Secret Ingredients

by David Remnick

  People who work with Julia Child are nearly always impressed by her sense of organization. “She may look sort of slapdash on the screen, but she’s the most organized person I’ve ever met,” according to Bess Hopkins, who now works in the office at WGBH. In the cluttered room that Julia uses as an office at home in Cambridge, her library of books on food and cooking and her extensive files of material on the subject are arranged and cross-referenced with the care and thoroughness of a major research institute, which, indeed, is what they amount to. A great deal of scholarship underlies that breezy self-assurance on camera; she can afford to appear casual, because she knows precisely what she is doing.

  Some of her most ardent fans like to remember the slips and disasters of the early French Chef shows: the potato pancake dropped on the counter and scooped back into the skillet with the serene advice that “nobody’s looking” the spilled liquids and solids; the famous Roast Suckling Pig that defied all Julia’s efforts, with several knives, to carve it up. What her co-workers remember is Julia’s incredible skill at averting disasters or turning them somehow to her advantage. The French Chef programs have all been videotaped in continuous half-hour shooting sessions—a decision made at the beginning, because it avoided expensive editing—and only half a dozen times in more than two hundred programs taped so far has it been necessary to stop and reshoot. When a dessert began to lose its shape after unmolding on camera, Julia simply nudged it together with two spoons and urged her flock not to lose heart in similar situations. (“Never apologize—nobody knows what you’re aiming at, so just bring it to the table.”) When Ruth Lockwood, Julia’s present producer and the person primarily responsible (with the Childs) for The French Chef ’s style and format, forgot once to take the butter out of the refrigerator to soften before a taping, Julia improvised without a tremor: “Where’s the butter? Oh, I forgot to take it out of the fridge! Well, here’s what you do when that happens.” And that evening she called Ruth at home, because she knew how Ruth, who never forgot anything, would be feeling. Mrs. Lockwood says that in the twelve years she has worked with Julia they have never had a real dispute about anything. One of the few times anyone has seen Julia lose her temper, in fact, was one day when there was a fire on the set. A towel flared up, a pot holder caught fire, and the cameraman stopped shooting. Julia was furious. She wanted to show the viewers just what to do at home when this happened.

  Paul and Julia enjoy reminiscing about the early days of the show. They had come back from Norway in 1960—it had been Paul’s decision to retire from the Foreign Service before he reached the compulsory retirement age of sixty-five—and established themselves in a comfortable old house they had bought several years before in Cambridge (the house where Josiah Royce, the philosopher, once lived). Paul planned to spend his time painting and photographing, and Julia was going to give private cooking lessons and work on Volume II of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In the spring of 1962, a few months after the first volume had been published, Julia was invited to appear on a literary-interview program on WGBH to talk about it. Thinking it might liven things up, she brought along a copper bowl and a wire whip, and showed the viewers how to beat up egg whites. WGBH received twenty-seven letters about the interview, all expressing delight. As Russell Morash, The French Chef ’s first producer-director, put it recently, twenty-seven letters might not mean very much to a major network, but to a small, noncommercial station like WGBH it was impressive. Would Mrs. Child be willing to consider doing a pilot program for a possible series of cooking shows?

  They made three pilot shows in June 1962, using a basement display room of the Boston Gas Company in downtown Boston, because the WGBH studio had recently been destroyed by a fire. WGBH’s director of programming, Robert Larsen, liked the pilots so much that he was willing to put the station’s own funds into financing a series of twenty-six shows. They went into production in January 1963, in a makeshift set on the third floor of the Cambridge Electric Company, which had better parking facilities than Boston Gas. The early shows were all “remotes,” videotaped with two cameras connected by cables to a power source in WGBH’s mobile unit parked outside the building. They did four shows a week. Julia and Paul and Ruth Lockwood would spend all day Monday in the Childs’ big kitchen at home, drinking oceans of tea and blocking out the rough outlines, time sequences, and opening and closing lines for the week’s programs. Tuesdays and Thursdays were rehearsal days, prior to tapings on Wednesdays and Fridays. Today, neither the Childs nor Mrs. Lockwood can imagine how they kept it up. Julia and Paul, who did all the shopping for the shows, would get to the Cambridge Electric Company an hour or so ahead of the others, carrying the Sacred Bag and a huge load of groceries. Whenever it snowed, Paul had to shovel the fire escape so the crew could bring in the cables and equipment. The crew numbered twenty-four, counting volunteers, and they usually ended up eating the show. Grips and cameramen would take home dishes in one state or another for their wives to finish cooking. The last show of the first series called for Lobster à l’Américaine. Julia and Paul bought enough for everyone, and plenty of dry Riesling, and after the show they had a banquet on the set. Not a farewell banquet, because the second series was already in the works, with several “subscribers” (public television does not refer to “sponsors”), such as Safeway Stores, Hills Bros., and eventually the Polaroid Corporation, to help pay for it. They did sixty-eight shows at the Cambridge Electric Company before moving to the new WGBH studios, in Cambridge, in November 1963.

  Old friends of Julia’s often say that those early black-and-white shows were the best—that in spite of the mishaps, or perhaps because of them, Julia was more herself than she has appeared in the technically superior programs that followed. Julia, who is highly self-critical, does not agree at all. “I was inclined at the beginning, having been involved in writing and teaching, to be too expository, to talk too much,” she has said. “Ruthie Lockwood kept reminding me that television was a visual medium and that the points had to be made visually. Also, I had no time sense to speak of, so it was very difficult for me at first. We’ve always worked with a system of ‘idiot cards,’ which they hold up to tell me when it’s time to move on to the next step, but at the beginning I’d sometimes forget to look for them. And then I’d look at the wrong camera sometimes. The boys finally started putting a little hat on the camera that was shooting, and a big sign under the lens reading ME FRIEND.” The videotapes of the first thirteen shows, which were made before the program started to be picked up by other noncommercial stations around the country, no longer exist—they literally wore out from overuse. Julia was rather pleased, because it gave her an opportunity to redo those programs (all basic mainstays such as Boeuf Bourguignon, Coq au Vin, and omelettes) in a more professional manner.

  The unique blend of Julia’s earthy humor and European sophistication, her tendency to slap and sniff and taste everything without losing a shred of her dignity, were there from the beginning. “Julia is a natural ham and a natural comic,” Paul once said, “and Ruth Lockwood, with her own slightly corny sense of humor, has always encouraged that in her.” Using a giant sabre to carve her Poulet Sauté Marengo, appearing in a pith helmet and firing off a popgun to bring down a squab for “Small Roast Birds,” and other elements of horseplay have undoubtedly helped to build her audience, which seems, from the mail that comes in, to include a surprising number of children and husbands. Julia, moreover, is not above a little gentle baiting of her detractors, who tend to be mainly sanitationists (or “home-economics types,” as Julia calls them), and those who are disturbed by her use of wine and other, more demonic spirits in cooking. “Now we’ll add a quarter of a teaspoon of white wine,” she will say, pouring copiously from the bottle. “The children will love it.” An amazing number of people seem to think that Julia’s high good humor and her occasional mishaps on the home screen can mean only that she is drunk. Cartoons have depicted her swigging from a bottle as she cooks, and some viewers insist that th
ey have actually seen her do this on camera—a misapprehension that may stem, Julia thinks, from the time she carefully peeled, seeded, and squeezed a tomato and then drank off the juice in a cup. When the BBC was contemplating a French Chef series in Britain, the program that they put on the air to test audience reaction opened with Julia picking up the lids from two steaming saucepans and clashing them together like cymbals. This caused the steam lingering in both lids to fly right into her face, a painful surprise that she accepted with one of her more robust peals of laughter. The station received so many calls from distressed Britons wondering what on earth a drunken or demented American woman was doing on the Third Programme that the BBC decided not to run the series after all. Actually, as Paul sometimes points out, it is peculiar to assume that anything as complex as what Julia does on television—does with split-second timing and with explanations that make sense—could be done at all by someone under the influence of liquor. “She wouldn’t be dropping spoons up there, she’d be falling down,” Paul says. It may be that real spontaneity has become so rare that it requires an explanation. “We never really know what she’s going to say on the program,” Ruth Lockwood said recently. “She memorizes the opening and closing lines, and there is a sort of rough script, consisting mostly of key words and phrases, but aside from that there’s just no telling what’s going to happen. We always say it’s the only real suspense show on television.”

  The last show in The French Chef series was taped in December 1972. There are more than two hundred of them on tape, and reruns keep the program going in most parts of the country, but after twelve years the Childs are not sure they want to continue with it. “If I ever do any more, I want them to be more professional,” Julia said recently. “I want to be sure that the closeups are correct, and things like that. One time, we had a program on roasting a turkey, and at the end you couldn’t see the turkey being carved, couldn’t see a damn thing.” She would like to be able to edit the show after each taping, though editing would add considerably to the expense. Julia thinks of herself primarily as a teacher—“The French Chef,” she says, “is really a continuation of L’École des Trois Gourmandes”—and she feels that her students should not have to put up with anything less than the highest standards.

  It has been said that Julia Child really “made” public television. She was certainly the first major star to emerge from noncommercial programming—the first to become a nationally known figure. Wherever she goes now, people recognize her and speak to her; in restaurants, waiters ask her to sign the menu (which pleases her enormously), and other diners send over friendly notes and try to find out what she has ordered. A recent television commercial featured Julia Chicken, a fowl who spoke in the French Chef ’s unmistakably rich and breathy accents, until the Childs’ lawyer put a stop to it, and The Electric Company, a children’s program, has had a character named Julia Grownup. Although Julia Child has little time to savor the fruits of her fame, she clearly enjoys it—“loves every minute of it,” according to Avis DeVoto—and, just as clearly, will not miss it when it recedes. She has consistently turned down all offers from commercial TV, just as she has turned down all requests to endorse products or to lend her name to promotions other than those in support of public television. Last year, she was approached by NBC, which offered her a spot at nine-thirty in the morning five days a week; she turned it down, largely because the audience at that hour would be almost entirely women, “and our audience is bigger than that.” She has given back to WGBH, through fees for demonstrations, fund-raising appeals, and royalties from The French Chef Cookbook, far more than she has ever received from it. The Childs feel that her television exposure has been responsible in large part for the success of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and that alone has made them, if not rich, at least comfortable beyond anything they had ever expected. Everyone involved, it appears, is grateful to everyone else, and the television audience seems happy enough for the time being with reruns. There has been talk about presenting The French Chef in a new format, based on public cooking demonstrations like the ones in San Francisco. But at present, Julia’s only plans for television involve a few special shows with James Beard.

  Meanwhile, Julia has completed the manuscript of another cookbook, using recipes done on the show since the first one appeared, in 1968, and she and Simone Beck may do a revised edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Louisette Bertholle, who dropped out of the collaboration after Volume I, now lives near Bourges and is teaching and writing on her own. But the Childs and Mme. Beck and her husband, Jean Fischbacher, a perfumer, remain in close contact professionally and personally—particularly during the spring and summer, when the Childs stay in a little house they have built on some property of the Fischbachers’ in the south of France. One purpose of a revision would be to bring readers up to date on some of the culinary equipment that has come along in recent years (such as nonstick pans and highly versatile electrical processors). In Volume I, the authors took a somewhat Olympian tone about utensils, in line with the traditional hauteur du chef, but Julia has come to feel that it is a good thing to speed matters up where possible in the kitchen, and that if the same effect that used to be produced by laborious handwork can be duplicated by a machine, then vive la machine.

  An hour before the first San Francisco cooking demonstration was to start, at two on Monday afternoon, the Childs and their two assistants were finishing a leisurely lunch in a curtained-off area at the left side of the stage. These “working” lunches were relatively simple but far from casual occasions. During the preceding days, Rosie Manell had dished up many regional specialties, such as cracked crab, tiny bay shrimps, rex sole, and abalone (sautéed twenty seconds to a side, no more), each of which had been complemented by a chilled Muscadet or some other wine from the Liberty House boutique in the theatre lobby. Each meal began with a ritual carillon de l’amitié, the four wineglasses held carefully by the stems so the sound would ring out clearly. “One of the good things about getting to be sixty,” Julia said that Monday, “is that you make up your mind not to drink any more rotgut wine.” There was a great deal of laughter and much talk of food. “When a vegetable is as beautiful as this asparagus,” Rosie Manell said at one point, “you’ve just got to take it seriously”—a comment that Julia liked so much she repeated it to her audience a little later. Immediately following lunch, while the others made a final check of the dozens of items that would be used during the afternoon’s demonstration, Julia was left alone in the dining alcove for her “quiet time,” which she used to go over her notes. She showed not the slightest hint of nervousness or stage fright.

  The demonstration was twenty minutes late getting started. Heavy rains had slowed traffic, but when Julia came out from the wings the downstairs area of the Kabuki was filled nearly to capacity, the audience consisting mostly of well-dressed women, who greeted her enthusiastically. Julia introduced her “team”: Rosie Manell and Liz Bishop, who would be onstage throughout the performance, and Paul, “our general manager, timekeeper, and resident ogre,” sitting at a table in the front row, where he could give time signals and make suggestions to the performers. The program called for soufflé on a platter, with poached eggs; Caneton en Aspic à la Parisienne; and Charlotte Malakoff. “Nobody in their right mind would want to serve all three at the same meal,” Julia explained, “but each could be the centerpiece of a memorable meal. Now then, where are my glasses?”

  The difference between Julia on television and Julia live onstage is mainly a difference in timing. Without the minute-to-minute pressure and the time cards held up to tell her to move on, she can be a little more expansive, and better able to savor the amusement and delight of whatever she happens to be doing. Volunteer hostesses in stylish aprons, instructed by the benefit committee to bring portable microphones to anyone who wanted to ask a question, never did so, because nobody needed them; when someone had a question, she would ask it, and Julia would glance up from her work, grin, and
answer while continuing to work. She was in her kitchen and about eight hundred people were there with her. “I know what it is about her,” an attractive San Franciscan said during the intermission. “She’s just like a child playing. Anybody who has that much fun just has to be irresistible.”

  Julia’s explanations of what she was doing and why were interspersed with items of general information. French ducks, she observed, tended to be less fatty than American ducks, which made them better for Caneton en Aspic. Raffle tickets would be sold during intermission for all the food cooked onstage, including the duck bones, which could be used for stock. (“Just think, somebody’s going to win all these lovely duck bones.”) If you wanted to, you could use “the other spread” in the soufflé, but it wouldn’t taste as good as it did with butter. “But then who am I to tell you what to use?” she went on. “It’s the method that counts, really. You can substitute any ingredients you want.” That morning, Rosie and Liz had cleaned out the local Safeway’s entire stock of sweet butter—thirty pounds, which they would use up before the week was out. Nobody catches Julia Child using the other spread.