Appetite for Life

by Noel Riley Fitch

  Julia Child & Company, which focused on occasions, sold very well and won the 1978 Tastemaker Award (voted on by a nationwide panel of book and periodical editors) as well as the American Book Award (“the only cookbook to win a major literary prize,” Jane Davison noted). Marcella Hazan’s More Classic Italian Cooking and the Troisgros brothers’ The Nouvelle Cuisine of Jean and Pierre Troisgros were runners-up. Julia Child & More Company, which focused on specific dishes, was not bought by New York public television and sales of the book were poor until she began a cross-country tour. Nevertheless, she was named Woman of the Year in 1979 by the New England chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The following year, the Katharine Branson School, at its sixtieth anniversary celebration, bestowed on her one of its Distinguished Alumnae Awards.

  Reviewers of her books praised the variety of her dishes and the clarity of her recipes. In the New York Times Book Review, Mimi Sheraton praised Julia’s streamlined (from four- to one-hour) puff pastry recipe (“alone worth the price of the book”), but mentioned “some unnecessarily gimmicky recipes (skewered vegetable salad) that smack of ladies’ magazine cookery.” Because Julia had said it was silly to fawn over the French, she was accused of a “patronizing view of the French.”

  Another criticism of the first book by reviewers was of its use of older recipes to fill out a menu (though only new recipes were demonstrated on the tapes). Between the two series and their books, Peggy Yntema composed a detailed assessment of the recipes, at which time Julia hired more assistants. A careful look at the dishes that were repeated in these volumes, however, reveals that Julia’s recipes evolved and improved. They were “recast into the prevailing food style,” one food writer noted, giving as an example the bouillabaisse made with chicken as the centerpiece of a low-calorie dinner. Julia did not just copy recipes. The most striking example, other than the new puff pastry, is her cassoulet, which she says of the second volume is her fourth version, each “lighter and leaner.”

  Ratings for the television series were modest (the time slot was not prime) and the book reviews were sparse, but rarely negative. The Chicago Tribune said her meals were “syncopated like jazz.” All reviewers noted the emphasis on shopping, preparing a full meal, and serving the meal, with most preferring the highly personal approach; another reviewer, however, thought the books were “too chummy.” Most newspaper writers focused on Julia herself, for her honest directness always gave the reporters a good quote. For example, Jeannette Ferrary featured the reasons why America found Julia Child so interesting—everything from her eccentricity to her feeling comfortable with being a woman. Ferrary adds: “She gives us a Magic Show every week, with slapstick (she’s a little like I Love Lucy),” and always seems to be having a good time. Of course, the last line in Julia’s very first book was “Above all have a good time.” Julia wrote in the introduction to More Company, “It’s more fun cooking for company in company.”

  Often reviews indulged culinary metaphors, but few as cleverly as Stephen Wadsworth, who was once editor of Opera News: “She’s a serenely gawky six feet one [sic] inch, a ripe roast of gourmande stuffed with fresh chortle, chesty guffaws, and twenty cloves of humor. She’s wrapped in a no-nonsense dress and poured into two one-quart sensible shoes, and she serves herself with quantities of élan.” Ferrary and Wadsworth were exceptions to the journalists who for decades covered Julia using the same profiles and clichés. Julia never made a meal of her past, yet was asked by reporters for the same basic menu over and over.

  If journalists were soft, her colleagues were not. One friend called the second volume “not up to her standards.” Yet, M. F. K. Fisher, who did not like the first volume, praised the language of the second: “1,000% better in every way … more pure class … more true spirit of Julia’s own spirit.” The innovative use of ginger in butternut squash, the inclusion of a vegetarian dinner and a low-calorie dinner, and Julia’s reinterpretations of classic dishes such as chicken melon and vegetarian gâteau are all praised twenty years later by Betty Rosbottom, food writer and cooking school owner. Rosbottom particularly commends Julia’s wit, illustrated by her poulet de Charente à la melonaise in the first volume and, in the second, “Una furtiva lagrima,” a postscript on ways to peel an onion (echoing the opera L’Elisir d’Amore).

  TAKING THE POSSE ON THE ROAD

  Julia, Sara, and Marian stood behind a long table on the stage in a contest to see who could make the fastest and best spun caramel cage. They were giving a benefit for the Schlesinger Library of Radcliffe College in 1979, and Julia knew how to put on a good show. Recalled Marian: “She used a glass bowl, I used one covered with Saran Wrap, and Sara used something else. The audience of five hundred went crazy. The suspense was breathless as Julia said ‘okay,’ and we dribbled the warm caramel. Mine came off first and people screamed with joy, but Julia did not care that hers was not perfect; it was a performance. She did not have to have the perfect dish, as other cooks would have insisted upon.”

  When the familiar seasonal rhythm called for her Provençal interlude, she and Paul were eager “to sit under our olive tree and breathe in the air of Provence.” Julia brought all their Christmas cards unopened for five months and had them answered by mid-June. She took time out for a week in Spain and a week in England, where she made brief television spots for the release of the English version of From Julia Child’s Kitchen (“Nobody will take me for a home economist!” she told Elizabeth David). Her sense of the contrast between the two countries (she had never been in Spain before) says much about her: she loved the people (if not the food) of Spain, a country reminding her in its broad plains and scattered great oak trees of Southern California, whereas in cold, damp England, there was a “lack of openly expressed gutsy sensuality,” she informed Mary Frances. “Things just don’t work very well there in old Blighty, but we adore our English friends.” After a dinner with Mark and Anne in Paris, Julia and Paul took the Concorde home because Bob Johnson told them to spend more money.

  Though Julia was not one to rush back for reunions, she returned for the hundred-year celebration of Hubbard House at Smith, where she and roommate Mary Warner reminisced about Julia’s trip to the speakeasy in her convertible. When she told a local reporter she would “rather eat a tablespoon of Charlotte Malakoff than three bowls of Jell-O,” she was revealing how far the young, jelly-donut-eating coed had come.

  “She is a tomorrow person, not a yesterday person,” said Russ Morash. “I frankly love that about her.” Julia’s present and her future would be as a public person, the representative of good cooking and eating and a major television personality. Her public appearances included a nomination at the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles in 1978 and speaking at the graduation ceremony of the Culinary Institute of America in 1979. She also judged the national Beef Cook-Off in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1979 and in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1980 (“I need my beef,” she was fond of saying, much to the dismay of a growing number of vegetarians in America). She taught with Rosemary at a weekend school called Cooking at the Cove, on the Sonoma peninsula in California. For the Boston Herald American, she judged the food at Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park (the hot dog was “thin and pale,” but she liked the beer and popcorn). If she could join 30,000 fans to taste their food and watch the Red Sox, perhaps they would watch her in their homes. Indeed, most did, even if they had no intention of preparing one of her recipes.

  Paul still went along to every appearance and performance, even after he was diagnosed with “prostate malignancy” in July 1979 and began a series of radium treatments. Julia told Simca earlier that his “understanding of the spoken word was getting more difficult.” As one representative of Knopf noticed: “Paul would drift in and out of paying attention, but she was incredibly sweet about making him a part of it all: he sat at the table and signed the books with her. She is a tough old broad, but she is kind, and having him sign was a way to keep him a part of things.” Occasionally he would add a pithy remark to an
interview (“She only liked food and men”).

  Every member of her troupe reported the same enjoyment (“She likes to have fun”), weight gain, and exhaustion upon traveling with her: “I was a wet rag left in her wake,” said one of her publicity directors half her age. “When I needed a nap, she would say, ‘Let’s go to the tall gals shop (The Forgotten Woman, Lane Bryant, or Big and Tall)!’” Another observed pointedly: “Even when the line was two blocks long, she was gracious. People do not stand in line for shits. She was as pleasant to the first person as to the last one, four hours later. She stays to the bitter end.”

  In 1979 Julia assisted both Simca and Louisette with their respective newly published books. When Julia was busy filming More Company in April 1979, Doubleday asked if she would read the galleys of the English translation of Louisette’s French Cuisine for All and write an endorsement, a request she could not turn down. But when Doubleday asked the next month if she would write her own memoirs, she called it “an impossible enterprise.” Julia arranged with the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe to give a reception for Simca when she toured the country in late 1979 and early 1980.

  RELUCTANT TOUR

  At the beginning of taping the More Company series, Julia (almost sixty-seven) said to Simca, “We all had so much fun cooking together … however this is the end—no more.” While correcting proofs for the book four months later, just after Paul’s hospitalization, she added: “But this is THE END, Finito. No more TV, no more anything of that sort, and I am even hoping I won’t have to go out and promote it this time. I’m really saying [no to] anything, and hope that will do the trick.” Then she added: “I’m really getting tired of all the cuisine brouhaha, jockeying for place and prestige.”

  Because she stayed home in 1979 to work personally on the proofs of More Company, publication was delayed until November, too late for a tour before Christmas. Therefore, after a two-week trip to the usual spots in California, Julia and Paul left for Provence just before Christmas of 1979. It was cold and damp, Paul got influenza, and their pussy cat died, Judith Jones, who called Julia in the hopes of setting up a book tour, found Julia enjoying herself despite the weather, illness, and her cat’s death. She had eleven people for Christmas dinner, including a writer and photographer from Bon Appetit magazine. But Paul was unhappy and chilly and told her he did not want to return again in the winter. Though she did not want to leave, Julia knew, as she told one journalist in January 1980: “As soon as you’re off television, in a few months nobody will know who you are, which is fine. That makes fame quite bearable.” Bearable because one can always quit, though she was not ready to do that.

  Upon their return, Julia embarked on a thirteen-city tour in three weeks. Initially the schedule was geared for plenty of rest for Paul, but opportunities for appearances were added as the tour went along. McCall’s, where several recipes were previously published in shorter form (exactly three per volume), took out full-page advertisements. (She had been writing her monthly column since 1977.) Knopf had a new publicity director named Janice Goldklang, who arranged promotions with Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. These stores sent invitations to their credit-card customers, “who would pour in,” according to Goldklang:

  A thousand people would show up, for her celebrity was a big deal…. You should see the cookbooks people brought to have her sign. You could eat them, they were so covered with food; and the pages were torn and covers fallen off. They would say, “This is my most beloved book.” … Whatever city they visited, the Wednesday papers would have huge features; sales were worth the expense for the department store. It doesn’t happen this way anymore.

  Knopf, who scheduled Julia on every show from Dick Cavett to Johnny Carson, paid for Julia, Paul, Liz Bishop (and Rosie or Marian to do prep work). Julia had to fly first-class because of her height. She needed the same leg room in cars, so she preferred sitting up in the front with the limo driver, adds Goldklang, who arranged for hairdresser, makeup person, and limousine.

  “We were awfully lucky,” Julia said to reporter Nao Hauser, who was catching an interview on the way to O’Hare Airport after the Chicago appearance. Just as Julia was recalling her romance with Paul in 1946 and “going to Paris with my loved one,” she noticed Paul stumbling up ahead, then turning back toward her. To the reporter, out of earshot of Paul, Julia said, “Oh, it’s rotten getting old,” and hurried to guide him to the limousine, hand him his cap and briefcase, and assure him that she was there. She was now the anchor, haven, and direction for her once wise and worldly guide.

  She began the tour reluctantly, for Paul’s infirmities complicated the logistics. She did not intend to leave him behind nor would she allow her career to languish. She loved the action, and she was their major financial support. As her career moved away from cookbook writing, she had to continue tours, demonstrations, and television.

  “It’s my job,” she would say. But the contact with people energized her. She did, in fact, enjoy her career and could not imagine the adventure coming to an end. Her only problem was her knees. “[My] cartilage is worn out from standing around too much,” she wrote Mary Frances on September 30, 1980. “It will gradually get worse and when [I] can’t walk, [I] will get an operation (new joint). This is the first real evidence of the machine wearing out (except for the glasses) that I’ve had so far.”

  They concluded their tour on the West Coast with Dorothy and Ivan in San Francisco, and then Los Angeles, where Charlie was now living with his daughter Rachel. Julia appeared on all the major talk shows, including one day on both The Mike Douglas Show at 1:15 P.M. and Johnny Carson’s Tonight show at 5 P.M.

  THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY:

  PASTICHE AND PARODY

  The most famous talk show incident occurred on the Tomorrow show, hosted by Tom Snyder, when Julia appeared with Jacques Pépin, who had been on the show five or six times before. “Julia brought enough food to feed a hundred people, and I was late,” said Pépin, who always carried his knife with him. Before they began their hour and a half of cooking, she cut her hand with his knife. According to Pamela Henstell (Knopf’s West Coast representative), Julia wrapped a towel around her hand and went to the hospital afterward: “To Julia it was nothing, but it was a very big cut,” adds Henstell. Julia says she went to the first-aid station on the Burbank lot. Pépin recalls that they got the studio infirmary to bandage the wound, then went out to eat afterward at L’Ermitage restaurant (“after she had stitches and a tetanus shot”). Julia also claims that Jacques said something very macho, such as “She’s probably not used to sharp knives.” She was not amused. Though the stories differ, they all agree on the cut and that Tom Snyder brought up the topic on the program. News traveled fast at NBC. The story lives on through repeated showings of Dan Aykroyd’s “reenactment” on The Best of Saturday Night Live.

  Comedian Dan Aykroyd, dressed in full Julia drag, stood with a large knife in one hand and a naked chicken in the other. Adopting her high swinging vibrato and gay anticipation, he announced the making of a poularde demi-désossée and began talking about the uses of the giblets and liver. The Saturday Night Live audience recognized the parody and was convulsed in laughter. “You can’t do nothin’ without a sharp knife,” he said as he ran the knife along the spine of the chicken, “toward the pope’s nose,” he said, presumably slicing off his thumb. The bleeding began. Mimicking her unflappability in crisis, her desire to turn any adversity into a teaching experience, he kept right on talking as the blood spurted profusely, filling the pan holding the chicken. “Chicken livers are a natural coagulant!” he said, applying one to his spurting hand. Chattering calmly on about every home needing the 911 number programmed into its phone, he reached for the phone: “It’s a prop phone. What a shame …,” he said, dropping it to the counter. “Why are you all spinning?” he asked the audience as the blood shot over the table and floor. Voice fading, he began slumping toward the table. Weakened by the loss of blood, he called “Bon appétit!” and hit the
Formica (to great applause), then raised his head once to gasp, “Save the liver!”

  It may have been one of Aykroyd’s (and Saturday Night Live’s) finest hours, but it was not the first or the last Julia Child parody.

  This parody, and the apocryphal stories of her dropping chickens and ducks on the floor and swigging wine (the latter she resented strongly), were part of the lore of a beloved television figure. The accidental cutting off of Aykroyd’s thumb at least had a semblance of basis in fact. Paul’s letters record her tripping on the way to the table and spilling the salad for six people all over the tiles in La Pitchoune. At least three times she broke her toe. Several times she cut her hands and had to see a doctor. When Simca was coming to dinner, Julia cut her hand while trimming butternut squash and had to go to the hospital while Sara Moulton finished the meal for eleven. Julia was back in time to eat with everyone. Stories of her car accidents, particularly backing out of her driveway, are repeated by colleagues and employees. In the summer of 1978, after “a little episode,” they had to get another rental car and stick to the larger roads in Provence. Another friend evokes Julia’s joie de vivre in a story of Julia driving her car toward a crowded intersection in Provence and shouting out one of her favorite expressions: “Lurch!”

  Fannie Flagg also did a takeoff on Julia earlier in her career. M. F. K. Fisher wrote to ask Julia if she saw the spoof of her by Fannie Flagg: “I did think it was quite funny, and hope you do too.” Carol Burnett did a takeoff on Julia for her 1968 variety show, Englishman John Cleese gave a convincing imitation, and “Sister Julia, Child of God” cooks the poisonous stew in Nunsense, a musical comedy by Dan Goggin. Julia learned to take them all in stride and was known to play the Aykroyd tape that NBC sent her.