’s in a group of people--it’s easy to believe him when he claims to have been overweight as a young teen and always too shy to ask anybody to dance.

Now, he says, when he visits with fans after the show, he’s more likely to kiss and hold the hand of women who are overweight or not too sure of their looks.

“I see all the pretty girls with their red leather skirts on. They don’t need it,” he reasons.

And despite all the jokes he does about sex, Hall insists it’s a low priority on his personal list. “I am the most undersexed guy on the planet. If a girl is with me, she gets it twice a month max.”

What’s more, he claims nudity and aging are his two biggest hangups--though as a performer he had no trouble telling the audience his age or promising viewers that he’d run around the set nude if his pal Emma Samms failed to show up the following night.

What would cause this conservative nature? He attributes it to his strait-laced upbringing as a preacher’s son in a household in which he never did anything--including sitting at the breakfast table--unless he was fully and properly dressed.

Although “The Late Show” introduced Hall to millions of viewers, he is no babe in the comedy woods. As a stand-up comic, he’s opened for dozens of big-time performers, among them Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Tina Turner and Anita Baker. In addition, he’s worked as co-host of TV’s “Solid Gold” with Marilyn McCoo and appeared on programs such as “The Tonight Show,” “Late Night With David Letterman,” and “Thicke of the Night.”

His first big break came about a year after he graduated from college. Hall says he’d briefly tried a career in marketing but decided he’d rather do comedy and moved to Chicago. When singer Nancy Wilson was late for a function he was emceeing, he had to ad-lib until she arrived and she heard him for just a few minutes.

Wilson urged him to move to Los Angeles, gave him some money, convinced her manager to represent him and also to give Hall a place to live in his guest house. What’s more, Hall says, Wilson reassured him that “you have a quality that transcends your material.”

According to Mitzi Shore, owner of the Comedy Store, Hall did extremely well as a comic almost immediately after he moved to Los Angeles in 1980. “He’s a natural and he just got better and funnier. He’s wide open in his comedy,” she says. “He’s vulnerable, which gives him a loving appeal to his audience.”

Shore suspects Hall easily gets away with so much racial stereotyping because it’s done in a “non-hostile manner.” (On the rare occasions when someone refers to him as a “nigger,” Hall says, his response is to take out a $20 bill and give it to the person. When the individual asks what it’s for, he replies, “Oh, excuse me, aren’t you the parking attendant?”)

“Arsenio is absolutely refreshing,” Shore enthuses. “He was always that way. He hasn’t changed one bit. He’s as pure as they come in comedy.”

So pure, says his mother, Annie Hall, that he has sent her a part of every paycheck he’s made “since he first starting making money in California in 1980” and has spoken on the phone with her virtually every day since his college days.

Mrs. Hall, who brought up her son after she and his father were separated when he was 6, affirms that her son was and still is the shy type.

“The earring and all that? That’s not him. When he’s with me, he’s always conservatively dressed. That fly stuff, that’s Hollywood,” she says by telephone from Chicago, where she’s an account representative at the DeVry Institute of Technology.

Her son was so introverted, Mrs. Hall recalls, that he never went to a party until he was 16 years old. He did, however, occasionally hang with a tough crowd by virtue of where he lived.

“We lived comfortably on a minimum amount of money,” she says. “The other people on the street were hoodlums, but we couldn’t stop him from playing with them. He had a very rich upbringing. He didn’t run with them in gangs. He played ball with them but never allowed them in the house.” Now, according to both Hall and his mother, all of his old friends from that neighborhood are “dead or in jail and one became a transvestite.”

How did Hall manage to escape the neighborhood pattern?

“I was always in choir practice,” he remembers. His mother adds that he also spent his time in more constructive pursuits: “He started out at 6 years old making his own newspaper by cutting things out of the newspaper and pasting them on sheets of paper. He’d make his own crossword puzzles and pass them out. He paid neighborhood kids pennies to deliver the papers. He really used those kids.

“He was a magician since he was 7. One time the Cleveland Browns gave a party and asked him to do the magic. . . . He played the drums in a pop group.”

If playing drums and performing magic aren’t enough similarities to drummer/magician/talk-show king Johnny Carson, Mrs. Hall has one more. She says her son told her when he was 12 he wanted “to do what what Johnny Carson does.”

Many observers are betting that’s a good possibility, given the fact that he’s already succeeded at replacing Carson’s once-favorite replacement.

Says Bob Wachs, the former owner of New York City’s Comic Strip who began managing Murphy before his “Saturday Night Live” days and who now manages both Murphy and Hall: “The end of ‘The Late Show’ is the beginning of Arsenio.”