Arsenio Hall

***Arsenio Hall*** (February 12, 1955 or February 12, 1956, Cleveland, Ohio, USA)| title= Arsenio Hall Biography: Talk Show Host, Film Actor, Television Actor, Comedian (1956–) | publisher=Biography.com (FYI / A&E Networks | accessdate= May 5, 2016}}</ref> (sources vary) is an American comedian, actor, and talk show host. He is best known for hosting The Arsenio Hall Show, a late-night talk show that ran from 1989 until 1994, and a revival of the same show from 2013 to 2014.

Other television shows and films Hall has appeared in are Martial Law, Star Search (host), Coming to America (1988), and Harlem Nights (1989). Hall is also known for his appearance as Alan Thicke's sidekick on the talk show Thicke of the Night.

In 2012, Hall won NBC's reality-competition game show Celebrity Apprentice 5.

Hall later moved to Chicago, and then Los Angeles, to pursue a career in comedy, making a couple of appearances on Soul Train. In 1984, he was the announcer/sidekick for Alan Thicke during the short-lived talk show Thicke of the Night (a role for which he has on occasion noted his confusion with Monty Hall). Arsenio was the original voice of Winston Zeddemore in the cartoon The Real Ghostbusters from 1986 to 1987. In 1988, he co-starred in the comedy film Coming to America with Eddie Murphy.

n 1986, the Fox network introduced The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, created to directly challenge The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. After a moderate start, ratings for the show sagged. Behind-the-scenes relations between Rivers and network executives at Fox quickly eroded, and Rivers left in 1987. The series was subsequently renamed The Late Show, and featured several hosts, including Ross Shafer, Suzanne Somers, Richard Belzer and Robert Townsend before it was cancelled in 1988. Hall was also chosen to host the show in the fall of 1987, and his stint proved to be immensely popular, developing a cult following which eventually led to Hall landing his own show in syndication.

From January 2, 1989 until May 27, 1994, he had a Paramount contract to host a nationwide syndicated late night talk show, The Arsenio Hall Show. The show became a breakout, late-night success, especially rating high among the coveted younger demographic and known for its audience's distinctive alternative to applause in chanting, "Roo, Roo, Roo!," while pumping their fists. The practice soon became such a ritual that by 1991 had become a "pop culture stamp of approval" — one that Hall said had become "so popular it's getting on people's nerves." The gesture made it into films of the time such as the title character played by Julia Roberts did it in a polo scene in Pretty Woman (1990) and characters played by Penny Marshall and Michael J. Fox did it in The Hard Way. In Disney's Aladdin (1992), the Genie character voiced by Robin Williams performs the gesture while mimicking the physical appearance of Hall. This popular gesture can also be found in the 1993 Mel Brooks' comedy, Robin Hood: Men in Tights. It was also seen in the movie Passenger 57, in which an old woman confuses the character played by Wesley Snipes with Arsenio Hall, and after saving the day, the passengers on the hijacked plane do the gesture toward the protagonist.