A Cesspool Buffoonery

“I want to be the Martin Luther King of comedy.”
― Arsenio Hall, Arsenio: A Memoir

“ARSENIO HALL: I’m prettier than Pat Sajak.”
― Aileen Joyce, Arsenio: The Prince of Late Night : An Unauthorized Biography

“I knew I'd hit,” Arsenio Hall confided to a reporter not long after his show debuted (in January 1989). “White America only gets uptight when a black guy moves in next door, dates your daughter, or becomes your boss. They’ve always let us entertain them.”
― Aileen Joyce

“I did his show once,” said actress Anne-Marie Johnson, 31 (Hollywood Shuffle, In Living Color) “and I’ll never do it again because it’s a very nasty atmosphere.” Johnson plays the role of Althea Tibbs on NBC’s In the Heat of the Night. “It was terrible. You know how he abuses people — women, specifically. And women who don’t act like bimbos who want to sit on his lap, and, you know, take their bra off. It was very insulting.”

The unpleasantness began innocently enough, with show producer, Marla Kell Brown, suggesting that she remain with Hall even after her segment was finished. “She said, ‘Just sit on the couch with him and sit with the other guests, and just be yourself.’” Johnson remembered. “I said, ‘Great! It’ll be wonderful and warm.’” But no sooner did she walk out on stage than things went downhill fast. “So I go out there, and he’s shaking my hand, and the first thing he says to me is, ‘God, you are so skinny,’” recalled the slender, 5-foot, 10-inch Los Angeles-born actress. “That’s the first thing… The way he said it was just so… like it was the only thing he could possibly say.”
After that, said Johnson, the segment just got worse. She couldn’t help but feel offended when Hall repeatedly pestered her about recent relationships, antagonizing for not keeping with her Black boyfriend, and now dating a white man….

ANNE-MARIE: “He has a problem with (Black) women dating white guys,” said Johnson. “So I’m tap-dancing, trying to get out of that, and he looks away, off-stage, where no one was standing, pantomimes an affirmative nod – towards some imaginary stage manager – and looks back at me, insisting, ‘Well, your time’s up. Thank you very much. And I don’t like the way the light’s looking on you, so why don’t you just stand backstage, and watch from there.’“

Johnson then got up, “zombie-like,” and started walking backstage. The segment producers tried to corral her back towards the couch, apologizing for their boss’ behavior, but she had had it. “I said, ‘Never again’ …I wasn’t playing his game. They called me for like a year afterwards, ‘Please come, please come.’ And I said, ‘You will never, ever see me on that show again.’ And I’m sticking to it.”
― Arsenio Hall, Arsenio: A Memoir