by Bob Spitz
“grande dame of the American cooking scene”: Jane Friedman, “Before Julia, There Was This Great Unheralded Teacher,” Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1979, p. 1.
“the most wonderful cooking hands”: Ibid.
almost single-handedly created the American: “If you look at the menus she created, it’s French-inflected Americana, with omelets.” Batterberry interview.
“fraudulently appropriated”: Clark, James Beard, p. 155.
“wasn’t a gifted performer”: Kafka interview.
“She was encyclopedic”: Paula Wolfert, “Before Julia,” Chicago Tribune, November 24, 1980, p. 4.
“turning out a dish of scallops”: Batterberry interview.
“She was a serious headcase”: Wolf interview.
“impossible,” “bossy and not very nice”: descriptions attributed to Michael Batterberry, Paula Wolfert, Judith Jones, Barbara Kafka, Avis DeVoto, and Jacques Pépin.
tossing off flawless omelets: “With Palette Knife and Skillet,” The New Yorker, May 28, 1949, p. 51.
“pointers on doing cooking demonstrations”: JC, My Life, pp. 255–56.
“food that could claim to be”: “1961 was the annus mirabilis for French food in particular.” Clark, James Beard, p. 198.
had hired René Verdon: Craig Claiborne, “White House Hires French Chef,” New York Times, April 7, 1961, p. 1.
“People were reading about what the Kennedys”: JC, letter to Leslie Brenner, in Brenner, American Appetite, p. 52.
The leading bookstore sold out: “I have no doubt if this has any significance as far as countrywide sales are concerned, but it was pleasant to have it happen.” PC, letter to family, November 12, 1961, SA.
“We are giving demonstrations”: “The book seems to be doing well in its modest way.” JC, letter to family, November 19, 1961, SA.
He was already recuperating: “My poor old Pop was struck by a virus and has been in bed for two weeks—he is never sick.” JC, letter to family, November 19, 1963, SA.
“tossing verbal stink bombs”: “His feelings disclose themselves in stupidities which I find it difficult to take with equanimity.” PC, letter to family, December 1, 1961, SA.
“the old idiot’s”: “The old idiot has managed to … divorce his three children during the last 20 years by aggressive stupidity, excessive right-wingism … ” PC letter to family, May 20, 1962, SA.
“the willies”: “My subjective feeling here is one of depression, on account of the life of every person we’ve met seems wrapped up in nothing much.” PC, letter to family, November 12, 1961, SA.
Paul was convinced that Pasadena: “I have a sense of dismay because of my conviction that, for the most part, their contributions to art, culture, and political purpose are nil.” Ibid., p. 2.
“the John Birchers” would scoop: “Lucky thing the cops didn’t see me (or the John Birchers) or I’da been scooped into the loony bin.” PC, letter to family, November 24, 1961, SA.
“an atmosphere of aggression”: “I hope this may only be the typical gripe of a grandfather-aged guy.” PC, letter to family, November 12, 1961.
Norway, “with its simple life”: Ibid.
“most of what makes life significant”: “They seem, for the most part, unaware of world politics, of art, music, literature, science anthropology.” Ibid., p. 1.
“He was so judgmental”: Jones interview, March 18, 2009.
“no spring chicken,”; “yet [it was] an odd point”: Fisher Howe, interview with author, February 24, 2009.
“years of experience in setting up exhibits”: PC, letter to family, November 29, 1961, SA.
“unpredictable situations!”; “squatting on the floor”: PC, letter to family, December 1, 1961, SA.
“It had been shocking”: Jones interview, May 27, 2011.
“What a life we are leading”: JC, letter to family, November 19, 1961, SA.
Seventeen A MONSTROUSLY BUSY LIFE
JFK, who had worked on his tan: “They [Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen] were on the roof of their Chicago hotel … quizzing Kennedy on the likely debate topics while he worked on his tan.” Kayla Webley, “How the Nixon-Kennedy Debate Changed the World,” www.time.com, September 23, 2010.
an “Armenian rug peddler”: Avis DeVoto, letter to JC, October 29, 1960, SA.
Kennedy as “a star”: “By the end of the evening, he was a star.” Webley, “Nixon-Kennedy.”
an “assassin”: Attributed to Henry Cabot Lodge. Walter Shapiro, “The First Kennedy-Nixon Debate,” www.politicsdaily.com, September 25, 2010.
“The winner that night”: David Greenberg, “Rewinding the Kennedy-Nixon Debates,” www.slate.com, September 24, 2010.
“solemnly sworn [she] would never vote”: JC, letter to family, April 2, 1960, SA.
“How about TV?”: JC, letter to family, April 4, 1953, SA.
Almost three quarters of the country’s: Collins, Watching What We Eat, p. 60.
“the Sarah Bernhardt of the kitchen stove”: Jo Coppola, “The View from Here,” New York Post, January 8, 1958.
“actively unlikable”: Barbara Kafka in Collins, Watching What We Eat, p. 58.
“intimidating”: “She is a no nonsense type, with an intimidating air of Captain Cook.” Rose Dosti, “Learning to Cook First Courses Better Late Than Never,” Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1991.
“reassured readers that packaged foods”: Shapiro, Something from the Oven, p. 98.
“splotch of wine”: “Food for Fun and Fitness,” Mademoiselle, February 1947, p. 38.
“generous flutter of chopped chives”: “Eat and Run,” Mademoiselle, January 1941, p. 30.
“a great swish of sour cream: “Food for Fun and Fitness,” Mademoiselle, June 1947, p. 30.
For salmon mousse: Poppy Cannon, The Can-Opener Cookbook (New York: Crowell, 1952), p. 107.
“needed to raise families”: “Cooking shows of the 1950s created friendly experts who gave viewers the modern information they needed.” Collins, Watching What We Eat, p. 37.
“I think that perhaps women”: Quoted but unsourced in ibid., p. 68.
“with distinction from scratch”: Shapiro, Something from the Oven, p. 214.
“I couldn’t tell a bouillabaisse”: Russ Morash, interview with author, December 11, 2008.
She did a wonderful thing with tuna fish: “We ate overdone swordfish or meatloaf.” Ibid.
“Paul was all in favor”: Charlie Gibson, interview with author, June 22, 2011.
“she was all charged up about it”: “I first met her at her house and she seemed gung-ho.” Morash interview.
“We broke our recipes down”: JC, My Life, p. 264.
“All the material within each section”: JC, letter to Bill Koshland, February 11, 1963, SA.
“You’ve got to understand the way television works”: Morash interview.
“curt, clear-cut, and concise”: “It must tell the whole story and must be a selling title for the backers of the series.” PC, letter to family, May 24, 1962, SA.
Among the thirty that Paul suggested: PC, note to JC, May 24, 1962, SA.
The French Chef: “I can’t remember when we came up with The French Chef, but either Ruth or I had proposed it.” Morash interview.
“Let us call it The French Chef”: Bob Larsen, memo to WGBH staff, December 24, 1962, SA.
“a form of leukemia”: “The doctors have now decided John Sr. has a form of leukemia.” PC, letter to family, February 4, 1962, SA.
“he had lost forty-eight pounds”: “Julie’s father seems precarious.” PC, letter to family, May 14, 1962, SA.
“a terribly generous father financially”: JC, letter to Freddie Child, March 14, 1962, SA.
“old eagle beak”: JC, letter to Dorothy Child, June 1962.
Never in her corner, never on her side: “He was unable to be sympathetic, understanding, thoughtful, or even decent to them.” PC, letter to family, May 24, 1962, SA.
“Frankly, my father’s death�
��: JC, My Life, p. 263.
“I came prepared,” she said: JC, interview with author, September 21, 1992.
“Simmering water in large alum. pan”: JC, pilot notes, SA.
uttered a line that Paul had written: “It was Paul who came up with the smart idea of having Julia use it to sign off The French Chef programs.” Judith Jones, interview with author, July 13, 2011.
they refused, to a man, to taste: “The crew would decline all but the simplest food. They all went for hero sandwiches rather than eat it.” Morash interview.
“She’s terrific”: Russ Morash, interview with author, September 3, 2008.
“There I was in black and white”: JC, My Life, p 267.
“Mrs. Steam Engine”: Shapiro, Julia Child, p. 100.
“panting heavily”: “I had put too much into the program.” JC, letter to James Beard, August 20, 1962, SA.
“There was a sense of breathlessness”: “There is room for improvement.” PC, letter to family, August 6, 1962, SA.
“a blitz-type operation”: PC, letter to family, January 26, 1963, SA.
“We knew very early on”: Morash interview, September 3, 2009.
“the rigid necessities of television”: PC, letter to family, January 6, 1963, SA.
“a monstrously busy life”: “This will make a monstrously busy life for our little woman.” PC, letter to family, November 9, 1962, SA.
Eighteen A LAW UNTO HERSELF
It was frightfully cold outside: Boston Globe, February 11, 1963, p. 18.
Checking the listings: “Cuisiniere Julia Child demonstrates the technique of making Boeuf Bourgignon.” Ibid., p. 22.
“already recognizably Julia”: Shapiro, Julia Child, p. 101.
“You are the only person”: Letter to JC c/o WGBH-TV, undated, 1963, SA.
“We love her naturalness”: Quoted in PC, letter to family, April 28, 1963, SA.
“success-wave”: “Old Joolie is riding that success-wave like a hawk on an updraft.” PC, letter to family, November 29, 1962, SA.
“I have decided to keep out”: “Julie is now pretty well established in that new world and won’t really need anything more from me than psychological support.” PC, letter to family, November 9, 1962, SA.
“Man can hardly catch his breath”: PC, letter to family, January 26, 1963, SA.
“at covering‑up when something goes wrong”: PC, letter to family, February 9, 1963, SA.
“She was locked in, not conscious”: Russ Morash, interview with author, December 11, 2008.
“just ripe”: “I think we are luckily in at just the right time, as there have been no cooking shows for years, and people are evidently just ripe for them.” JC, letter to Bill Koshland, April 13, 1963, SA.
“The station is getting a bit worried”: Ibid.
“We’ve got a tiger here”: Russ Morash, interview with author, September 3, 2009.
“a guy in an elf’s suit”: Russ Morash, interview with author, July 23, 2011.
“she was the first educational TV star”: Ibid.
“in the subway, or in stores”: “Hardly a day passes that … people don’t stop Julie.” PC, letter to family, May 21, 1963, SA.
“These evenings, when other folk”: PC, letter to family, February 9, 1963.
when she beat egg whites during the show: “Why, damn it, I think I could now beat 2,000 egg whites!” Ibid.
“On live TV, shit happens”: Morash interview, September 3, 2009.
“Oh—that didn’t go very well”: “The Potato Show,” The French Chef, Show #28, May 17, 1963.
“Julia Child presents—the chicken sisters”: “To Roast a Chicken,” The French Chef, Show #206, April 16, 1970.
“the hard feathery parts”: “The Lobster Show,” The French Chef, Show #24, October 1963.
“throw a pretend little fit”: Morash interview, September 3, 2009.
“But she had a black side”: Morash interview, December 11, 2008.
“the hardest work I’ve ever done”: JC, letter to Helen Evans Brown, undated, SA.
“that went off like successful rocket launchings”: PC, letter to family, May 15, 1963, SA.
“fairy godmother”: Jane Harriman, “The Fairy Godmother Waves a Neat Spatula,” Boston Sunday Globe, April 28, 1963, p. 26.
the Boston Globe offered her a weekly: “Julie now writes a weekly column for the Boston Globe.” PC, letter to family, May 11, 1963, SA.
“Julie could get to be a legend”: Charlie Child letter to PC, May 6, 1963, SA.
Beard invited Julia to join: Clark, James Beard, p. 202; also: “she will take over some of Jim Beard’s classes in NY when he has to have a check-out at some hospital.” PC, letter to family, February 2, 1964, SA.
“the doyenne” of NET: Craig Claiborne, “Julia Child Avoids Frustration with In-Place Utensils,” New York Times, March 4, 1964, p. 28.
“too much slogging work”: “which has allowed her to become too fatigued for common sense.” PC, letter to family, July 27, 1963, SA.
“a sort of pleurisy”: “started with a most painful ache right through my chest from my back to my left pectoral.” PC, letter to family, May 15, 1963, SA.
“a kindred spirit”: “We both felt you, immediately, a kindred spirit and as though we had known you for years.” JC, letter to Elizabeth David, Paris, Wednesday, 1963, SA.
“buy 10,000 more cooking vessels”: PC, letter to family, November 4, 1963, SA.
“my darling cuisiniere”: JC, letters to Simca Beck, July 13 and September 7, 1958; September 12, 1960; and January 12, 1961, SA.
“ ‘We’ll do that recipe in another’ ”: Judith Jones, interview with author, May 27, 2011.
No mention was made of The French Chef: “It didn’t seem important, and I didn’t want her to feel overshadowed.” JC, My Life, p. 271.
“Bramafam was very beautiful”: Jean-François Thibault, interview with author, November 20, 2008.
“a row of icebergs”: PC, letter to family, February 25, 1965, SA.
Later, after a long extravagant lunch: “One afternoon, the four of us shared an idyllic lunch of Dover-sole soufflé with a chilled bottle of Meursault.” JC, My Life, p. 269.
Those trips were hair-raising, pure “torture”: “Simca is torture for me because she is a wild and aggressive scofflaw.” PC, letter to family, September 26, 1963, SA.
“madwoman”: “I was always terrified when she drove.” JC, My Life, p. 269.
“several of her friends had died”: Thibault interview.
Mouans-Sartoux: “We shop at a nearby village of Mouans-Sartoux, which has a good butcher.” PC, letter to family February 20, 1965, SA.
owning a pied-à-terre in Paris: JC, My Life, p. 270.
“ten acres of long slope”: “We spent last Sunday looking at various pieces of land that are for sale in the general region of Bramafam.” PC, letter to family, July 27, 1963.
“I could already imagine”: “To be in Provence next to Simca would be a dream come true.” JC, My Life, p. 270.
“even for charitable considerations”: “So much easier for Ruth (than for Julie) to say ‘the standard cost for a demonstration-lecture by Julia Child is $250, and I regret to say, Madam, the French Chef Lecture Bureau cannot make any changes with established costs.’ ” PC, letter to family, July 27, 1963.
she’d come into $100,000: Probated will of John McWilliams, Jr., March 16, 1964.
“We have decided not to invest”: PC, letter to family, September 26, 1963.
“To be in Provence next to Simca”: JC, My Life, p. 270.
places like Ogden, Utah: “This is based on a sponsor, Safeway Stores, with outlets in those cities which also have Educational TV stations.” PC, letter to family, April 19, 1964, SA.
“infinitely smoother, more integrated”: PC, letter to family, May 15, 1963.
“the Madison Avenue hounds”: “A representative of J. Walter Thompson called Julia yesterday.” PC, letter to family, January 25, 1964, SA.
“baited hooks”: “We have an understanding about our attitude to all these baited hooks now being case in Julie’s direction: we are not interested at this time.” PC, letter to family, February 8, 1964, SA.
“the freedom to plan”: PC, letter to family, January 25, 1964.
“I just don’t want to be in any way”: “The line is sometimes difficult to see but I know where I mean it to be.” JC, letter to Bill Koshland, undated, SA.
“We do not eschew cash”: “Paul would argue with Julia about a point, especially when it came to money, as if to say, ’Lady, we can use every dollar that is not tied down.” Morash interview, December 11, 2008.
“We run the show to suit ourselves”: “She declines all offers firmly.” Jack Anderson, undated magazine article SA.
“sense of theater”: “Her sense of theater endears her to the most fiercely devoted and unlikely audience ever to write fan letters to a television cook.” Louis H. Lapham, “Everyone’s in the Kitchen with Julia,” Saturday Evening Post, August 8, 1964, p. 20.
“a law unto herself”: Judith Crist, “Casual Cook,” TV Guide, August 22, 1964, p. 9.
“her ingenious wit”: “She proved to be, in the words of her husband, ‘a natural clown.’ ” Lapham, “Everyone’s in the Kitchen,” p. 31.
“know exactly what is involved”: Foreword, JC, Mastering, p. vii.
“natural clown”: Lapham, “Everyone’s in the Kitchen,” p. 31.
“quarter pound of butter”: “On one show, Mrs. Child reached for butter but found only a note.” June Bibb, “Harvard Meets ‘The French Chef,’ ” Christian Science Monitor, December 2, 1965.
Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs: “Child’s predecessors in the medium were less Dione Lucas and Poppy Cannon than Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs.” Clark, James Beard, p. 211.
Lucille Ball: Shapiro, Julia Child, p. 112.
“Sometimes she drops a turkey”: Lapham, “Everyone’s in the Kitchen,” p. 32.
“We had to continually defend Julia”: Morash interview, December 11, 2008.