Word: halle
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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 reluctant. But a guest appearance with Carson on Tonight got his talk-show juices flowing again, and he finally agreed...
...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...
...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...