Everything about Julia Child totally explained
Julia Child (
August 15,
1912 –
August 13,
2004) was a famous American
cook,
author, and
television personality, who introduced
French cuisine and cooking techniques to the American mainstream, through her many
cookbooks and television programs. Her most famous works are the 1961 cookbook
Mastering the Art of French Cooking and, showcasing her
sui generis television persona, the series
The French Chef, which premiered in 1963.
Youth and World War II
Born
Julia Carolyn McWilliams to John and Julia Carolyn ("Caro") McWilliams in the wealthy community of
Pasadena, California, she grew up eating traditional
New England food prepared by the family maid. She attended
Polytechnic School from fourth grade to ninth grade and then
The Branson School in
Ross, California. After graduating in 1934 from
Smith College—where at six feet, two inches (1.88 m) tall she played basketball—with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in history, she moved to
New York City and worked as a
copywriter for the
advertising department of upscale home-furnishing firm
W. & J. Sloane. After returning to California in 1937, shortly before her mother died, she spent four years at home, writing for local publications and briefly working in advertising again. Civic-minded, she volunteered with the
American Red Cross and, after the bombing of
Pearl Harbor in 1941, joined the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) after being turned down by the
United States Navy for being too tall.
She started out at OSS Headquarters in Washington, working directly for General
William J. Donovan, the leader of OSS. Working as a research assistant in the Secret Intelligence division, Julia typed up thousands of names on white note cards used to keep track of officers.
For a year, she worked at the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section in
Washington, D.C., where she was a file clerk and also helped in the development of a
shark repellent to insure that sharks wouldn't explode ordinance targeting German U-boats. In 1944 she was posted to
Kandy, Ceylon (now
Sri Lanka), where she met her future husband, a high-ranking OSS cartographer, and later to
China, where she received the Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service as head of the Registry of the OSS Secretariat.
Following
the war, she lived in Washington, D.C., where she was married on
September 1,
1946 to
Paul Cushing Child, a man known for his sophisticated palate who came from a prominent
Boston family and who had lived in
Paris as an artist and poet. He joined the
United States Foreign Service and also introduced his wife to fine cuisine. In 1948, they moved to Paris after the
U.S. State Department assigned Paul Child as an exhibits officer with the
United States Information Agency in Paris, France. The couple had no children.
Post-war France
Child repeatedly recalled her first meal in
Rouen of
oysters,
sole meunière, and fine
wine as a culinary revelation. She described the experience once in
The New York Times newspaper 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 master chefs like
Max Bugnard. 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 and proposed that Mrs. Child work with them to make it appeal to Americans.
In 1951, they began to teach cooking to American women in the Childs' kitchen, calling their informal school
L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes (The School of the Three Gourmands). For the next decade as the Childs moved around Europe and finally to
Cambridge, Massachusetts, the three researched and repeatedly tested recipes and Child translated the French into English, making the recipes detailed, interesting, and practical.
Fame, books, and television series
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 to the masses, 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
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) 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 debuted
February 11,
1963 on WGBH and was immediately successful. The show ran nationally for ten years and won
Peabody and
Emmy Awards, including the very first Emmy award for an Educational program. Though she wasn't the first television cook, Child was the most widely seen. Her primary "competitor" for viewers was the British "
Galloping Gourmet", another successful cooking show of the time. She attracted the broadest audience with her cheery enthusiasm, distinctively charming warbly voice, and unpatronising and unaffected manner.
Child's second book,
The French Chef Cookbook, was a collection of the recipes she'd 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, with whom they'd ended their partnership. Child's fourth book,
From Julia Child's Kitchen, was illustrated with her husband's photographs.
In the 1970s and 1980s, she was the star of numerous television programs, including
Julia Child & Company and
Dinner at Julia's. 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 lights, 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-turned-TV-backdrop hosted nearly all of Mrs. Child's 90's era TV series.
Child was a favorite of audiences from the moment of her television debut on public television in 1963 and her personage–a striking hybrid of gravitas and
camp–was a familiar part of American culture and the subject of numerous references. In 1966, she was featured on the cover of
Time magazine 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 the thumb.
Jean Stapleton portrayed her in a 1989 musical,
Bon Appétit!, based on one of her televised cooking lessons, the title based on her famous sign-off from her televised cooking shows: "This is Julia Child. Bon appétit!". She was also 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.
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'd already begun with her books and television appearances.
Retirement
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 diminished but still formidable height, and which served as the set for three of her television series, to the
Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where it's now on display in Washington, D.C.
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, her alma mater
Smith College, and several other universities.
On
August 13,
2004, Child died at her home in Santa Barbara, peacefully in her sleep of
kidney failure. Her final meal was
French onion soup.
On
August 18,
2004, a documentary filmed during her lifetime premiered. The one-hour feature,
Julia Child! America's Favorite Chef, was aired as the first episode of the eighteenth season of the PBS series
American Masters. The film only featured archive footage of Julia, but had current footage from many of the people who influenced, and were influenced by, her life and work. The film was produced by
WGBH, the Boston public television station.
In March 2008, director-screenwriter Nora Ephron began filming "Julie & Julia", a film starring
Meryl Streep as Julia Child.
Public works
Television series
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 1598530054Further Information
Get more info on 'Julia Child'.
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