Joe Sedelmaier, ‘Where’s the Beef?’ Ad Director, Dies at 92

Joe Sedelmaier, the Chicago-based commercial director who gave America some of the most unforgettable TV ads ever made — including Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” and FedEx’s legendary “Fast-Paced World” spot — died May 8 at his home in Lincoln Park. He was 92.

His son J.J. Sedelmaier confirmed that his father passed peacefully of natural causes, in his favorite chair. He is survived by sons J.J. and Adam, daughter Rachel McElroy, six grandchildren, and three great-granddaughters.

For anyone who grew up watching television in the 1980s, Sedelmaier’s fingerprints are all over the ads that stuck. He had a completely distinctive approach — deadpan humor, real-looking people with lived-in faces, dialogue that felt almost accidentally funny — that made his work impossible to confuse with anyone else’s. His longtime executive producer Marsie Wallach, who worked alongside him for decades, put it simply: “He was so true to himself, and I do believe that showed in the work. And he enjoyed what he did, and that showed in the work.”

Roger Ebert, in a 60 Minutes interview, once credited Sedelmaier with changing not just advertising but Hollywood itself. “I think that thanks to commercial filmmakers like Sedelmaier we now have movie actors who look like real people, including Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman,” Ebert said. “Movie stars that 20 years ago would have been playing characters are now playing the lead because it’s now permissible to look like somebody other than Robert Redford.”

The Man Who Found Clara Peller

The story of how Sedelmaier discovered Clara Peller is the kind of thing that sounds made up but absolutely isn’t. Years before “Where’s the Beef?” he needed a manicurist for a commercial shoot. A crew member ran across the street to a local salon and came back with Peller in tow. She looked up at Sedelmaier and, in that enormous gravelly voice coming out of that tiny frame, said: “How ya doing, honey?”

“What I can do with that!” Sedelmaier recalled in a documentary about his career produced by Wallach.

He cast her in spots for Mr. Coffee and Jartran Truck Rental before the Wendy’s opportunity came along. When copywriter Cliff Freeman at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample developed the concept for the chain’s new campaign, Sedelmaier knew exactly who to put in front of the camera. In 1984, Peller — a Hyde Park manicurist, widow, and Soviet immigrant living at the Belmont Hotel — became one of the most recognizable faces in America almost overnight.

The commercial showed her looking at a competitor’s disappointingly tiny burger patty and demanding, in that unmistakable rasp: “Where’s the beef?” It was funny and indignant and weirdly relatable, and it hit the culture like few ads ever have. Wendy’s attributed a measurable jump in corporate profits directly to the campaign. And then Walter Mondale used the phrase in a presidential debate against Gary Hart — “When I hear your new ideas, I’m reminded of that ad, ‘Where’s the beef?’” — and it was officially part of the American language.

Sedelmaier cast Peller in 10 Wendy’s commercials total. The following year, 1985, he delivered another one that landed: “Soviet Fashion Show,” a deadpan parody of Communist conformity featuring a plus-sized model wearing the same drab gray factory-worker outfit for every occasion — daywear, eveningwear, and swimwear, the last distinguished only by the addition of a beach ball.

The Fast-Talking Man and Everything Else

Three years before Peller made her Wendy’s debut, Sedelmaier had already pulled off one of the era’s other defining ad moments. He’d spotted actor John Moschitta Jr. — known as the world’s fastest talker — on an episode of That’s Incredible, and cast him in a 1981 Federal Express spot that became known simply as “Fast-Paced World.” Moschitta played a mile-a-minute business executive rattling off lines like “I know it’s perfect, Peter, that’s why I picked Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh’s perfect, Peter, can I call you Pete?” at a pace that was both exhausting and completely hilarious.

In 1982, Sedelmaier’s firm won five Clio Awards — the Oscars of the advertising world — for the Federal Express work alone. Advertising Age would later name both “Where’s the Beef?” and “Fast-Paced World” among the 50 best TV commercials of the previous half-century.

His commercials earned him covers of magazines and profiles in the New York Times and Newsweek. His work spawned imitators. But Sedelmaier remained rooted in Chicago — deliberately so. “Everyone in New York said I was crazy, setting up shop in Chicago,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 1979. “But I’ve got a good lab… and besides, I like living here. You can’t bring up kids in Manhattan, and I’m not a commuter.”

A Career Built on Real Faces and Gut Instinct

John Josef Sedelmaier was born May 31, 1933, in Orrville, Ohio — hometown of J.M. Smucker Co., maker of jams and jellies — and came to Chicago in 1950 to study at the University of Chicago before earning his bachelor’s degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1955. He’d originally dreamed of being a cartoonist.

He worked at Young & Rubicam, Clinton E. Frank, and J. Walter Thompson before growing frustrated with the assembly-line nature of agency work. “The thing that bugged me the most was that the director wasn’t in on the casting and whatever; he was just a little machine,” he told the Tribune in 1979. In 1968, he started his own company, Sedelmaier Film Productions Inc., out of what had been the old Chez Paree nightclub at 610 N. Fairbanks Court in Streeterville.

His casting process was almost entirely instinctual. He found actors at neighborhood playhouses, noticed interesting waiters, got tips from his receptionist. “I’ve never gone out looking for people,” he told the Tribune in 1993. “I’ve found people at neighborhood playhouses. Sometimes I have a waiter who looks interesting. One guy brought in a picture of his grandchildren, and they were nice-looking grandchildren, but I liked him. I said, ‘You’ve got a great face.’”

What he was always after was authenticity — faces that looked like they’d actually lived in. “It seems to me that you should want to stand out if you’re trying to sell something,” he said in 1984. “But so many commercials don’t. They’d rather blend with the wallpaper.”

Wallach, who later created a 40-minute documentary retrospective about his work called Point of View, described his defining quality as the courage of his convictions. “He had a definite point of view. So if he thought something would work or not work, you did not push him around. He was like, this is it.” She also remembered the man himself: “He wore sneakers before everyone started wearing sneakers, along with jeans and a white button-down shirt, and he walked very fast and kind of bounced when he walked. He was very spry.”

Sedelmaier stopped making commercials in the mid-1990s, telling the Tribune in 2009 that he’d reached a point where he “didn’t want a product at the end anymore.” He had, in fact, always had a parallel life as a filmmaker. His 1967 short “Because That’s Why” won first prize at both the San Francisco Film Festival and the Mannheim International Film Festival. He was the original director on the 1983 comedy Easy Money before a falling-out with star Rodney Dangerfield. And his 2003 short film OpenMinds was an official selection at Sundance.

In 2000 he was inducted into the Art Directors Club of New York Hall of Fame; in 2016, into the American Advertising Federation Advertising Hall of Fame.

His wife of 47 years, Barbara, died in 2012. His son J.J., who runs an animation studio in New York, remembered growing up around his father’s old comic books and the homemade Superman outfit his dad once made him. “It was wonderful watching him mellow as he got older,” J.J. said. “His family was his whole life.”

In a statement, J.J. wrote that his father’s “unique approach to casting, dialogue and framing as well as his philosophy — ‘You’ve got to entertain to sell’ — broke the mold in television advertising. His work helped redefine commercial storytelling, favoring real faces, authentic oddity, and sharply observed humor over polished perfection.”

That’s as good a summary as any. For a generation of viewers, Joe Sedelmaier’s commercials weren’t interruptions — they were the part you actually remembered.