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Time to talk turkey

When the news media reported that the man responsible for the TV dinner had died, were they merely serving up a warmed-over tale?

By JANET K. KEELER
Published August 8, 2005

	[AP photo: 1999]
	Gerry Thomas, the former Swanson salesman who died July 18, holds what he maintained was his claim to fame.

As obituaries go, this one was a bit of a turkey.

Last month, news outlets worldwide, including the St. Petersburg Times, reported the passing of Gerry Thomas, the man behind the TV dinner. The TV dinner, you will recall, was the nourishment of early couch potatoes who ate on reclining thrones while watching I Love Lucy or Bonanza.

Gerry Thomas was a visionary, it was reported, an innovator who loved publicity. After his July 18 death in Phoenix at age 83, he got plenty of it.

Trouble is, it may have been somewhat undeserved. Is his tale actually urban legend?

The Los Angeles Times reported July 31 that much of Thomas' story was bogus. Because the former Swanson salesman spun his yarn for so many years to so many reporters, the story became fact in the archives of the nation's media, including many retellings on the Internet.

"Never mind that Swanson family members, historians and frozen-food industry officials from the early 1950s have all contradicted Thomas' tale," Roy Rivenburg wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "Or that, in 1944, the W.L. Maxson Co. created the real first frozen dinner, which was sold to the Navy and airlines. Or that FrigiDinner, not Thomas, devised the first aluminum tray for frozen meals in 1947. Or that several of Thomas' former colleagues say he had little to do with Swanson's product."

In 2003, a Rivenburg story about the murky beginnings of the TV dinner ran in the Taste section of the St. Petersburg Times. Even Swanson had several versions of how the TV dinner got its start, he wrote.

As Thomas told it, unusually warm weather in late 1951 reduced demand for Thanksgiving turkeys and Swanson was panicked about what to with 520,000 pounds of surplus birds. Inspired by compartmentalized airline meals, Thomas said he came to the rescue. He claimed the corn bread stuffing was his mother's recipe.

However, Rivenburg reported, November 1951 was exceptionally cold on the East Coast. Plus, former employees said that Swanson owned eight stories of freezer space in Omaha, Neb., and wouldn't have any trouble storing turkeys. (And anyway, those of us in balmy Florida know we eat turkey at Thanksgiving no matter the temperature.)

Today, just weeks after Thomas' death, there is no mention of him on Swanson's Web site or that of Pinnacle Foods Corp. of New Jersey, Swanson's owner since 2001.

Could it be that the media overstated Thomas' involvement in the TV dinner? Or are journalists guilty of not checking Thomas' claims?

Kelley Maggs, a senior vice president at Pinnacle, said that Thomas was the marketing whiz behind the TV dinner, but that the company doesn't think he ever claimed to invent it.

Nevertheless, Maggs said the company doesn't have any problem with the many newspaper stories written about Thomas naming him as the inventor. They aren't so keen, though, on Rivenburg's pieces, he said.

Many papers reported that Thomas was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There are a few Thomases there, including Danny and Marlo, but no Gerry. William Hertz, director of public relations for Mann Theaters, says Thomas does not have prints in front of the famed Chinese Theater in Hollywood, either, as has been reported.

The Library of Congress says Betty Cronin, a bacteriologist who worked for Swanson in the 1950s, claims brothers Gilbert and Clarke Swanson came up with the TV dinner concept. Cronin was on the logistics team that figured out how to cook a meat, starch and vegetables in an aluminum tray so that they were all done at the same time.

The Library of Congress reports, on its Web site, that Thomas was inducted into the Frozen Food Hall of Fame in Orlando in 1998.

Well, not exactly. There is no Frozen Food Hall of Fame in Orlando, or anywhere for that matter. The hall is not a building, but rather a plaque-and-handshake way for the American Frozen Food Institute to recognize achievement. The AFFI held its 1998 convention in Orlando, where Thomas was indeed honored.

Maybe we'll never know the true origin of the TV dinner, but we do know that Americans love a good story and that's why we like to read about people like Gerry Thomas.

"Urban legends, if that's what this is, make sense. That's how we understand life - we get a narrative that puts it together for us," says James Twitchell, professor at the University of Florida and author of Twenty Ads That Shook the World: The Century's Most Groundbreaking Advertising and How It Changed Us All (Three Rivers Press, 2001). "We don't ask if it's true; we're seeking a feeling. This feeling is "ahhh.' "

- Janet K. Keeler can be reached at 727 893-8586 or krieta@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 5, 2005, 11:21:04]