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Synopsis based on the biography, "CHEF TELL The Biography of America's Pioneer TV Showman Chef, " by Ronald Joseph Kule.
"Tell started all this television madness about chefs." - Regis Philbin
Tons of bombs drop on Stuttgart the night Friedemann Paul Erhardt who would become Chef Tell on television and cooking-show stages. At 13, he not only begins his quest to become a master chef but also discovers his mother's lifeless body hanging from a chandelier, laying in the basis for his relentless drive toward culinary perfection: to prove his mother right and honor her cooking that kept her family alive after WWII.
He arrives in America, marries his sweetheart, a former Miss Philadelphia, and enters a scriptless outdoor audition for cooking on syndicated-television segments. Erhardt takes his place in culinary history by using wit, personality, and imagination alone; he wins the contest, birthing a new breed of celebrity, the TV-showman chef.
Weeks later, 40,000,000 avid fans in 114 cities tune in to Evening Magazine or PM Magazine to watch "Chef Tell" perform 90-second cooking segments three times a week. The Mike Douglas Show, Dinah Shore Show, Merv Griffin Show, and Jon Davidson Show book him, further fueling the German-American prairie fire that sweeps across the nation's small screens. PM Magazine's new "rock-star chef" draws up to 50 percent market share in 95 percent of their syndicated outlets. Tell's ruggedly masculine yet comfortable in the kitchen, appeal crosses gender and generational lines. 20- and 30-year-old female and male home cooks swoon over his engaging style and simple recipes.
No one has ever seen anyone like him: Chef Tell cooks fast, entertains, teaches, and makes America confident enough to try cooking his way. His fan mail blossoms to 14,000 pieces of mail weekly. Excited crowds cheer him at airports. Capitol Center in Baltimore, Maryland, draws 20,000 people to his five cooking shows one weekend.
"If a housewife, or man, sees me do something in 90 seconds, they figure they can make it in five minutes," Tell says in an interview, adding, "Most recipes are overcomplicated anyway. You see recipes in Gourmet Magazine... five of the ingredients are out of the country, and three more you can't find!"
Yet, Erhardt suffers the scars of his childhood through three restaurants-one on Grand Cayman Island. He endures another suicide, two marriage losses, alleged sporadic drug use, and clandestine sexual encounters before finding personal happiness with a woman he can trust implicitly and love boundlessly. Grounded, he makes numerous appearances on LIVE! with Regis & Kathy Lee, begins production of his own cooking show, and opens two more restaurants that flourish in Pennsylvania. When two untimely falls lead to ill health, lawsuits, marital strife, and the discovery of a diabetic condition, he kicks his medications, manhandles his diabetes with dietary changes and exercise, loses 100 pounds, rehabilitates his marriage, and begins a sixth cookbook-an earlier one sold 230,000-copies-loaded with diabetic recipes.
As "In the Kitchen with Chef Tell" airs on PBS locally, pulls high ratings, and gets picked up on syndication, on Friday morning, October 26, 2007, Tell never reaches his cooking class at Chestnut Hill College. Instead, he collapses and dies alone at home. Informed of his passing while on her business trip, Tell's wife, Bunny Erhardt, returns home through a driving rain that night. The next day messages of surprise, shock, and reminiscence flood the internet.
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