DINA FIGGONE Ice Burial
     A frozen endurance stunt (performed by a woman) long before David Blaine was encased in ice. The now-familiar dramatic elements are all there: the medical personnel (a worried nurse), the solemn male assistant, the concerned looks. Host Art Baker plays along, hugging his winter coat to emphasize the cold (in most of these shows, you'll see how the producers dress up Baker whenever they can). Nice touch: sealing the ice casket with snow.
      This half-hour stunt uses the then-fresh approach of opening the show with the entombment and then checking in throughout the show until the finale. No word who the ever-silent Dina was or what became of her (or "Nurse Sterling"), but that's part of the charm of You Asked For It: the random, surprising kaleidoscope of acts that you'd never seen and might never hear from again.

SENOR MALDO Substitution Trunk
     Note how the show angles this routine as a rare example of a magician entering into a trunk instead of escaping from one (Ricky Jay has called this approach "enterology"). The version here is an old-style, earthy Metamorphosis that stresses the ruggedness of the prop and the thorough bonds. The elegantly dressed matador drags and shoves his trunk around and Art Baker gets a workout as he helps heft Senorita Paolita into the trunk.
      At the climax, Art has trouble with the knots and finally asks the assistant for help. It looks like the magician is having quite a struggle inside that bag, and when Senor emerges from the sack with a surprise finale, you'll understand why.

IRBY Milk Can Escape
      Art Baker tells us Bess Houdini endorsed Irby, a sort of working man's escape artist. The show loved the bald Irby, and he pops up often in these DVDs with his manly stunts. Here Irby has chosen some unique half-leopard-skin briefs for his Milk Can escape, which for once is performed with actual milk instead of water.
     The presentation has the classic pieces: ticking clock, ominous music, warnings of danger, and the ax-wielding assistant (plus a great shot of a superimposed clock face).

KUDA BUX Blindfold Drive
      On location in Santa Monica, California, Kuda Bux gets his eyes covered in dough, cotton, and bandages with the mayor's help before getting behind the wheel of a convertible for a spin through this mid-century beach town. Art Baker has to speak up for Kuda to hear him through all those layers, and the host doesn't expect the muffled mystic to respond. (Is there really no ordinance against driving blindfolded in Santa Monica?) Kuda Bux passes every test though he has to squeal to a stop when he returns.

IRBY The Lady and the Tiger
      Our hero Irby (billed as "The Master of Danger") is genuinely in danger here. He's within frightening reach of that tiger, who swipes at Irby's irresistibly waving arms like a cat pawing a piece of yarn and in the end pulls the jacket from the escape artist's hands with his teeth.
     Irby gets points for a pretty exciting straitjacket presentation and having the blind confidence to perform it. The swinging blade is a painted fake, but Irby earns showmanship bonuses for the girl and the rope slide. His costume this time is a matching strongman suit, gloves, and sandals from more of that leopard-skin fabric.

GEORGE PAL Houdini Films
      The public's fascination with Houdini leads Art Baker to the screening room to view a clip from 1920's Terror Island . Harry's nailed into a packing crate and jettisoned into the water before undersea photography shows Houdini's escape prowess while wearing a tie, collared shirt, and shoes.
     Next comes the great trapped-under-ice scene from the 1953 Houdini movie with Tony Curtis. That's really the Belle Isle Bridge in Detroit, where Houdini actually performed a packing-crate escape in 1906.

DANTE Sawing a Woman in Half
     Watch the fifty candle flames on the cake commemorating Dante's half-century in magic, most of them featuring a magician's historically present goatee. The gracious if somewhat tired-sounding Dante leads the lovely Moi-Yo Miller into an old-fashioned Sawing, but only after she legally releases Dante and the show's sponsors from any liability. He uses the lost-to-time ploy of gazing into a crystal ball to hypnotize her, and notice how Dante attentively glances at Miller to make sure she's really asleep (unlike many modern-day illusionists, whose hypnotic spells are apparently risk-free enough to be cast and basically forgotten).
      The table looks a bit thicker than Dante's stated "four inches," but many small touches make this segment a surprisingly effective early version of this classic. With the boxes locked and Moi-Yo's feet and head held, Dante and his pageboy assistant loudly saw through real wood with real effort. An assistant walks through the halves and the feet prove authentic, then the head half of the box is paraded around. And, hey, there's that age-old gag of pulling on the girl's feet to make the blade fall!

FRAKSON Cigarettes and Cards
      A TV-only cigarette production opens this smoke-filled sample of the great Spanish magician's headlining nightclub act. (Say, how come the requesting viewer "Harold Kahn" looks so much like Frakson?) Making small objects play big with smoke, sparks, and snaps, Frakson risks cancer for our entertainment pleasure. With great routining and a million-peso smile, Jose vanishes and produces cigarette after cigarette in front of a supremely contrasting black background (including, for some reason, a vent figure). Narrating in his pleasant accent, Frakson sips water before blowing clouds of smoke, in many ways more convincingly than in the now-fashionable smoking thumb routines using hand-held gimmicks.
     Frakson continues with some skillful card flourishes and ends a bit anticlimactically with a spot-card routine, perhaps to fill some extra time, but even this he manages to render more artistic than usual.

MR. X Gambling Trickery
      Having traded a sinful life of gambling for scripture, the masked Mr. X unloads his repentance on television. He misses the "blanket roll" the first time and proceeds with decent explanations of fake throws and gimmicked dice, but his switches are good enough to make you start wondering who exactly was the well-tailored Mr. X. When he starts to repeatedly back-palming pairs of dice during a throw, you'll really ask who this masked man was. Nice idea from Mr. X: use a gambling act to promote the Bible.

THINK-A-DRINK HOFFMAN Any Drink Called For
      Here posing as the "world's highest paid soda jerk," nightclub favorite Charles "Think-A-Drink" Hoffman mans the malt-shop counter and turns water into family-friendly, non-alcoholic drinks like tomato juice, grape drink, lemonade, milk, Coca Cola, and - surprise! - chocolate soda. Black-and-white television makes all the drinks look like various shades of gray, so audience members have to verify the tame concoctions and their colors (this may explain Hoffman's relative absence from TV appearances). Host Art Baker miscalls the grape drink as cherry, but under the hot spotlights, the spectator still says it tastes and looks like cherry soda.
     Hoffman continues with orange drink and root beer, turns water into hot coffee and cream, producing the sugar and spoon, and concludes - for a laugh - with a glass of foaming seltzer.

EARL LOCKMAN Paper Bag Escape
      The often-published, little-performed paper bag escape begins with a not-so-subtle promotion for L.A. 's Bemis Bag Company. Ignoring Lockman's prominent geometric scarf, Baker tries to add drama by invoking suffocation and claustrophobia, but when Earl runs overtime, the host seems at a loss to improvise anything more ominous than counting the seconds of dead air that prolong Lockman's inevitable triumph over fifty-pound kraft paper. Signing the back is a nice touch, and the routine concludes with the bag master's sound advice that the puzzled audience should "try to figure it out."

KUDA BUX Blindfold Routine
     The intense eyes of Kuda Bux, "one of the most incredible men of the twentieth century," as host Art Baker proclaims, open his fifth appearance on You Asked For It. Once again, his eyes may be shielded but his vision remains undiminished as he lights Art Baker's cigarette, duplicates blackboard script, shoots balloons, captures goldfish, and avoids swigging acid. One hopes he "accrued the bucks" for his many silent, oxygen-deficient efforts on the show.

NICKY Canine Math
      The dog's mumbling master keeps his hand in his pocket as Nicky counts, despite his assurance to Art Baker that he's not cueing his top pupil. Even so, the Australian shepherd takes three tries to get four minus two correct..

IRBY Canvas-Covered Box Escape
      Dramatic shadows simulate jail-cell bars over the face of "The Master of Danger" as the segment opens. Striking black-and-white images like this and the use of lighting and dramatic shadows turn many of the You Asked or It magic spots into moments of near-cinematic impact.
     A viewer has supposedly proposed that Irby perform the Herbert Brooks canvas-covered box escape, creepily specifying that the trunk looks hardly large enough to contain "the body of a five year-old boy."
     Having invested in a tuxedo to temporarily replace his jungle-themed garb, Irby presents what he says is Brooks' priceless original trunk, though apparently not valuable enough to prevent Irby from mounting his name on it. After Irby has been inserted and intricately laced, one of the awaiting assistants looks like he's going to have a heart attack. The "Master of Escape" finally succeeds, a bit better than he succeeds in repeating his memorized lines.