by Bob Spitz
Julia tabled any decisions about John until she could sort out the business that had piled up while she was away. As usual, there was a book to promote. In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs was a popular success, more successful than its predecessor, and a tour was arranged in support of its publication. Knopf was eager to get her on the road. A TV series had a respectable effect on sales, but personal appearances by Julia always sent the figures soaring. Conflicting interests, however, created uncommon tensions.
Julia’s connection with Geof Drummond, which had begun four years earlier, had isolated her from perhaps her greatest advocate. Judith Jones felt Drummond had become “quite possessive” of Julia, that he was manipulating her “for his own gain.” Jones was unhappy with the two Master Chef books. “I don’t think they were top Julia material,” she says, voicing an editorial point of view. “There wasn’t much of Julia in them. She didn’t really have enough time to write them, so her voice was missing. And because the books had to get out so quickly, recipes were developed without proper care.”
Jones worked on both manuscripts, but she did so begrudgingly. Because of a co-writer (Nancy Barr was responsible for much of the book’s material), and what she considered Drummond’s “hold over Julia,” Jones no longer played the quotidian role that she had when Julia and Simca shared authorship. “Geof put the idea in her head that I didn’t do as much as I could have for her, and there is always a certain truth,” she admits. Jones also admits she was prejudiced from the beginning. “They were terrible programs, there was no role for Julia. I think it would have been better had she stayed off TV, rather than being an inessential component. I think her day was over on TV.”
A similar sentiment resonated from Good Morning America. While Julia was in Europe on location with the show, Disney announced its purchase of Capital Cities/ABC, the parent company that broadcast GMA. Not long afterward, Julia got the news that her contract wasn’t being renewed. “Julia was convinced it was because of her age,” says Stephanie Hersh. “She told me, ‘From now on, they’re going to use younger chefs.’ ” No matter what the reason, it had to be a blow. Hersh maintains that Julia loved doing that show; it had kept her sharp, in front of a national audience. But if truth be told, she was busier than ever and ready to pursue something fresh.
A live one, in fact, was already on the hook. Geof Drummond offered Julia a TV special with her longtime sparring partner, Jacques Pépin. Their act originally grew out of their appearance with Tom Snyder in 1978, the same show on which Julia cut her hand and inspired Dan Aykroyd. Julia and Jacques were cooking lobster that night, and had a big argument over the tomalley, the digestive gland which turns green when it’s cooked. It began off-camera, but they continued it, only louder and hotter, once they went on the air. Why wasn’t it changing color? “Jack, don’t do it that way,” Julia pecked. At which point Jacques got his hackles up and became defensive. “Because, my lovely Julia, this is the way it is done!”
Jacques adored Julia, respected her more than anyone, but they had serious disagreements when it came to technique. Jacques was a restaurant chef, Julia a home cook, and they often worked at cross-purposes: a restaurant chef always thinks in terms of efficiency, whereas Julia’s goal was the method behind the recipe. Combining these two charged particles created nuclear fusion. “I thought it was great television and interesting cooking,” Drummond recalled. “In front of an audience, it would be cooking as theater.”
They’d road tested the concept again, in March 1994, with a sold-out performance called Cooking in Concert at Boston University’s Tsai Auditorium. The show was a huge success. It was filmed in front of five hundred students and underwritten by Cuisinart, an appropriate sponsor, inasmuch as Julia and Jacques more than anyone else were responsible for the popularity of its ubiquitous food processor. The two cooks squared off over a four-course meal, and from the beginning, they had more chemistry than an explosives lab.
During a recipe for salmon, they wrangled over how best to slice it. “It’s too thick!” Jacques warned her. “Let’s do it this way instead.” Julia ignored him and cut it however she wished. “So we got into a stupid argument about slicing salmon,” Pépin recalls. “It was like being in the kitchen with my wife.”
Another time, while making dessert, Jacques added more lemon to a recipe when Julia turned her back. When he turned his back, she added more vanilla. Back and forth it went like that, like an episode of The Honeymooners. It was hilarious, and the audience ate it up.
The only hitch came halfway through the performance, when they were working up a recipe for gremolata. Julia started in on the Cuisinart, to let the sponsors know she wasn’t their shill. “One of the problems is that the blade gets too dull to cut parsley,” she complained. “So if you’re having a problem with the way your Cuisinart cuts the parsley, speak to Madame Cuisinart out there in the audience.” Geof Drummond, who was watching the action on a monitor in a remote truck, saw Julia point out their client, sitting in the crowd with five of her colleagues. “But if you talk to Cuisinart, I’m sure they’ll be glad to get you a sharper blade.”
Drummond began sweating bullets. Cuisinart had sunk a lot of money into the evening, and he was counting on them in case it ever became a series.
“The other problem with the Cuisinart is latching the top and the safety mechanism,” Julia continued. “What I learned to do is take a little emery board and file it down, and that makes it so much easier.” On the monitor, you could see the company reps begin to twitch in their seats. “That’s nothing,” Jacques said, grinning. “In the kitchen, what we do is just jam a knife in to short out the mechanism. Then you can run it without the safety catch.”
Drummond, nearly apoplectic, had an assistant call Bill Truslow, Julia’s lawyer, and get him into the truck, so he could watch what was going on.
The show got even rowdier and more enjoyable, but needless to say Cuisinart never came back for a Julia Child program of any kind.
Whatever Julia did, she did to promote cuisine, not for promotion or any personal gain. When she cloned Cooking in Concert in San Antonio, with Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet, it was because she wanted to raise money for the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Unfortunately, the electricity had lost its charge. Over the years, Kerr had become a dedicated health freak, which meant that butter and salt were banned substances, and Julia, as might be expected, lost her enthusiasm. “It became diet food versus non diet-food,” Drummond recalls, nothing she wanted to actively pursue.
Drummond’s goal had been to sell the show to network TV. Julia and Graham Kerr still had plenty of name recognition, and CBS was listening to his pitch. But after several attempts to create a show with broad-based appeal—in other words, an act that combined tension and comedy like Julia’s work with Pépin—the program collapsed in a puff of uninterest.
In the meantime, Drummond was trying to package Julia with another viable concept. Despite her age, he felt “she still had enormous energy” and the desire to work, to explore new modes of cooking. Russ Morash, who watched from afar, wasn’t so sure. He thought “the later shows didn’t measure up to her high standards” and that “she looked feeble” on TV and “ought to know when to get off.” But Julia wasn’t prepared to call it a day. “I have no intention of stopping,” she said, in a reflective moment. “When I do, you’ll know I’ve finally slipped off the raft.”
One theme, in particular, interested Drummond: baking. It had been a preoccupation of his since Nancy Silverton’s appearance on Cooking with Master Chefs. Despite Silverton’s rocky stint in front of the camera, the response it had gotten was nothing short of sensational—almost ten-to-one greater than the next-highest-ranking segment with Emeril Lagasse. Drummond thought that a series devoted entirely to baking could feature Julia in a new and different light. It wasn’t cooking, per se, at least not classic French cuisine, but still ranged within familiar territory. In Mastering, Julia had left most of the baking to
Simca, but over the years she had developed her own nice repertoire. Could she sustain a baking show for twenty-six segments? Most likely, Drummond assured her, if they used the Master Chefs format, with celebrated bakers contributing recipes and performing on air. Julia would assist them in her capacity as host—and as Julia Child, which was the icing on the cake.
Julia was sold the minute she heard it, and Maryland Public Television once again leaped at the opportunity to broadcast one of her series. The only stumbling block was what to do about a book. Drummond wanted something that was more than a companion piece. In his opinion, companion books were mostly rushed, slapdash affairs, with little long-term appeal. He felt that, with Julia’s imprimatur, they could produce a handsome book that could become the baking bible, in the way that Mastering was the gold standard when it came to French food.
Far more important to Drummond’s thinking was the advance the publisher was willing to pay. Except for the short time when Bob Johnson represented her, Julia took whatever Knopf had offered her—a fair sum, but nothing in the superstar category. Both Julia and Judith Jones engaged in an old-school publishing relationship in which money was rarely mentioned. “Ultimately,” says Drummond, “neither of them believed in the new big advance structure of the book business or in flash in any way.” Nor did he believe the company put their resources fully behind the Master Chefs books. He wanted to do the book on his terms, not theirs, and that meant more money.
According to Judith Jones, she received a letter written on Drummond’s company stationery, advising her they were making multiple submissions of the book proposal to other publishers. “It was an outrageous thing to do,” she says, hurt and offended. She and Julia had a relationship that went back thirty years—more than a relationship, a friendship that was deep and meaningful. Jones had nurtured Julia’s career with loving care. They had been there for each other at key personal moments. “Geof didn’t even have the decency to send me a personal letter,” Judith said. It was addressed to her and contained the terms of the book he was offering, but ended: “Call me, Maria, if you have any questions.” A form letter! She deserved more than that. “I thought, I won’t even dignify this with an answer. I don’t want to publish it. Let Julia go.”
Drummond already had a relationship with William Morrow, which published Lidia Bastianich and the Frugal Gourmet under his stewardship. Morrow paid a million-dollar advance in 1988 for a baking book by Rose Levy Beranbaum. That was more in line with Drummond’s thinking. “They offered Julia a fortune up front,” he says, “and she jumped at it, she never looked back.”
JULIA MIGHT HAVE cut her ties with Knopf, but it would be harder, much harder, with John McJennett. Ever since her return from Europe, he’d been in a fast decline, the heart failure a debilitating burden. In the winter of 1995, he moved out of his apartment near Julia’s into an assisted-living facility in Westwood, a half hour away, where it was much harder for Julia to visit. There were so many drawbacks—time and distance, of course, but John’s condition tapped into emotions for her, not just of Paul’s decline, but her own dread of old age. She’d never been afraid to talk about death or how she’d face it—when it had been well in the future. But lately, in her mid-eighties, it had crept up on her. “She talked about death quite a bit,” says Rebecca Alssid, “and I think she was trying to process it for herself, trying to confront it, what it would mean.”
According to Judith Jones, Julia pooh-poohed the subject. It came up often in their conversations, especially after Paul had passed away. “I’m not sentimental,” she told Jones defiantly. “Death is death. It’s just another episode.”
John’s death, however, was suddenly staring her in the face. On one visit, she discovered he’d developed a form of bone cancer that was already quite well advanced. Through no fault of his own, his arm just spontaneously broke. “He was quite ill,” according to his daughter, Linda. “When it was clear he wouldn’t take a turn for the better, Julia said to me, ‘I think I won’t be coming down anymore.’ ”
A few weeks later, John was gone. “It had happened so fast,” says Alssid, “Julia didn’t know what had hit her. She wasn’t prepared. It seemed like he’d been in her kitchen only the week before.” There was a memorial service for him at Harvard, where he’d studied and played baseball in 1933. Julia went with Alssid, who’d spent many evenings socializing with the couple. They talked about what a lovely, old-fashioned guy John had been, how funny and smart and handsome he was, how he knew nothing about food. How he’d adored Julia—she had always felt his affection and generous warm heart. She’d been so lucky to meet him after Paul got sick, lucky to have another nice man in her life. All those memories; suddenly she was overcome. “It was the only time,” says Alssid, “that I’d ever seen Julia cry.”
There was hardly enough time for her to cope with her grief. A week or two later, she was tethered to another appearance at BU with Jacques Pépin, More Cooking in Concert, which was filmed for PBS. Again, it was strictly a sold-out affair, and again she teed off on a faithful sponsor—not Cuisinart, which had headed for the hills after the last contretemps, but Land O’Lakes Butter, a longtime ally. Land O’Lakes loved Julia’s devotion to rich, creamy butter. Who else used such obscene quantities of it in their recipes? Who else scorned the hated other spread and refused all substitutes to make food so utterly delicious? Who else regarded butter the way Donald Trump regarded cash? And yet, it was necessary to remind them she couldn’t be bought. She might have used thousands, tens of thousands of pounds of their butter over the years, but no matter—in the end she wasn’t there to sell somebody’s product.
“I remember Julia putting a stick of butter into a recipe we were doing,” Pépin recalls, “and then another stick went into whatever it was.” His eyes narrowed. “Julia, it’s too much butter,” he cautioned. She put a finger right in his face and said, “Okay, Jack, but you’ll regret it.” Her scorn was palpable. The president of Land O’Lakes was in the audience with a half-dozen reps, and the scene couldn’t have played better for them. Jacques was preparing a flaky dough that he used for chicken potpie, which Julia thought sounded like a fine recipe. But three minutes before curtain, she announced a new plan. “I want to do my own dough,” she said, “a sweet dough, with a dessert.” “Fine, terrific,” Jacques said, “whatever you want to do.” He was used to her last-minute whims, which often signaled a different recipe than the one they’d rehearsed. “She was such a character,” he says. “I never knew what was coming.”
On stage, to the crowd’s great pleasure, Jacques rolled out his dough with the fluency of a master baker. “Now,” he announced, “Julia is going to do a dough.”
“Actually,” she said, “Jack is going to do it for me.”
“I am?” Here we go again, he thought.
“And I want you to do it in the food processor.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. That sounded like a good idea. He’d done his dough demo by hand; this would teach the audience a different, modern method. Who knew?—perhaps Julia was atoning for bashing Cuisinart last time around. Obediently, Jacques filled the machine with the ingredients Julia handed him—flour, salt, sugar, the appropriate measurements for each. “How much butter do you want?” he asked.
“We’re doing it with Crisco,” she said expressionlessly.
Crisco! They’d never used Crisco in any recipe before. He could only imagine the Land O’Lakes reps’ discomfort as they watched this debacle. Well, he could head this off at the pass. “We don’t have Crisco,” Jacques said.
“I have Crisco.” Julia reached underneath the counter, where she’d hidden a can of the shortening.
Of all the damnable tricks! She’d planned this switch all along. They ended up using half Crisco and half butter, which produced a perfect dough, but Jacques swore “that confounding woman” would never show him up like that again.
THE SPECIALS WITH Jacques galvanized Julia and her public. Viewers tuned in in droves once again for Bakin
g with Julia, which ran for thirty-nine weeks in 1996 and 1997. As with the Master Chefs series, her participation was minimal; Julia more or less hosted the program as a cavalcade of twenty-six bakers turned out a tremendous range of baked goods, from muffins to madeleines, pies to pizza.
During the taping, which was done at 103 Irving, an erratic noise in the kitchen kept interfering with the recorded sound. The culprit, it turned out, was Julia’s Westinghouse refrigerator, so cranky and old that when she opened its big door guests gaped at the inside freezer located down in the corner. It had broken down repeatedly over the years, but because it was under a service agreement, the company continued fixing the infernal beast. Now they had to find a way to silence its phlegmatic motor.
The repairman who showed up stared at the refrigerator as if he were looking at an exhibit in the Museum of Ancient History. “Sorry, but this is so old we don’t make the parts anymore,” he explained. “We’re going to replace your refrigerator free of charge.”
He must not have known Julia’s aversion to free goods. She knew the trade-off: if she accepted free equipment, companies would invariably ask her do product endorsements. Her stock response was enough to forestall those offers: “If you give it to me and I don’t like it, I will say that I don’t like it in a public way.” Meanwhile, Julia did not want a replacement Westinghouse. Cornering the repairman, she said, “Young man”—he was well into his seventies—“it says right here: lifetime warranty. And as you can well see, I am still living. Find a way to make this thing work.”
If it had only been that easy when it came to her knee. The old appendage demanded constant care. For Julia, mobility was more than just a convenience, it was a vital necessity. With the bumper crop of appearances remaining on her schedule, she valued the importance of maintaining her stride. She prided herself on good fitness in general, staying active and vigorous even if it meant, at her age, working through a little pain. During those long book tours when she was always on the move, she would pop a few anti-inflammatories to keep her on the go. All told, it was a small price to pay.