Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 11, 1991 TAG: 9104100258
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANA E. LUNDIN/ LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
Oh, child of MTV . . . you know we're giving it up for Arsenio Hall, whose late night barks and cranks have become a hip, loud, wild symbol of approval for the pop culture.
Applause at a Bell Biv Devoe concert?
Jump back.
Tired old hand claps have been replaced by rapid-fire woofs and raised, rotating fists.
It's even on celluloid.
Julia Roberts cranks it up at a polo match in the box-office smash "Pretty Woman." Ditto for Penny Marshall and Michael J. Fox, who woof in "The Hard Way," which opened Friday.
Even Hall is amazed at how his jesting gesture has caught on with his viewers, the demographically desirable 18- to 34-year-old children of rival/idol Johnny Carson's audience (who has his own well-known trademark, the swinging of the air golf club).
"It's so popular it's getting on people's nerves," the 31-year-old Hall admitted, at once sheepish and proud.
The host parodied himself on the second anniversary of "The Arsenio Hall Show" in January. A fake "lost episode" was discovered, in which Hall - with a mighty large Afro and very bad platform shoes - hosted his first talk show in the '70s.
The bark and crank hadn't yet evolved to the symbol they've become today. Instead, Hall was snapping his fingers and . . . meowing.
Woof.
Give it up.
Barks are a Cleveland thang, something Hall, a native son, knows very well.
If you're a Browns fan, you're already familiar with the legend of the Dawgs. Wearing dog masks and hard hats, the fans at the end zone throw Milk Bones onto the gridiron and woof it up mercilessly at the opposing players.
"The big thing in Cleveland is to bark," Hall said. "I always like to explain that because there's nothing new. I just think you're a product of your environment and you bring that to wherever you go."
Now Cleveland, the city Hall affectionately refers to as "the mistake on the lake," has been immortalized beyond its renown for being the home of the burning Cuyahoga River.
"I brought a little bit of Cleveland to late-night television because I didn't have an Ed McMahon," Hall said. "And because I didn't have an Ed McMahon, I obviously didn't have a `Hey-oh!' You need something."
Even though Carson does have an Ed McMahon, he needed something, too, and has been taking a swing at an imaginary golf ball since he became host of NBC's "The Tonight Show" on Oct. 1, 1962.
Carol Burnett still tugs on one of her earlobes on each episode of "Carol & Company," a quirky little mannerism she started in the '60s as a signal to her grandmother that she was doing fine.
You'll also remember Jackie Gleason and his shuffle, Chevy Chase and the fall he took before "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night," David Letterman and his toss of the cards that supposedly shatters the glass on the wall behind his on-stage desk.
And don't forget Tracey Ullman in her bathrobe imploring her audience in her cockney accent to "Go home!" with a dramatic waving of her arms.
Those gestures are the recognized signatures of the television entertainer who used them night after night, week after week.
But none has caught on with the masses like Hall's woofs.
"I call it a sense of unity, a sense of pride among young people like myself," said 19-year-old filmmaker Matty Rich, a guest this week on Hall's show who came on stage cranking.
"It's something that he started and a lot of people appreciate," said Rich, whose "Straight Out of Brooklyn" was the Sundance Film Festival's winning entry earlier this year. "It's a way of saying, `We love what you're doing . . . Keep pushing, keep doing it.' "
The barking might come straight out of Cleveland, but the crank comes straight out of the gym, where the younger Hall used to hang out. After someone slam-dunked a basket, Hall would crank it up in approval. One night when his audience began barking, Hall cranked it up - and voila! a symbol was born.
"It was just something I married with the bark," he said.
That marriage has produced offspring that are everywhere.
"I was in a mall and a guy walked up to me and said, `Woof, woof,' " said Hall, raising his voice to emphasize those two barks. "I said, `Oh yeah, that is obnoxious.' "
It's one thing when it's done in a crowd, like at a concert. It's another matter entirely when it's done in your face.
"I said, `Wow, that's a hook I don't know if I want,' " Hall said. "I guess it's a way of saying, `I know your stuff, man. I watch your show.' It was weird. I never had anyone walk up to me and do it like that."
But it's far too late to take back the bark.
One Sunday at his church, with Hall sitting unrecognized in the balcony, the youth choir had just finished a spirited Baptist gospel hymn.
And then they barked and cranked it up for the soloist.
"The Bible said, `Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.' I guess he never knew it would come to this," Hall said with his familiar toothy grin.
He had a different kind of spiritual experience when Julia Roberts cranked it up on "Pretty Woman." "That's the most exciting," he said. "That's the first time I ever saw it outside of my show."
The bark is what gives Hall his bite. His celebrity interviews have as much depth as the carmel crust on top of a creme brulee, for which he makes no apologies. "I'm not there to put a wrench in anybody's persona," he said.
Nightly, 3 million households tune into his syndicated talk show (which airs at weeknights at midnight on WSET, Channel 13 in the Roanoke viewing area), finishing a respectable second in late-night gab fests to "The Tonight Show," which regularly pulls in 4.5 million viewers.
His charismatic style is not without its critics, though.
"He's a bright and humorous guy, but his interest is not in doing comedy, it's pretty much in having, as he describes it, a party on the air," said David Letterman's head writer, Steve O'Donnell, last June.
"A lot of what makes the excitement of a party is repeated mannerisms and gestures of rituals. And I wonder if that holds up. I know Carson has had his golf swing forever, but are [Hall's] mannerisms going to hold up?"
We'll see.
Because Hall isn't quite finished with it yet.
"I'll just do it until people say that's tired, that's out," he said. "I remember a time when I thought I would always have a big Afro like Tito Jackson, you know? . . . Now, I look at old pictures, and it's frightening."
And hey - it isn't like Hall popularized another kind of hand gesture that perhaps has a more negative connotation.
"Maybe some people consider it obnoxious and hate it because it's synonomous with me," he said "but I like it because it's something that is positive and is used as a symbol of approval for things that you like."
And he knows the MTV generation will once again get bored barking.
"Everything grows and evolves to something else," Hall said. "I think it's like anything else in our culture. It's replaced by whatever the new thing is."
by CNB