"How Are You, Baby?"

The husky, caressing voice murmurs: "Hello, muffin, this is your lonesome gal. How are you tonight, baby? Your lonesome gal loves you better than anybody in the world, just remember that . . ." These fudgelike endearments, dripping from U.S. radios every weekday night, cause chest flutterings and glassy stares in cross-country truck-and-trailer rigs, diners, Army barracks and teen-age bedrooms from El Pasp to Boston.

The alluring voice belongs to a tall, slender woman who looks something like Rosalind Russell and wants to be known only as Lonesome Gal. She is not at all anxious to tell the world that her name is Jean King, that she is 32, and that she lives in Hollywood. "I'm not a person: I'm a symbol," she says dramatically. "These guys think of me as their gal--lonely, like them; and wanting affection, like them."

Hooked Idea. Before becoming the anonymous idol of her panting fans, Texas-born Jean King was a singer, a movie bit player (Tarzan and the Amazons) and a radio actress. In 1947, marooned in Dayton, Ohio, she went on station WING as a disc jockey. "I was damned lonely in Dayton," she recalls. "So I just hooked onto this idea and talked about my loneliness. And, you know, I found out there are a lot of lonesome people in this world."

Her discovery is paying off at the rate of about $100,000 a year. In the six months since Lonesome Gal has become a recorded, nationwide show, it has found' sponsors for its beery sentimentality on all but one of its 57 stations; appropriately, most of the sponsors are brewers. But in writing her own purple-prose commercials, Jean tries not to offend teetotalers : "After all, beer is here. I try to explain it as a wonderful refreshment--people don't have to become gluttons."

Something Impersonal. Off the air, she switches from sexy voice to hard-working businesswoman, records 285 programs a week--a different one for each city. To get the proper "hometown atmosphere" she corresponds with chambers of commerce across the nation, getting the names of local streets, parks and people. This week Jean was laboring her usual twelve hours a day in her new $5,000 studio. Built inside her home, it is equipped with a microphone sensitive enough to pick up each wisp of her breath and every sugary nuance of her voice.

Lonesome Gal is resigned to being misunderstood by the rest of her sex. "Some girls think I'm trying to steal their guys, but I'm not. I just say things a lot of girls don't have the nerve to say to their men." Has anyone considered her show suggestive? "I never say more than 'I'd like to kiss you on the end of the nose'--something impersonal like that," she explains indignantly. "I might tell a guy how nice it would be to spend a weekend in a small and charming hotel--but I always add: 'If we were married.' "

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