Founder of Popeye’s Dead.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Al Copeland, who became rich selling spicyfried chicken and notorious for his flamboyant lifestyle, extravagant weddings, bitter divorces and lawsuits over Christmas decorations, died Sunday at a clinic near Munich, Germany. Copeland, who was 64, had been diagnosed shortly before Thanksgiving with a malignant salivary gland tumor. His death was announced by his spokeswoman, Kit Wohl.

After growing up in New Orleans, Copeland sold his car at age 18 for enough money to open his own one-man doughnut shop. He quickly turned the shop into a moneymaker and went on to spend 10 modestly successful years in the doughnut business. The opening of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in New Orleans in 1966, however, caught Copeland’s eye, especially when he found it offered a shorter workday and about four times as much money per week as his doughnut shop.

Inspired by KFC’s success, Copeland in 1971 used his doughnut profits to open a restaurant, Chicken on the Run. (”So fast you get your chicken before you get your change.”) After six months, Chicken on the Run was short of the break-even point. In a last-ditch effort in the chicken business, he chose a spicier Louisiana Cajun-style recipe and reopened the restaurant under the name Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken, after Popeye Doyle, Gene Hackman’s character in the film “The French Connection.” The chain that grew from the one restaurant became Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken.

In its third week of operation, Copeland’s revived chicken restaurant broke the profit barrier. Franchising began in 1976 and the company grew to more than 800 stores in the United States and several foreign countries by 1989. In 1983, he founded Copeland’s of New Orleans, a causal dining, Cajun style restaurant. In the next two decades the chain expanded as far as Maryland and west into Texas. He also started Copeland’s Cheesecake Bistro and Fire and Ice restaurants and Al’s Diversified Food & Seasonings – a line of specialty foods and spices for large national restaurant chains.

In March 1989, Popeyes – then the third-largest chicken chain – purchased Church’s Chicken, the second largest. The two chains, operated separately, gave Copeland more than 2,000 locations. The Church’s purchase was heavily financed, however, and escalating debt forced Copeland to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the company in April 1991. Although Copeland lost oth Church’s and Popeyes in the bankruptcy, he retained the rights t some Popeyes products, which he manufactured through his Dversified Foods & Seasonings plants, along with a few Popeyes stores.

Copeland frequently made headlines away from his business empire. His hobbies included racing 50-foot powerboats, touring New Orleans in Rolls Royces and Lamborghinis, and outfitting his Lake Pontchartrain home with lavish Christmas decorations, including half a million lights and a three-story-tall snowman.

In 1983, he was sued by his neighbors to remove the Christmas light display, which he said cost about $50,000 a month in electricity. The display attracted so many visitors the street was blocked for hours every night. Neighbors said they were held hostage in their own homes.

Ten years later, Copeland made an unsuccessful bid for a Louisiana gambling license. The successful bidder, Robert Guidry,

later testified that he had bribed then-Gov. Edwin Edwar to secure the license. In 2001, Guidry and Copeland ran into each other at an upscale restaurant in New Orleans and a fight started involving Copeland, Guidry, and Guidry’s sons. Witnesses said that Copeland’s then-wife, Jennifer, who was six months pregnant, was knocked to the ground during the fight, and both Copeland and his spouse were hospitalized.

Copeland and his third wife, Luan, were married at the New Orleans Museum of Art on Valentine’s Day. As they left the ceremony rose petals were tossed from a helicopter and fireworks exploded over the building. The original presiding judge at the divorce, Ronald Bodenheimer, pleaded guilty to promising a custody deal favorable to Copeland in return for a possible seafood contract and other benefits. Two Copeland associates and Bodenheimer went to federal prison for participating in the conspiracy. Copeland was never personally accused of participating in thescheme.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

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