Gerry Thomas (February 17, 1922 – July 18, 2005) was a Canadian who moved to the US to become a salesman. He is sometimes credited with inventing the

TV Dinner A frozen meal (also called TV dinner (Canada and US), prepackaged meal, ready-made meal, ready meal (UK), frozen dinner, and microwave meal) is a packaged frozen meal that comes portioned for an individual. A frozen meal in the United States an ...

in 1952. Thomas, who worked for the Swanson food company in America in the 1950s and went public with his account decades later, said he designed the company's famous three-compartment aluminum tray after seeing a similar tray used by Pan Am Airways. He also said he coined the name "TV Dinner," brainstormed the idea of having the packaging resemble a TV set, and contributed the recipe for the cornbread stuffing. Thomas later said he was uncomfortable with being called the "father" of the TV dinner, because he felt he just built upon existing ideas. Thomas became a marketing and sales executive after Swanson was acquired by

Campbell Soup Campbell Soup Company, doing business as Campbell's, is an American processed food and snack company. The company is most closely associated with its flagship canned soup products; however, through mergers and acquisitions, it has grown to become ...

in 1955. He retired in 1970 after suffering a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

, then did

consultancy A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...

and briefly directed

Grand Central Art Galleries The Grand Central Art Galleries were the exhibition and administrative space of the nonprofit Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Ed ...

in New York City. Thomas' wife described him as a gourmet cook who "never ate TV dinners." In recent years, Thomas' TV Dinner role was disputed by former Swanson and Campbell employees, frozen food industry officials, and Swanson family heirs, who said the product was created by the Swanson brothers, Clarke and Gilbert. (M. Crawford Pollock, who was Swanson's in-house marketing chief at the time, was also said to have played a role.) After Thomas' death in 2005, a ''Los Angeles Times'' opinion article that labeled him a "charlatan" spurred other newspapers to reexamine the TV Dinner's origins.Keeler, Janet. "Self Promoter Heated, Served an Urban Legend," ''St. Petersburg Times'', Aug. 8, 2005 As a result, dozens of publications printed retractions on obituaries that had called Thomas the TV Dinner inventor. The ''New York Times'' said that although Thomas was "widely reported to have had the inspiration, there have been competing claims, including one from the Swanson family, that W. Clarke Swanson, an owner of the company in the 1950s, had the idea." However, Pinnacle Foods, which currently owns Swanson, still credits Thomas with proposing the TV Dinner concept. And an ''Arizona Republic'' editorial termed the debate over his TV Dinner involvement "surprisingly vindictive." The Library of Congress says the history of the TV Dinner is murky, but notes that frozen dinners existed several years before Swanson made the idea famous.Library of Congress - Who “invented” the TV dinner?
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References

External links

second of two Los Angeles Times articles questioning Thomas' claims
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Gerry 1922 births Canadian emigrants to the United States 20th-century American businesspeople 2005 deaths