‘Mother Love is a character that I created. Me, personally, I am not as tolerant. She’s very compassionate.’
IT’S hard not to love Mother Love.
Just start with her name, ‘Mother” and ‘Love” – two words practically guaranteed to make you feel warm and fuzzy, especially with Mother’s Day coming this Sunday.
Mother Love herself has had the name for 22 years. She even remembers the date she thought it up: June 6, 1977, the day she gave birth to her son, Jahmal. Mother Love replaced Sister Love, a nickname she earned for her warmth and hospitality as a student at Ohio State.
‘The day my son was born, so many things went through my head when they handed me this helpless human being,” Mother Love recalled. ‘I thought to myself, I’m not Sister Love anymore. I’m Mother Love, and I saw full-blown the character at the end of my hospital bed saying to me, ‘Yeah, um-hmmm, you Mother Love, now let’s see what you gonna do!’ ”
What she did was parlay the name and the character who went along with it into a stand-up comedy career that eventually took her to local radio in Cleveland and Los Angeles, TV (‘The Home Show” on ABC), character roles in movies (‘Mr. Nanny,” with Hulk Hogan, and ‘Kazaam,” with Shaquille O’Neal) and(MD+BO) ‘Forgive Or Forget,”(MD-BO) her syndicated talk show which will be a year old next month.
Yes, Mother Love is kind of a character role, but the woman who plays her says Mother Love is a real part of her, although there are differences.
‘You know, Mother Love is a character that I created and I tweak her and I work on her and she has certain ways that she thinks about things. Me, personally, I am not as tolerant. She’s very compassionate.”
At the same time, she says, ‘Mother Love is really a big part of me. She’s another part of me that’s allowed to come out. It’s not a personality that I hide behind. She’s absolutely a persona that I want to share with the world.”
Mother Love, 45, grew up in a Cleveland housing project, one of six siblings. Her real name is Jo Anne Hart, a fact she doesn’t like to divulge, but a name that’s been widely reported anyway.
Before landing her first radio job in 1984, she worked as a schoolbus driver. When she quit, she wrote a resignation letter that read, ‘I am leaving to become a star.”
As Mother Love, she became one. ‘Forgive Or Forget” is the most successful new syndicated talk show of the 1998-99 season, possibly because of its unique format. The show, which airs weekdays at 4 p.m. on WWOR/Ch. 9, has been renewed for a second season by syndicator Twentieth Television.
On ‘Forgive Or Forget,” guests come to ask estranged friends and relatives to forgive them for past misdeeds or acts of betrayal. When forgiveness comes, heartwarming reunions are the result. When forgiveness is withheld, the results can be heartbreaking.
Whether she’s real or not, Mother Love’s sincerity certainly appears to be authentic. It didn’t seem like a put-on last Saturday night, for example, when she broke down and cried on (MD+BO)’Larry King Live”(MD-BO) on CNN. She was appearing on ‘King” to talk about the Littleton massacre, along with a panel of child psychologists.
‘It’s hard to watch people writing on a teenager’s casket,” she said, choking back tears when King asked her why she was crying.
Mother Love and her husband, who is also her business manager, have one child, Jahmal. But the couple is also raising two younger children of an acquaintance who is battling drug addiction.
‘I can’t explain to them why they’re not with their mommy,” Mother Love says. ‘All I can do is try to make them happy, to let them know that they are worth loving.”