Arnie Warren, former radio personality, 73
La N
Former radio personality Arnie Warren dies
BY ELINOR J. BRECHER
Arnie Warren, who began his South Florida radio career as Moon Cat, a
pop-spinning disc jockey on WKAT in the early 1960s then created the
popular, half-fictional team of Arnie and Amos, died of a heart attack on
April 19. He was 73.
Warren, who lived with his wife, Kathleen Field Warren in Wellington, also
worked in television, taught television production at Lindsey Hopkins
Vocational School, gave motivational speeches, and wrote several business
books, including The Great Connection (Pallium Books, 1997), published in 12
languages.
A member of the National Speakers Association and past president of the
Florida Speakers Association, Warren had a smooth baritone, flawless diction
and a facility for accents.
''When he read to us, he was Dr. Seuss,'' recalled his daughter, Leslie
Warren of Leesburg, Va.
He read books-on-tape for the blind and appeared in high-profile
commercials.
''He was the spokesman for Levitz furniture,'' Leslie said, and hosted a
local game show called Bowling for Dollars.
During the 1970s, the entire Warren family appeared in Ethan Allen
commercials. As Arnie listed South Florida store locations, his son, Chris,
popped out from behind a piece of furniture chirping, ``and Pompano!''
Arnold Warren Jr., born in Fall River, Mass., was the son of Ina Warren, an
opera singer/pianist, and Arnold Sr., the local newspapers' printing press
manager.
Through his mother, he discovered the performing arts as a preschooler and,
said his daughter, knew immediately what he would do as an adult.
''He learned that. . .he could make people laugh and he fell in love with
that,'' Leslie Warren said.
By 10, he was singing difficult pieces with his mother's church choir, and
''he could tickle the ivories with the best of them,'' Leslie Warren added.
A multi-instrumentalist, he played the ukulele ``with style and grace.''
After graduating from Northfield-Mt. Hermon, a prestigious Massachusetts
prep school, Warren attended Michigan State University, where he studied
hotel management, then graduated from the University of Miami as an
English/speech major.
There, he met his first wife, Joan Trout, from whom he was later divorced.
After college, to his parents' surprise, he joined a band, Sonny Bloch and
his Coralairs, which played Miami Beach's Rock'n M.B. Lounge and then toured
Cuba in the late 1950s.
They had a modest hit with the Christmas song, Buona Natale.
''It was going over big when the Chipmunks came along and edged us out,''
Warren quipped to The Miami Herald in 1965.
Warren's first radio gig was the midnight shift at WKAT. At the time, Sid
Levin was vice president/general manager.
''Arnie was remarkably inventive and clever, a lifelong student of whatever
he was doing: communication, humor, storytelling,'' Levin said.
Realizing that ''his bosses were asleep'' during his broadcasts, Warren
began ''to tell wonderful stories'' while he played music.
''He was too good for the middle of the night,'' Levin said, and was given
the coveted morning drive slot.
Warren's show evolved into a talk format which in turn inspired him to
create Amos Rutledge, a crusty old Mainer who would ''talk'' to Arnie -- in
a thick New England Yankee accent -- on a specially wired microphone.
Amos, a weatherman, supposedly was stationed atop what was then the Dade
County Courthouse.
''They'd generally talk about the weather, a little lobstering, then it got
into women,'' Levin recalled. ``It was a wonderfully odd little feature . .
. People bought it and loved it.''
The Arnie and Amos act survived for 13 years on WKAT, WGBS and WIOD.
The fictional Amos, of Kennebunkport, Maine, even ran for president in
1972 -- on the American Dream Party ticket. His running mate? Longtime
WPLG-ABC10 weatherman Walter Cronise.
''No less than 85,000 automobiles in Dade, Broward and Monroe counties bear
bumper stickers emblazoned with the Rutledge name,'' The Miami Herald
reported at the time.
He then became ''Commander Bolt'' on a children's television show and worked
as a weekend weatherman on WTVJ-TV.
In 1982, when Warren retired from broadcasting and joined the Plantation
advertising agency, Brown/Dau and Associates, he told The Miami Herald:
``This is the first 9-5 job I ever had in my life. It's nice to be in sync
with the whole world, finally.''
But in 1985, Warren left Florida for KMOX in St. Louis, a high-powered
station that was heard from Chicago to Texas. He was a celebrity
interviewer, chatting with the likes of First Lady Rosalynn Carter, singer
Mel Torme and comic Phyllis Diller.
The station's reach made Warren's voice familiar to millions of listeners,
many of whom never forgot it.
''We were in a museum in Heidelberg [Germany] and dad was explaining a piece
of artwork,'' Leslie said. 'This couple came up and said, `Are you Arnie
Warren?' ''
He became a prolific public speaker, wrote a sequel to The Great Connection,
and several other business books, then began working on a historical novel,
unfinished at his death.
During a recent period when he developed writer's block, ''he did the
damnest thing,'' said Sid Levin. ''He went to work for Apple [computer] for
three months. . .He loved his experience with the young people and was still
learning from that. It unhinged something with the character,'' so Warren
went back to writing.
His latest work was The Story of Chautauqua, a stage presentation about a
late 19th Century/early 20th Century adult education movement.
His website is greatconnection.com.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Arnie Warren is survived by son
Christopher H. Warren of Bradenton, and Kathleen's children: Chrissie Field
of New York and Jack Field of Fort Lauderdale.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday at the T.M. Ralph Plantation
Funeral Home, 7001 NW Fourth St., Plantation.
In lieu of flowers, the family welcomes donations to Insight for the Blind,
insightftb.org.