The Voice from Forest Lawn

Art Baker, 58, was born on the Bowery, where his mother ran a settlement house, and he grew up hoping to be a clergyman. But in World War I he discovered the compelling quality of his powerful voice when he was shifted from the front lines to the rear areas with orders to lead soldiers in community sings. Back in the States he toured the country as an evangelist until he reached California and became a lecturer at Hollywood's Waugh-celebrated cemetery, Forest Lawn.

More than 5,000 graveside lectures gave Art's voice the slightly unctuous quality that has made him one of the best-paid commercial announcers on the air; he does the Chevrolet spiels on TV's Dinah Shore Show and on a radio news cast. (His grateful employers spent an estimated $4,000 building him a personal horn for his personal Chevvie; it plays the commercial jingle: "See the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet.") He has also parlayed his voice into the radio program Art.Baker's Notebook, on the air since 1938.

But his biggest show, ABC's You Asked for It, depends less on Baker's voice than on his nerves. A TV program aimed at showing its viewers whatever they want to see, You Asked for It has required Baker to stand still while a knife-thrower ringed his body with blades, an archer sent steel-tipped arrows whistling through balloons held close to his side, and a marksman shot the ace of spades out of his hand. He has been hoisted head-high by Ada Ash, billed as "the world's strongest woman." As his show last week was entering its sixth year for the same sponsor (Skippy Peanut Butter), You Asked's cameras interviewed the dietician for San Diego's zoo, poked into an exhibition of whipcracking and sharpshooting, covered a test cracking of office safes and dived with Navy frogmen in action.

Letters from viewers pour in at a rate of 1,500 a week. "The kids' requests show the effect of comic books," says Baker sadly. "They're always wanting horrible things like two trains crashing into each other at 90 miles an hour." An entire grade of Minneapolis schoolchildren wrote in asking to see Joan of Arc burned at the stake. There was only one dissenter in the class: he wanted to see a ship blow up in midocean.

Baker still has enough evangelistic faith to hope that his program is worthwhile. He says: "We're not an educational show --you're committing suicide if you try to be educational--but we do actually teach things. We never have a dirty show, never any innuendos, so any kid can watch us without harmful effects."

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