Clara Peller
Clara PellerClara Peller (August 4, 1902 – August 11, 1987), was a manicurist and American character actress who, at the age of 81, starred in the 1984 "Where's the beef?" advertising campaign for the Wendy's fast food restaurant chain, created by the Dancer Fitzgerald Sample advertising agency.
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. 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.
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.
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