Catching Up with Julie Lansky

“Your help is needed in finding the sixth member of our family,” read a press release from the Lansky family, owners of the iconic Lansky Bros. in Memphis’s Peabody Hotel. The missing family member was an eight foot tall “Big Boy” statue that had been stolen from its 25-year perch in the Lansky’s back yard.

Over three days last week, Lansky owner Hal Lansky and his daughter Julie, who runs their Lansky 126 contemporary store, appeared on local television and radio broadcasts appealing to Memphis to help them recover the beloved statue. Soon, out-of-state news sources picked up the story. “It just turned into something really big,” says Julie Lansky. “There were 43 story mentions and 35 minutes worth of talk on the [television] news about this Big Boy. You always think, what can you do to promote and market your stores? This is a weird way.”

Julie Lansky at Lansky 126.

The incident happened early Monday morning, and after a three-day media blitz, the statue was returned. “All it cost us was the $500 reward,” said Julie. “But with all that media attention, we didn’t care.”

Big Boy statues, smiling fiberglass characters usually posed holding giant hamburgers aloft in one hand, were the mascots of a restaurant franchise that started in the 1930s in Glendale, California. In many Southern states, Big Boy restaurants were run by Alex Schoenbaum (who started his franchise operation in the 1950s) as Shoney’s Big Boy.

Left: The Big Boy statue in the Lanskys’ back yard.

At some point about 25 years ago, Shoney’s cut their affiliation with Big Boy. That’s when the Lansky family got their statue. Julie remembers climbing on Big Boy with her sister. “When we were two or three, our aunt was the executive assistant for the guy who ran all of the Shoney’s restaurants in the Memphis area. She was able to get one, and as an April Fool’s Joke, he just showed up on our front porch one day. We’ve been playing on him ever since.”

The family was understandably upset when they noticed that the Big Boy was missing on Monday after the Fourth of July weekend. It was probably taken during the night on the Fourth. Julie says that it must have taken at least two people and a cart to get it out of their yard.

A University of Alabama sophomore, James Francis, saw the Big Boy lying on its side at about 3:30 Sunday morning near the street and recognized it from the Austin Powers movie. He and friend brought the statue home, only realizing a couple days later that this was the Lanskys’ missing Big Boy. They returned it and received a $500 reward from Hal Lansky.

And it turns out that the Lanskys’ missing Big Boy drama helped another Tennessee Big Boy enthusiast recover a missing statue as well. “Hers got stolen two weeks before ours did,” said Julie. “My dad is on the Crime Stoppers board, so he called his friend and said, ‘look we got our Big Boy stolen, we’re going to say “call Crime Stoppers if you know anything.”’ Someone called in a tip, and it happened to be this lady’s Big Boy, so we ended up getting hers back, too.”

At left: Julie Lansky and friends posed with Big Boy years ago.