He was best known for performing comedic routines as his alter-ego Charley Weaver on numerous television and radio shows.

[citation needed] Arquette is credited for inventing the modern rubber theatrical prosthetic mask, which was flexible enough to allow changing facial expressions, and porous enough to allow air to reach the actor's skin.

[8] Arquette had previously created the character of "Charley Weaver, the wild old man from Mount Idy".

This characterization proved so popular that Arquette almost never again appeared in public as himself, but almost always as Charley Weaver, complete with his squashed hat, little round glasses, rumpled shirt, broad tie, baggy pants, and suspenders.

Arquette could often convulse Paar and the audience into helpless laughter by way of his timing and use of double entendres in describing the misadventures of his fictional family and townspeople.

As Paar noted, in his foreword to Arquette's first Charley Weaver book: Sometimes his jokes are old, and I live in the constant fear that the audience will beat him to the punch line, but they never have.

Arquette's Charley Weaver character was a fixture on the TV game show Hollywood Squares for many years, always sitting in the lower left corner of the tic-tac-toe board.