Julia Child (August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was an American
chef,
author and
television personality. She introduced
French cuisine and cooking techniques to the American mainstream through her many
cookbooks and television programs, notably
The French Chef which premiered in 1963. Her most well-known cookbook is
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published in 1961.
Childhood and education
Child was born
Julia Carolyn McWilliams to John and Julia Carolyn ("Caro") McWilliams in
Pasadena, California. The eldest
[The Biography of Julia Child, Noel Riley Fitch, pg. 169, paragraph 2..."Dorothy (at six feet four)"] of three children, she had a brother, John III, (1914–2002), and a sister Dorothy D. (1917–2006).
[www.newsmodo.com/display.jsp?id=509084] Child was raised in a well-to-do family where she ate traditional
New England food prepared by the family cook. She attended
Westridge School,
Polytechnic School from fourth grade to ninth grade and then
The Branson School in
Ross, California, which was at the time a boarding school. At six feet, two inches (1.88 m) tall, Child played tennis, golf, and basketball as a child and continued to play sports while attending
Smith College, where she graduated in 1934 with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in History
. Following her graduation from college, Child moved to
New York City, where she worked as a
copywriter for the
advertising department of upscale home-furnishing firm
W. & J. Sloane. Returning to California in 1937, she spent the next four years writing for local publications and working in advertising.
World War II
Child joined the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) after finding that she was too tall to enlist in the
Women's Army Corps (WACs) or in the U.S. Navy through the
WAVES.
Beginning her OSS career at its headquarters in Washington, Child worked directly for the head of OSS, General
William J. Donovan. Working as a research assistant in the Secret Intelligence division, she typed ten thousand names on white note cards to keep track of officers. For a year, she worked at the OSS Emergency Rescue Equipment Section (ERES) in
Washington, D.C. as a file clerk and then as assistant to developers of a
shark repellent needed to ensure that sharks would not explode
ordnance targeting German
U-boats. In 1944 she was posted to
Kandy, Ceylon (now
Sri Lanka), where her responsibilities included "registering, cataloging and channeling a great volume of highly classified communications" for the OSS's clandestine stations in Asia
. She was later posted to
China, where she received the Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service as head of the Registry of the OSS Secretariat.
Following the war, she married
Paul Cushing Child on September 1, 1946 in
Lumberville, Pennsylvania, and the couple moved to Washington, D.C. Paul Child, a
New Jersey native
[ ] who had lived in
Paris as an artist and poet, was known for his sophisticated palate.
He joined the
United States Foreign Service and introduced his wife to fine cuisine. In 1948, they moved to Paris after the
US State Department assigned Paul there as an exhibits officer with the
United States Information Agency. The couple had no children.
Post-war France
Child repeatedly recalled her first meal in
Rouen as a culinary revelation; once, she described the meal of
oysters,
sole meunière and fine
wine to
The New York Times as "an opening up of the soul and spirit for me." In Paris she attended the famous
Le Cordon Bleu cooking school and later studied privately with Max Bugnard and other master chefs. She joined the women's cooking club
Cercle des Gourmettes where she met
Simone Beck who, with her friend
Louisette Bertholle, was writing a French cookbook for Americans. Beck proposed that Child work with them to make it appeal to Americans.
In 1951 Child, Beck and Bertholle began to teach cooking to American women in Child's Paris kitchen, calling their informal school
L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes (The School of the Three Food Lovers). For the next decade, as the Childs moved around Europe and finally to
Cambridge, Massachusetts, the three researched and repeatedly tested recipes. Child translated the French into English, making the recipes detailed, interesting, and practical.
Books and television
The three would-be authors initially signed a contract with publisher
Houghton Mifflin, which later rejected the manuscript for being too much like an encyclopedia. Finally, when it was first published in 1961 by
Alfred A. Knopf, the 734-page
Mastering the Art of French Cooking was a best-seller and received critical acclaim that derived in part from the American interest in French culture in the early 1960s. Lauded for its helpful illustrations, precise attention to detail and for making fine cuisine accessible, the book is still in print and is considered a seminal culinary work. Following this success, Child wrote magazine articles and a regular column for
The Boston Globe newspaper.
A 1962 appearance on a
book review show on the
National Educational Television (NET) station of Boston,
WGBH, led to the inception of her television cooking show after viewers enjoyed her demonstration of how to cook an
omelette.
The French Chef had its debut on February 11, 1963, on
WGBH and was immediately successful. The show ran nationally for ten years and won
Peabody and
Emmy Awards, including the first Emmy award for an educational program. Though she was not the first television cook, Child was the most widely seen. She attracted the broadest audience with her cheery enthusiasm, distinctively charming warbly voice, and unpatronising and unaffected manner.
In 1972
The French Chef became the first television program to be
captioned for the
deaf, albeit in the preliminary technology of open captioning.
Child's second book,
The French Chef Cookbook, was a collection of the recipes she had demonstrated on the show. It was soon followed in 1971 by
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two, again in collaboration with Simone Beck, but not with Louisette Bertholle, the relationship with whom ended on unattractive terms. Child's fourth book,
From Julia Child's Kitchen, was illustrated with her husband's photographs and documented the color series of
The French Chef, as well as providing an extensive library of kitchen notes compiled by Child during the course of the show.
In 1981 she founded the educational American Institute of Wine and Food in
Napa, California, with vintners
Robert Mondavi and
Richard Graff to "advance the understanding, appreciation and quality of wine and food," a pursuit she had already begun with her books and television appearances.
[
Child, 1989.jpg|thumb|right|Julia Child at the [[Miami Book Fair International] of 1989]]
In the 1970s and 1980s she was the star of numerous television programs, including
Julia Child & Company and
Dinner at Julia's; at the same time she also produced what she considered her
magnum opus, a book and instructional video series collectively entitled
The Way To Cook, which was published in 1989.
She starred in four more series in the 1990s that featured guest chefs:
Cooking with Master Chefs, In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs, Baking With Julia, and
Julia Child & Jacques Pépin Cooking at Home. She collaborated with
Jacques Pépin many times for television programs and cookbooks. All of Child's books during this time stemmed from the television series of the same names.
Beginning with
In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs, the Childs' home kitchen in Cambridge was fully transformed into a functional set, with TV-quality lighting, three cameras positioned to catch all angles in the room, a massive center island with a gas stovetop on one side and an electric stovetop on the other, but leaving the rest of the Childs' appliances alone, including "my wall oven with its squeaking door."
This kitchen backdrop hosted nearly all of Child's 1990s television series.
Child's last book was the autobiographical
My Life in France, published posthumously in 2006 and written with her husband's great nephew,
Alex Prud'homme. The book recounts Child's life with her husband, Paul Child, in post-World War II France.
In popular culture
Child was a favorite of audiences from the moment of her television debut on public television in 1963, and she was a familiar part of American culture and the subject of numerous references. In 1966 she was featured on the cover of
Time with the heading, "Our Lady of the Ladle."
In a 1978
Saturday Night Live sketch, she was affectionately parodied by
Dan Aykroyd continuing with a cooking show despite profuse bleeding from a cut to his thumb. It has been told that Julia loved this sketch so much that she would show it to friends at parties.
Jean Stapleton portrayed her in a 1989 musical,
Bon Appétit!, based on one of her televised cooking lessons. The title derived from her famous TV sign-off: "This is Julia Child. Bon appétit!" She was the inspiration for the character "Julia Grownup" on the
Children's Television Workshop program,
The Electric Company (1971–1977), and was portrayed or parodied in many other television and radio programs and skits, including
The Cosby Show (1984–1992) by character Heathcliff Huxtable (
Bill Cosby) and
Garrison Keillor's radio series
A Prairie Home Companion by voice actor
Tim Russell. Julia Child's TV show is briefly portrayed in the 1986 movie,
The Money Pit starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long; the 1985
Madonna film
Desperately Seeking Susan and the 1991 comedy
Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead. In 1993, she did the voice of Doctor Bleeb in the children's film
We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story.
In 2009, Child was half the focus of the feature film
Julie & Julia, with
Meryl Streep portraying Child.
Retirement
[
child kitchen.jpg|thumb|Julia Child's kitchen on display at the [[National Museum of American History] in
Washington, D.C.]]
Her husband, Paul, who was ten years older, died in 1994 after living in a nursing home for five years following a series of strokes in 1989. In 2001 she moved to a
retirement community in
Santa Barbara, California, donating her house and office to
Smith College. She donated her kitchen, which her husband designed with high counters to accommodate her formidable height, and which served as the set for three of her television series, to the
National Museum of American History, where it is now on display.
[Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian] Her iconic copper pots and pans were on display at Copia in Napa, California, until August 2009 when they were reunited with her kitchen at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.
She received the
French Legion of Honor in 2000
and the U.S.
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003. Child also received honorary doctorates from
Harvard University,
Johnson & Wales University in 1995, her alma mater
Smith College,
Brown University in 1999, and several other universities.
On August 13, 2004, Child died of
kidney failure at her assisted-living home in
Montecito, two days before her 92nd birthday.
Films
On August 18, 2004, a documentary filmed during her lifetime premiered. Produced by WGBH, the one-hour feature,
Julia Child! America's Favorite Chef, was aired as the first episode of the 18th season of the PBS series
American Masters. The film combined archive footage of Child with current footage from those who influenced and were influenced by her life and work.
In August 2002,
Julie Powell started documenting online her daily experiences cooking each of the 524 recipes in Child's
Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Powell later rewrote the
blog, "The Julie/Julia Project," into a memoir,
Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (Little, Brown, 2005), the paperback version of which was retitled
Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (Back Bay Books, 2006).
Julia Child noted publicly that she was not impressed with Powell's endeavor, calling it a mere stunt.
Nora Ephron wrote the screenplay for the film
Julie & Julia, which she adapted from Child's memoir
My Life in France and from Julie Powell's memoir. The film, directed by Ephron, was released on August 7, 2009 with
Meryl Streep playing Child.
A film titled
Primordial Soup With Julia Child was on display at the
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Life in The Universe gallery from 1976 until the gallery closed
[ ].
Public works
Television series
DVD releases
- Julia Child's Kitchen Wisdom (2000)
- Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home (2003)
- Julia Child: America's Favorite Chef (2004)
- The French Chef: Volume One (2005)
- The French Chef: Volume Two (2005)
- Julia Child! The French Chef (2006)
Books
- Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961), with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle—ISBN 0-375-41340-5
- Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two (1970), with Simone Beck—ISBN 0-394-40152-2
- The French Chef Cookbook (1968)—ISBN 0-394-40135-2
- From Julia Child's Kitchen (1975)—ISBN 0-517-20712-5
- Julia Child & Company (1978)—ISBN 0-345-31449-2
- Julia Child & More Company (1979)—ISBN 0-345-31450-6
- The Way To Cook (1989)—ISBN 0-394-53264-3
- Julia Child's Menu Cookbook (1991), one-volume edition of Julia Child & Company and Julia Child & More Company—ISBN 0-517-06485-5
- Cooking With Master Chefs (1993)—ISBN 0-679-74829-6
- In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs (1995)—ISBN 0-679-43896-3
- Baking with Julia (1996)—ISBN 0-688-14657-0
- Julia's Delicious Little Dinners (1998)—ISBN 0-375-40336-1
- Julia's Menus For Special Occasions (1998)—ISBN 0-375-40338-8
- Julia's Breakfasts, Lunches & Suppers (1999)—ISBN 0-375-40339-6
- Julia's Casual Dinners (1999)—ISBN 0-375-40337-X
- Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home (1999), with Jacques Pépin—ISBN 0-375-40431-7
- Julia's Kitchen Wisdom (2000)—ISBN 0-375-41151-8
- My Life in France (2006, posthumous), with Alex Prud'homme—ISBN 1-4000-4346-8
- (collected in) American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes, ed. Molly O'Neill (Library of America, 2007) ISBN 1598530054
