Bernard Arnold, 88; Friars Club Regular Wrote for Milton Berle

Bernard “Buddy” Arnold, 88, a key writer for Milton Berle for half a century, died Wednesday at Indian River Memorial Hospital in Vero Beach, Fla., of unspecified causes. He had suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Arnold moved to Florida from Los Angeles three years ago.

Born in New York City where he attended what was then City College of New York, he served in the Army during World War II. He began writing for variety shows in New York after the war, and soon was introduced to Berle. They became, in Arnold’s words, “closer than brothers.” Both became regulars at the Friars Clubs of New York and of Beverly Hills.

At Berle’s request for help with the new medium of television in 1948, Arnold and Woody Kling created the four Texaco men and their well-known ditty to open Berle’s innovative “Texaco Star Theater.” Each week the quartet sang, “Oh, we’re the men of Texaco, We work from Maine to Mexico, There’s nothing like this Texaco of ours. Our show tonight is powerful. We’ll wow you with an hour-full of howls from a showerful of stars....” With Berle, Arnold also wrote the song “Lucky Me.”

In addition to Berle, Arnold wrote for Red Buttons, Ray Bolger and Andy Williams, and for the television shows “Your Hit Parade,” “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Jackie Gleason Show” and “The Jimmy Dean Show.” Among songs that carry Arnold’s credit are “It Only Takes a Moment,” “Summer Love” and “If I Knew You Were There.”