Not Caviar

"We haven't hit anyone in the face with a pie in over two years," says Art Linkletter wistfully. He explains: "Radio and TV are in a do-good phase these days. Everybody's busy turning some unfortunate's life into a Cinderella story." As a veteran broadcaster, 40-year-old Art Linkletter skillfully rides the trends--:rom giveaways to guessing games. And expects to still be around with such shows as his House Party (weekdays, 2:45 p.m., CBS-TV and 3:15 p.m., CBS radio) and People Are Funny (Tues. 8 p.m., CBS radio) when the public is once again in the mood for pie-throwing and seltzer-squirting.

On the air, Art Linkletter looks and sounds like the life of the party. He scampers down into the studio audience to fire questions at startled ladies; he twinkles his way through interviews with scrubbed-faced moppets; he delights in playing practical jokes on visiting husbands & wives. Fun & games is the prescription for all his shows, and Linkletter reports that the question most often asked his non-professional wife is whether he is as much fun offstage as on. He adds, quickly: "She says 'Yes.' "

Linkletter is probably the most notable living native of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. His parents moved to California when he was six, and Art worked his way through San Diego State College, won his varsity letter at basketball and swimming. A big (6 ft. i in., 210 Ibs.) and serious-minded athlete, he has only this year given up competing in National A.A.U. handball tournaments. He got into radio on a local San Diego station and has broadcast from planes, dirigibles, battleships and submarines. Once he had himself hoisted up & down the face of a skyscraper in a bosun's chair, interviewing people on each floor. Since he became a network name ten years ago with People Are Funny, Art estimates that he has interviewed more than 25,000 people on the air. He rates children and old ladies as the most cooperative talkers, young brides ("They just giggle") and sea captains ("They don't say anything") as the toughest problems.

Art's hatful of sponsors (Pillsbury flour, Green Giant peas, Kellogg cereals, Lever Bros, soaps, Mars candy bars) pay him more than $350,000 a year, which is enough to let Art indulge his favorite hobby: investments. "I love business," he says. He owns all or part of a Colorado lead mine, a Mexican magnesium plant, nine producing oil wells in Oklahoma and Texas, a low-voltage wiring company, a modeling school, a roller-skating arena, a gas well and a batch of California apartments. The only shadow on his contentment is cast by certain radio & TV critics who, Art' complains, "look down their noses at my type of show." Says he: "We don't pretend to be Studio One. But they ought to remember that all food isn't caviar, either."

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