Clara Peller

Life and career

Born in Illinois, Clara Peller lived for most of her early life in Chicago, although she later moved to the suburban North Shore area to be near her daughter, Marlene Necheles. Married at age 20 to a local jeweler, she was divorced eight years later, with two children, a boy and a girl. She worked for 35 years as a manicurist at a local Chicago beauty salon.

At age 80, Peller was hired as a temporary manicurist for a television commercial set in a Chicago barbershop. Impressed by her no-nonsense manners and unique voice, the agency later asked her to sign a contract as an actress for the agency. Though hard of hearing and suffering from emphysema, which limited her ability to speak long lines of dialogue, Peller was quickly used in a number of TV spot advertisements. She first attracted attention as a comical cleaning lady in an advertisement for the new Massachusetts State Lottery game "Megabucks" in the late 1970s, and later nationally in a series of commercials for the Wendy's Restaurant chain.

Wendy's campaign

First airing on January 10, 1984, the Wendy's commercial portrayed a fictional fast-food competitor entitled "Big Bun", where three elderly ladies are served an enormous hamburger bun containing a minuscule hamburger patty. While two of the women are commenting on the size of the bun, they are interrupted by an irascible Peller, who looks around in vain for customer assistance while making the outraged demand: "Where's the beef!" Sequels featured a crotchety Peller yelling her famous line in various scenes, such as storming drive-thru counters, or in telephone calls to a fast-food executive attempting to relax on his yacht, the 'S.S. Big Bun'.

Peller's "Where's the beef" line instantly became a catchphrase across the United States. The diminutive octogenarian actress made the three-word phrase a cultural phenomenon, and herself a cult star. At Wendy's, sales jumped 31% to $945 million in 1985 worldwide. Wendy's senior vice president for communications, Denny Lynch, stated at the time that "with Clara we accomplished as much in five weeks as we did in 14½ years." Former Vice-President Walter Mondale also used the line against rival Senator Gary Hart in his bid for the Democratic nomination in the 1984 presidential campaign.

While hugely popular, the advertising campaign proved to be short-lived, at least for Wendy's. Peller had made actor scale wages – $317.40 per day – for the initial Wendy's TV commercial of the campaign in January 1984. Her fee for subsequent work as a Wendy's spokesperson was not disclosed, though Peller admitted in an interview with People magazine to having earned US$30,000 from the first two commercials and profits from product tie-in sales. Wendy's later alleged that the company had paid Peller a total of $500,000 for her work on the campaign, though Peller denied earning that much.

Per the terms of her Screen Actors Guild union contract, the actress was free to participate in any commercials for products, goods or services, which did not directly compete with Wendy's hamburgers. She subsequently signed a contract with the Campbell Soup Company to appear in an advertisement for Prego Pasta Plus spaghetti sauce. In the Prego commercial, Peller examines the Prego sauce and after wondering "Where's the beef?" declares, "I found it! I really found it". However, after the Prego commercial aired on television in 1985, Wendy's management decided to terminate her contract, contending that the Prego commercial implies "that Clara found the beef at somewhere other than Wendy's restaurants". In announcing the dismissal, Wendy's Denny Lynch stated, "Clara can find the beef only in one place, and that is Wendy's". Peller's response was short and swift: "I've made them millions, and they don't appreciate me."

Following the conclusion of the "Where's the beef" campaign, Wendy's Restaurants entered a two-year sales slump. Vice President Lynch later admitted that consumer awareness of the Wendy's brand did not recover for another five years, with the advent of a new, humorous line of TV commercials featuring the brand's founder, Dave Thomas.

Final appearances and death

Despite the setback with Wendy's, Peller continued to make the most of her new-found fame, granting numerous press interviews and making several guest TV appearances. She regularly amused interviewers and friends by claiming not to know exactly how old she was, once telling a frustrated Social Security clerk (who was given three different ages by Peller) that she was "whichever one will get me Social Security." On April 14, 1984, Peller made an uncredited cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live which was hosted that night by 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. She also made an appearance in the low-budget 1985 Neal Israel comedy Moving Violations as the friend of Nedra Volz's character, who was a haphazard driver needing to renew her license at traffic school. In that film, Peller uttered "Where's the bags?", a reference to her Wendy's commercials fame. In Larry Cohen's The Stuff, she appeared with Abe Vigoda in a commercial shouting, "Where's the stuff?" On April 7, 1986, she made an appearance at WrestleMania 2 at Chicago's Rosemont Horizon, where she was the guest timekeeper for the 20-man invitational over-the top-rope Battle royal involving both wrestlers and NFL players of the 1970s and '80s.

Peller died on August 11, 1987, in Chicago, one week after her 85th birthday. She is buried at Waldheim Jewish Cemetery.