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4’10”, 83-year-old shrill-voiced actress named Clara Peller, in a commercial for fast-food giant Wendy’s, became a popular catchphrase. And even though the commercial featured two other senior ladies trying to order a burger at a fast-food restaurant, Peller was the attention-getter.

A POWERFUL STATEMENT
    The ad is deliciously simple compared to some of today’s commercials. In it, three senior ladies, whose heads barely reach the counter of a restaurant that bills itself as the “Home of the Big Bun,” are less than impressed by the hamburger they’ve ordered. Two of the women marvel at the size of the fluffy bun, but Peller asks three times, “Where’s the beef?” (Peller’s only other lines in the ad are “Hey” and “I don’t think there’s anybody back there.”)
    “Where’s the beef?” became such a recognizable catchphrase that Peller recorded a single of the same name (with Nashville shock jock Coyote McCloud). More famously, the phrase took on new meaning in the 1984 Democratic presidential candidate debates, when Walter Mondale used it against Gary Hart. (A decision that bumped Mondale up in the polls, too). “Where’s the
beef?” was licensed in a major merchandising deal and emblazoned on T-shirts, underwear, coffee mugs, and towels.
    Not bad for a commercial that almost didn’t make it on the air. Just one week before it was scheduled to run, Wendy’s got cold feet when test audiences reacted negatively to the ad. The ad copywriter had to talk the Wendy’s team into sticking with his vision. And it paid off. Annual revenues for Wendy’s jumped 31 percent after the spots began airing, and the fast-food chain moved from fifth to third place in the industry. In 1988, the ad spot was named a “Clio Classic” at the annual Clio Awards, the most prestigious prize given in the advertising industry.

THE TEAM BEHIND THE FLUFFY BUN
    Wendy’s had wanted to bump up its sales in the early 1980s, so the company turned to a 41-year-old copywriter named Clifford Freeman, employed by the Madison Avenue advertising agency of Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. Freeman had created several ads that used humor to make their point (like “Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don’t” for Mounds and Almond Joy). Wendy’s was betting that his approach could give them a bigger bite of the market.
    What Freeman came up with was called “Fluffy Bun,” even though the world would forever remember it as “Where’s the beef?” Freeman wrote the simple line before he knew which actress would deliver it. He left the job of hiring to director Joe Sedelmaier.
    Sedelmaier was famous in the ad business, too. He was the guy behind a 1980s Federal Express commercial featuring the fastest talker in the world, and he had a knack for picking out nonactors and “personalities” instead of professional actors for his spots. It was Sedelmaier who cast the little-known Peller based on her work in a previous commercial for a truck-rental company called Jartran. (In that commercial, Peller played a woman moving her belongings—which included a lot of pet rabbits—while her husband slept.)

A STAR IS BORN
    Peller was a Russian native who’d come to the United States as a girl. She’d worked as a beautician and manicurist for 35 years and had only decided to give acting a try after she retired. She made her commercial debut for Jartran in 1983, but it was the Wendy’s
spot that made her a household name. Peller’s lack of theatrical training shows in the spot; she looks a bit confused and out of sorts. But it didn’t matter. Her presence and grouchy delivery of her short lines were comedic gold.
    She made only the actor’s union scale—$317.40 per day—for the first Wendy’s commercial, but for her follow-up commercials for the chain—a total of 10 in all—she reportedly made $500,000. She was quoted later as saying, “I made some money, which is nice for an older person, but Wendy’s made millions