Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards (11 page)

Then it came time to let the wolves go. At first, when scientists opened the front enclosure gates, the wolves wouldn’t venture into the park. Instead, they avoided the front gate and spent most of their time at the rear of their pens. But when the back gates were finally removed, the wolves moved out. Before they did, each
wolf was outfitted with a radio collar so that scientists could follow the animal’s movements and study its behavior.

Yellowstone’s new wolf population fared surprisingly well. The first 14 animals quickly bore two litters, totaling nine pups. By the spring of 1997, 13 litters totaling 64 pups had been born. In addition, 10 young orphaned wolves were released into the park in early 1997. Today, more than 700 wolves live in Yellowstone, and about 1,500 total live in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. All of those are descendants of the original Yellowstone wolves.

Good news, right? Sort of. The resurgence of the wolf population in the western United States angered ranchers, who argued that the animals’ growing numbers put their livestock at risk. In fact, over the last 35 years, ranchers have maintained that the wolf problem was getting out of hand and that government protection needed to be lifted.

In 2008, they found an ally in President George W. Bush, whose administration declared that the wolves no longer needed protection and removed them from the endangered species list. This left the job of protecting the wolves up to the individual states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. The response of Idaho’s governor, C. L. Otter, who “bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself,” wasn’t reassuring to environmentalists. They argued that for the wolf populations to really rebound, between 2,000 and 5,000 animals should occupy the three states—not the 1,500 there now. Debate and legal wrangling continue as the wolves (and the folks who love them) await their fate.

Clara Peller and Wendy’s
“Where’s the Beef” Commercial

Tuesday, January 10, 1984, was the first time Americans heard the phrase “Where’s the beef?” It definitely wouldn’t be the last. Almost instantly, the question asked by a 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.

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.

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.)

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 because of me.”

When all was said and done, Peller was a celebrity, making appearances on
Saturday Night Live
and in the 1985 movie
Moving Violations
. She continued to get commercial work as well, but when she proclaimed, “I found it!” in a Prego spaghetti sauce commercial in 1985, Wendy’s had a beef with her. She would no longer star in any more ads for the chain. William Welter, an EVP for Wendy’s, told the
New York Times
, “Unfortunately, Clara’s appearance in the [Prego] ads makes it extremely difficult for her to serve as a credible spokesperson for our products.”

In 1987, exactly one week after her 85th birthday, Peller passed away. But her legacy lives on in American pop culture.

“Take on Me” by a-ha

It took a while for the world to take to “Take on Me.” Luckily, the Norwegian band a-ha had a record company that believed the group was destined for stardom thanks to the band members’ matinee-idol good looks and the vocal range of lead singer Morten Harket. The trio (Harket, guitarist Paul Waak-taar Savoy, and keyboardist Magne Furuholmen) moved to London in the early 1980s to try to get a record deal and finally succeeded in late 1983 when Warner Bros.’ U.K. division signed them. They released “Take on Me,” a catchy pop song about the nervousness of falling in love, in the fall of 1984, but the song lacked a hook. Its midtempo beat was overpowered by synthesizer effects that distracted listeners from Harket’s powerhouse voice. The familiar chorus of “Take on me/Take me on/I’ll be gone/In a day or two” was there, of course, but the energy of the song was plodding.

Nevertheless, Warner Bros. still felt they had a potential hit band on their hands, and they wanted to recoup the initial investment they’d made in the group. They hired producer Alan Tarney, who’d had success working with such 1970s artists as Cliff Richard and Leo Sayer, to remix “Take on Me,” along with some other songs on the album. Tarney’s direction for the song worked. He rearranged the synthesizer line, bringing it to the forefront to create the hook that would make the song immediately recognizable.
He also sped up the tempo, creating a tune that would have the potential to entice people onto the dance floor.

Still, a second release of the single didn’t change matters. Outside of Norway, sales of a-ha’s album
Hunting High and Low
were tanking. This time around, though, the American section of Warner Bros. Records had an idea. When the band had visited their offices, all the women had gone crazy for the three band members, Harket in particular. Warner Bros. wasn’t going to let that opportunity get away. They convinced their British counterparts that the song needed just one more thing—a good video.

In the spring of 1985, everyone would be humming along to Harket’s almost glass-shattering chorus and reciting the song’s simple lyrics (“Talking away/I don’t know what I’m to say/I’ll say it anyway”). But ultimately, it was the medium of television that would get the message of “Take on Me” across and help it achieve sales of nearly 10 million copies worldwide.

A performance video for the original version of “Take on Me” had already been filmed, but Warner Bros. was looking for something new, different, and captivating. Director Steve Barron had worked on movie sets for years and had already made an impact in music videos with Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” the Human League’s

“Don’t You Want Me,” Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” and others. In 1985, he was ready to break out of the mold of traditional music videos (which usually had slim budgets that left little room for creativity). “Take on Me” was given £100,000—an enormous budget at the time, especially since the band was unknown and had a sketchy track record. But Warner Bros. believed the investment would pay off. Barron went to work creating a story that mixed live action and animation.

The video’s story opens with comic-book art of a motorcycle race. A cartoon version of Harket fights off the attacks of his competitors to win the race fair and square. The scene then shifts to a woman in a café who’s reading the comic while a waitress serves her coffee. Suddenly the woman notices movement on the page. An animated Harket winks at her, and then his hand pops
through the table to invite her into his world. She follows, and their flirtation begins.

The couple’s happiness is short-lived, however. The waitress believes the woman has left without paying her bill, and she crumples the comic and throws it in the garbage. Meanwhile, the thugs from the motorcycle race return with wrenches in hand to beat Harket. The couple runs away, and Harket pushes the woman back into the real world, where she emerges in the trash. She grabs the comic, runs from the restaurant, and hurries home to finish reading to find out the fate of her new love.