WHERE’S THE BEEF? The Grave of Clara Peller and the Real Reason Wendy’s Fired the 80’s Icon

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Clara Peller (August 4, 1902 – August 11, 1987) was a Russian-born American manicurist and television personality who, already an octogenarian, starred in the 1984 "Where's the beef?" advertising campaign for the Wendy's fast food restaurant chain.

Born in Imperial Russia,[1] in 1902, one of eight or nine children born to Wolf Swerdlove (Swerdlov/Sverdlov; died 1949) and Yudis (aka "Julia" or "Judith") Tilkin (or Tilken; died 1952), young Clara spent most of her early life in Chicago. Her father left Russia when he was being drafted for the second time, and they settled down in Illinois. Clara married at age 20 to a local jeweler, William Peller. They had a son (Leslie) and a daughter (Marlene), but later divorced. She never remarried. She worked for 35 years as a manicurist at a local Chicago beauty salon, and later moved to the suburban North Shore area to be near her daughter, Marlene Necheles.

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", and later nationally in a series of commercials for the Wendy's restaurant chain.

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 acknowledged in an interview with People magazine that she had earned $30,000 from the first two commercials and profits from product tie-in sales. Wendy's later stated 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 responded, "I've made them millions, and they don't appreciate me."

Peller died on August 11, 1987, in Chicago, one week after her 85th birthday, from congestive heart failure. She is buried at Waldheim Jewish Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.