Darlene Hayes: producer plus

DARLENE HAYES producer plus

Ask Darlene Hayes about the wildest show she's done as the producer of The Marsha Warfield Show, and she breaks into a big grin. "We had a guest cancel at the last minute and had to book someone else a half hour before the show. As luck would have it, the new guest, a stand-up comedian, got stuck in traffic. She called in her jokes on her car phone."

These days Hayes, a fortyish divorced mother of two, has a career that is grist for the talk-show mill. Producing is only the beginning of her talents. She is also a script consultant for the new cartoon series Camp Candy. And until recently she was doling out down-home advice as Dear Darlene on the recently-cancelled NBC-TV daytime talk show House Party.

Working with Warfield is particularly exciting to her. "This is the first time I've produced for a major Black talent who has an impact," she says.

Hayes, a native of Topeka, Kansas, cut her television teeth on the Donahue show, starting out as a clerk-typist and rising to senior producer during her 12 years there (an extremely uncommon career feat). "Donahue was my total television education. I went from knowing nothing to being able to have a viable career," she says.

She left Donahue in 1985 and moved to Los Angeles because she "couldn't go any higher" on the show and she wanted to pursue her dream: to write sitcoms. "The smart money was against me making it," Hayes admits. But she didn't let the naysayers deter her. "I know how to pump gas and steal oranges," she says with a laugh. "I figured I wouldn't starve or freeze in L.A."

Armed with a list of "serious" contacts, she made the cross-country trek. Within a month she had a job producing a television pilot. In between other positions she took television-writing courses at UCLA, got an agent and started sending out scripts to production companies. One year after her move west, she landed a writing internship for the NBC sitcom Amen. "I was very proud of myself," she recalls. "I had taken a fantasy, made it a goal and seen it come to fruition.

"Eventually I'll bring all my experience together," she says. "I'll write a show, produce it and be in it."

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