The French Chef in America

by Alex Prud'Homme

  I. CLICK, CLICK, CLICK

  The sudden loss of momentum from the pell-mell “FCiF” production left Julia and Paul in a disoriented limbo. But they didn’t have the luxury to worry about it, for 527 miles to the south McCall’s magazine had established a base camp in Plascassier manned by a half dozen staffers. Pressure was building for the Childs to return to La Pitchoune as soon as possible. The magazine, Knopf, and Simca were growing increasingly anxious about Julia’s cooperation, or lack thereof, with Arnold Newman’s photo shoot.

  The Childs were resentful. When Paul suggested they avoid Plascassier altogether, and spend the next two weeks driving slowly and anonymously through the remote Massif Central, Julia snapped: “I am not going to be put out of my own house by any bunch of magazine people!”

  They drove south, and when they arrived at La Pitchoune, they were dismayed to discover that Simca was unchar­acteris­tically wan and despondent. She had visited the doctor for the first time in eight years, only to discover she was losing her hearing, suffered “valve trouble” in her heart, and had been recommended for a pacemaker.

  Patrick O’Higgins, a charming and flamboyant McCall’s editor, managed to talk his way into La Pitchoune. Almost the moment the Childs put down their bags, Arnold Newman and his assistants arrived and began setting up tripods, light boxes, reflectors, and cables in their living room.

  “Non!” Julia declared. “No photos.”

  O’Higgins began to wheedle, but Paul shut him down: “Julia has been very clear about this from the start—”

  “Augghhhhhh!” The air was rent by a loud cry.

  It was Simca. From a corner, she glared at Julia with a wounded look and tears streaming down her face. “I had my whole heart set on this picture of you and me together, and now you say ‘no more photos,’ ” she shouted. “How can you treat me like that?”

  Julia stared at her old friend, dumbstruck. In two decades of collaboration Simca had never said anything like that before.

  Perhaps Simca’s outburst was due to worries about her health. Or maybe it was due to the illness itself, which can make people act in unpredictable and emotional ways. Or maybe it was Simca’s belated discovery that her old friend had become a superstar in America, achieving a level of success that Simca would never achieve. Or the outburst might have been a delayed response to Julia’s 1967 demand for a greater share of their royalty income from Mastering. Whatever the reason, Simca had put her two-decades-long collaboration with Julia on the line in front of a room full of journalists on the eve of the publication of their new book.

  Julia glanced away and marinated in silent rage for a few minutes. Seeing no graceful exit, and trying to take the long view, she agreed to pose for Arnold Newman.

  Sputtering with rage and hurt feelings, Paul sequestered himself in the little cabanon across the driveway, where he slashed paint across a canvas.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Julia and Simca posed for photographs in the dining room and kitchen at La Pitchoune—click, click, click. In the resulting photos, Julia sits at the kitchen table with a weary half smile on her face, her head and body leaning away from Simca, who holds a sharp pencil up and tilts her body toward Julia. Arranged on the Peg-Board behind them is a row of knives.

  The next day, McCall’s took over the dining room in Rancurel’s farmhouse down the hill, and turned it into a stage set for a fête champêtre, a “festival of rustic food.” Rancurel, the farmer, and Boussageon, the butcher, cooked dishes—green herb soup, lamb in a brioche crust, potatoes Anna, sautéed zucchini, strawberry shortcake—from Volume II, and O’Higgins arranged them in platters on large tables. A dozen local characters—including Jeanne, the cleaning lady; Laurent, the gardener; Lerda, the carpenter; Ceranta, the electrician—were recruited to pose as celebrants. As Newman shot roll after roll of film, the “patrons” ate and drank copiously, roared with laughter, and told lewd jokes. At the end of the feast, kids dabbed fingers into the fresh whipped cream, while the elders sang traditional songs in gravelly voices.

  Julia and Simca posing for Arnold Newman

  II. VOLUME II: STEPPING INTO CONTEMPORARY LIFE

  When Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume II, was published in October 1970—nine years after the original volume—Knopf printed one hundred thousand copies and mounted a major publicity campaign. By that point Mastering had sold more than seven hundred thousand copies, and the publisher had high hopes for the follow-up book.

  Food-world allies such as James Beard and Craig Claiborne trumpeted the arrival of Volume II. McCall’s ran Patricia Simon’s three-part series in their October, November, and December issues. And early reviews were mostly rapturous: “It is without rival, the finest gourmet cookbook for the non-chef in the history of American stomachs,” Raymond Sokolov declared in Newsweek. “No serious scholar of the kitchen will want to function without it,” Gael Greene wrote in Life. “Volume I was mud-pie stuff. With Volume II it is no longer mere Child’s play.”

  But some found the book overly complicated. Volume II would appeal to those “who learn to drive a car by having the workings of the internal combustion engine explained to them in full detail,” quipped Nika Hazelton in The New York Times Book Review.

  In the foreword, the authors laid out their case for the second volume and contrasted it to the first: “Mastering any art is a continuing process…While Volume I was a long introduction to French cooking, [Volume II] is a continuation.” Mastering had been a reflection of France in the 1950s and was written, the authors admitted, with “a rather holy and Victorian feeling about the virtues of sweat and elbow grease—that only paths of thorns lead to glory…and all that.” But beating egg whites in a copper bowl, or pushing fish paste through a fine sieve for quenelles can be tedious and take the fun out of cooking, while a machine can do the same job much quicker. “Volume II, like France herself, has stepped into contemporary life,” the authors wrote. Times had changed and so had Simca and, especially, Julia, whose distinct voice clearly emanates from the page.

  The new book was written in a looser tone than the original. Child and Beck expanded on their idea of “theme and variation,” encouraging their readers to apply basic approaches and techniques across a wide range of dishes. Occasionally the authors strayed from orthodoxy, adding curry to beef tongue here, or advocating the use of broccoli (almost unknown in France) there.

  As with Mastering, the publisher regarded the second volume as a major work and lavished attention on design, type, and appendices crammed with arcana, such as three pages on “Stuffings for Meats and Vegetables” and thirty-eight pages on Julia’s batterie de cuisine (a “roundup of the kitchen equipment we find useful…solid, practical, professional equipment designed by people in the chef business who sell to chefs”). There is even a disquisition on bottle openers, corkscrews, and types of wineglasses (“the brandy snifter will release after-dinner esters”).

  The book was illustrated with technical drawings by Paul Child and instructional drawings by Sidonie Coryn, who produced thirty-four drawings just for French bread, and twelve for pâté en croûte. To ensure that the recipes in Volumes I and II reinforced each other, Knopf devised an index that tied the two books together, referencing items in Volume I in boldface and those in Volume II in plain type.

  By the time Volume II was published, Julia and Simca had put their differences aside, and joined for a well-financed, carefully orchestrated book tour that took them from New York to Washington, D.C., and Virginia, then out to Portland, Oregon. In New York, they were celebrated at the Ford Foundation, where 250 “very swish” guests included Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the writer Ada Louise Huxtable, and other notables. It was a long way from the launch of Mastering, which Julia and Simca had promoted with a self-financed trip, during which they had stayed with friends across the country.

  III. “THE FRENCH CHEF FACES LIFE”

  Two weeks after Volume II was published, Season Two of The French Chef debuted in color on PBS s
tations, to produce a cross-promotional juggernaut of Julianalia. The first episode to air was the show on bouillabaisse, including the documentary footage shot in Marseille’s Criée aux poissons marketplace. The early reviews were positive, which helped to boost book sales. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Terrence O’Flaherty enthused:

  I really don’t know how to explain Julia Child’s appeal. She wasn’t even cooking something I like. It was that loathsome assemblage of fish carcasses called bouillabaisse. Yet Mrs. Child has a wonderful way of catching the attention and holding it because she is doing something she likes to do and she does it better than anyone else around…

  In the past seasons Mrs. Child’s culinary adventures have been in black-and-white. Home viewers just had to take her word for it when the lobster bisque got the right shade for serving. The addition of color this year is a great help. The parsley is green, the cook’s cheeks are a healthy pink, and her fingernails are orange. But I could be wrong. I’m on Cablevision and…its colors are never the same.

  “Hoooray!” Julia crowed in relief.

  The first problem cropped up two months later. As was revealed in My Life in France, Judith Jones met a doctor from Mount Sinai Hospital who was researching the suspected link between asbestos and cancer. Recalling that Volume II instructed readers to bake bread at home on “asbestos-cement tile,” Jones immediately alerted the Childs, who were alarmed to think they might be endangering their readers. But the taping of Julia’s two bread shows was just days away. While Julia was busy preparing her TV scripts, Paul rushed to experiment with a half dozen kinds of tiles. When Julia taped the bread shows, she suggested that people use basic red floor tile instead. Jones quietly altered the text in later printings of Volume II, and no one was the wiser until Julia told this story in her memoir.

  Despite all of the authors’ research on fish, the entire piscatory chapter—save a few fish soups—was cut from Volume II, to save time and space. This caused some heartache for Julia and Simca, especially over the loss of Loup de Mer en Croûte, the sea bass they had tasted at L’Oasis in 1969 with Patricia Simon. Both writers would return to that dramatic dish later in their careers. Nevertheless, the idea of wrapping protein in pastry stuck with them, and was evident in Volume II dishes such as Filet de Boeuf en Croûte (Tenderloin of Beef Baked in Pastry—Beef Wellington Brioche). “That whole idea just grew out of that experience that day” at L’Oasis, Julia recalled, explaining how one gastronomic experiment often led to another, and another.

  Indeed, with Simca’s tremendous productivity and Julia’s doggedness, there were many recipes that did not make it into the pages of Volume II or onto television in 1970. The question hung in the air: What would happen to those orphaned ideas? After their rapprochement, Simca broached the idea of writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume III. Judith Jones raised the same issue, writing to Julia: “Who knows, we may have a tetralogy before you are finished!”

  It was a dilemma that weighed on Julia.

  In the meantime, she continued to work on television. WGBH described Season Three of The French Chef, which aired from 1971 to 1972, as “a tour of the French classics”: twenty-six half-hour programs designed as “a refresher course for experienced cooks and as a jet-assist takeoff for beginners.” When Polaroid hesitated to fund Season Four, a public outcry helped convince them to underwrite the 1972 to 1973 season. Here Julia explained how to cope with the “demands of society,” such as planning family dinners, getting kids excited about cooking, having unexpected company, or preparing three-course sit-down dinners. The title of this final season was, aptly enough, “The French Chef Faces Life.”

  IV. THE END

  In June 1971, Réalités, a French magazine, sent a writer and photographer to La Pitchoune to interview Julia over lunch. Mindful of Simca’s tender feelings, and intent on showing the world that they remained a harmonious team, Julia insisted that her co-author be included. She loved Simca as a friend, respected her as a talented cook, and remained grateful for the use of La Pitchoune. She promoted Simca’s Parisian cooking classes, and coached her on public speaking (perhaps a bit too insistently: “You must polish up your English constantly…Listen to American radio programs, and read as much American as possible,” Julia advised. “You just have to follow your recipes exactly, or your audience gets terribly confused…I know you are always saying you can’t cook and talk at the same time—but YOU CAN, and YOU MUST…Practice looking happy…SMILE.”)

  For years, Julia had staunchly defended Simca against Paul’s criticism—“I would strangle her if I were in Julia’s position,” he groused. But now Julia worried about her friend’s increasing deafness and chronic heart problems, and was frazzled by her abrupt mood swings.

  Even those who adored Simca, such as Richard Olney, an Iowa native who had become an exquisite Provençal cook, noted that her itchy restlessness, and affinity for lutte (strife), could be “irrational” at times. Simca had “a respect for French tradition coupled with a fascination for all that is new, a formal correctness of speech often seasoned with rather astonishing expletives, a fierce loyalty to friends, a determination that knows no bounds and sometimes irrationally refuses to recognize any barriers,” Olney wrote. But, he added, Simca’s drive could tilt into unhealthy, compulsive behavior. One day, “Simca slipped on the icy steps leading down from her house and broke a leg. She was found some time later, apparently indifferent to the pain but furious at the inconvenience, trying to pound the splintered and protruding bone back into place with the heel of her shoe so that she could get on with her business.” Olney’s story sounds apocryphal, except that Simca included it in her “memoir with recipes,” Food & Friends, without comment.

  “Julia and Simca had a very good partnership for twenty years,” observed Judith Jones. But under the strain of producing Volume II, and Simca’s growing resentment of Julia’s celebrity, financial success, and bullheaded Americanness, the creative friction that had worked so well in the past was reduced to mere friction. “It began with the fight over cassoulet, and got worse,” Jones added. “For Simca, it was unbearable to have Julia become a star of French cooking in America.”

  For her part, Julia resented being the workhorse and main salesperson for the Mastering franchise, and bridled at Simca’s French dogmatism. “She wouldn’t listen,” Julia said. “She told you what was what.”

  Jones was discreet and respectful of the two cooks’ friendship, but she could plainly see that their collaboration was in trouble. She encouraged Julia to prepare to go out on her own. “I warned her: ‘It’s going to happen,’ ” Jones recalled.

  There was another factor at work. While Simca continued to teach cooking classes in her Paris apartment, Julia was chafing against what she called “the straitjacket of classical French cuisine.” She was feeling an almost primal urge to stretch out in new culinary directions, to keep learning and pushing forward into terra incognita. But she had conflicted feelings about this, and was reluctant to bring it up.

  The tipping point arrived on a hot day in July 1971. Jones sat at the Childs’ kitchen table in Cambridge while Julia read a seven-page tirade from Simca aloud. “At a certain point, Simca’s condescension grew unbearable,” Jones said. “You could hear the tension rising in Julia’s voice. It was remarkable.”

  Attacking a recipe that she herself had contributed to Volume II, Simca wrote, “Ce n’est pas français! You Americans cannot possibly understand that we French would never baste with beef drippings!”

  Reaching the end of the letter, Julia stood up to her full six-foot-two-plus-inch height. Her eyes flashing with anger, she threw the letter to the floor and stomped on the pages with her size-twelve sneaker, shouting, “That’s it—end of collaboration!”

  —

  JULIA AND SIMCA NEVER DISCUSSED the demise of their collaboration. They understood that after more than two decades, it was time for each to go her own way professionally. They were two strong-willed women with different
styles in different countries who were moving at different speeds and in different directions with different goals. In retrospect, the split appears inevitable.

  Jean-François Thibault, one of Simca’s nephews, recalled that La Super Française had seen only a few minutes of The French Chef, and did not comprehend the power of television. “I was the one who relayed to her how famous Julia was, how important she was,” said Thibault. “But she didn’t really understand it.” Thibault was close to both Simca, who “was like a cinema star—overbearing and elegant,” and Julia, “the funniest, most lovable person in the world.” As for the end of their collaboration, he said, “I wouldn’t dare discuss it,” but “there was not any tension. I think Simca understood.” She “never expressed anything but love for her American ‘sister,’ even when she expressed regret at their parting of ways. When I inquired if she was sad about the many successes of Julia, she only replied: ‘Oui, mais maintenant c’est une femme d’affaires’ (‘Yes, but now she is a businesswoman’)—which, in her mouth, sounded like a compliment.”

  Others saw the split in a different light. “Simca was hurt,” said Judith Jones. “She just didn’t understand what Julia had become. She expected to be treated with attention and a grand book tour, that sort of thing.”

  The hard truth was that Simca’s star did not shine as brightly as Julia’s. Simca would continue to teach and write cookbooks, but never repeated the success of the two Mastering books. And, arguably, neither did Julia, for those two volumes remain her most famous and best-selling books—though later works, such as The Way to Cook, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, and My Life in France were best sellers.

  Simca declared that she wanted to slow down and devote herself to her husband, her garden, and cooking classes. But she was not really the slow-going type. Judith Jones helped to ease her out of Julia’s direct orbit and into a solo career when Knopf published many of the recipes Simca had developed but not used in Volume II in a book published in 1972. Called Simca’s Cuisine it was a mix of autobiographical stories and recipes from three regions of France that had shaped her cooking: Normandy, where she was raised; Alsace, where the Fischbachers originated; and Provence, where she and Jean had found their “greatest inspiration.” Eager for Simca’s culinary wisdom, but wary of Simca’s lack of authorial discipline, Jones hired the McCall’s writer Patricia Simon to help massage the text, test its recipes, and ensure the project was completed on schedule.