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, created by the Dancer Fitzgerald Sample advertising agency. Life and career Born in Imperial Russia, 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. Wendy's campaign First airing on January 10, 1984, the Wendy's commercial portrayed a fictional fast-food competitor named "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 and Canada. The diminutive octogenarian actress made the three-word phrase a cultural phenomenon, and herself