by Bob Spitz
Later that night, Julia stole off by herself to call Paul. There was plenty she wanted to tell him, how much he was in everyone’s hearts, how he was there in spirit, followed by a blow-by-blow description of the day’s events. It took awhile until he came on the phone, but he had no idea who she was.
THE PUBLIC CELEBRATIONS were a horse of a different color. There was everything but fireworks to commemorate the occasion.
It began in Washington, D.C., at the Hay Adams Hotel in July 1992, where seven local chefs, including Jean-Louis Palladin and Bob Kinkead, prepared a feast fit for 170 guests and one culinary queen: smoked black cod cakes, spicy lobster taquitos, broiled clams, corn cake with smoked salmon, and risotto with porcini mushrooms, as well as three birthday cakes, one decorated with edible reproductions of Julia’s cookbooks. The gala was a raucous, impassioned affair, while outside, on the pavement, a dozen animal-rights activists paraded with signs that read animals beware, julia’s hungry. The protest didn’t faze her one bit. Waving cheerfully to the demonstrators, she proclaimed, “I’m a card-carrying carnivore.” Didn’t they know she was eighty? “I’ve got to keep up my strength.”
No sooner had she digested her Washington feast than a trio of others followed suit, only larger and more copious, if that were possible. On November 2, six hundred fans paid $250 a head as a fund-raiser for WGBH and AIWF, at the Copley Plaza in Boston, and on January 24, fourteen New York chefs prepared a menu of French Chef classics, including sweetbread vol-au-vent, quail egg in aspic, and duck with turnips for a packed house at the Rainbow Room on the sixty-fifth floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
The largest and most over-the-top event was held on February 7, 1993, in Los Angeles, where spectacles are routinely produced by showbiz masters. This one, entitled “Merci, Julia,” was of the Ben-Hur and Spartacus variety, with a cast of five hundred crammed into a dining room at the Ritz-Carlton. The star-studded lineup of chefs might have been assembled by Cecil B. DeMille: Paul Bocuse, Michel Rostang, Alain Ducasse, Roger Vergé, André Soltner, Michel Guérard, Daniel Boulud, Jacques Pépin, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and David Bouley—forty-four chefs in all, who worked the line while guests watched the kitchen action on two overhead screens.
The stockpile of food on display was almost obscene. Each of the chefs had his or her own booth, where appetizers were staged like glitzy warm‑up acts. There were leek tarts, hush puppies stuffed with shrimp, lobster sausage, venison in puff pastry, crab croquettes, braised rabbit, curried duck, smoked salmon rillettes, tuna tartare, foie gras stuffed in prunes that had been soaked in Armagnac for two weeks, eight pounds of caviar, and unlimited bottles of champagne. Anyone who had room left for dinner feasted on a menu of artichoke-fennel soup with black-olive quenelles, marinière de coquille Saint-Jacques, and roast saddle of veal, before a cheese course and dessert. In all, “Merci, Julia” cost somewhere between $350,000 and $450,000 to produce, about the same as a budget for an independent film.
Julia soaked up the spotlight like a Hollywood supernova. It was her night to bask in the splendorous glare, and she did it with gusto (and the minimum of indigestion), but the evening was not without controversy. French food had been feeling the pinch of late, thanks to the meteoric rise of New American cooking. “Our love affair with French food is over,” Newsweek had declared, calling the stodgy French restaurant “almost extinct.” “The fickle public had turned against the mother cuisine in favor of A.B.F., Anything But French,” Marian Burros wrote in The New York Times. Even Italian food had staged its own culinary coup, and the atmosphere at the Ritz-Carlton was thick with regret. That night there was “a lot of hand-wringing about the state of French food in this country,” according to Burros.
Julia, of course, wasn’t having any of it. She rallied the troops, proselytizing for butter-and-cream sauces and well-marbled meats. “If we ate the way nutritionists want us to eat,” she said, “our hair would be falling out, our teeth would be falling out, and our skin would be drying up.” Vive la France.
At least the feminine la served to modify France, but that was the only thing feminine that served to elevate the gala. Its organizers took heat for the “paucity of women in the kitchen”—only two were listed on the official program and one, Maguy Le Coze of Le Bernardin, didn’t cook. The flap was kicked up further in the press by Julia’s old nemesis Madeleine Kamman, who complained that the event was nothing more than a testament to male chauvinism. “The mere fact that I haven’t been invited is grotesque,” she protested, a statement that cast doubt on the state of her mind. But the issue about women was no delusional matter. Why hadn’t Alice Waters been invited to cook? Or Lydia Shire, whom Julia promoted every chance she got? Or Marian Morash, a dear and trusted friend? Wouldn’t it have been prudent to ask Nancy Silverton to bake bread?
Asked to comment on the exclusion of women, Julia took umbrage. “This has nothing to do with women at all,” she replied. “It’s about French food and about friends.” Her response sounded evasive and glib to some. She clearly intended that such evenings be exempt from disputes. But then she got downright insensitive. “I think women are getting tiresome.”
I think women are getting tiresome! It was a rare misstep in a repertoire of sure-footed performances. Maybe after too many helpings of foie de canard rôti Julia had gotten a little cranky. Or maybe she wanted to lob a grenade into the bouillabaisse.
Be that as it may, Julia’s eightieth birthday was an otherwise good excuse to shower love and affection on a woman now described variously as “the Queen of Cuisine” and “a national treasure.” The celebrations were so gratifying—and addictive. Once Julia developed a taste for them, she added scores of similar events to her already crowded schedule. “Literally, there were birthday parties going on every week,” recalls David McWilliams. It seemed that every community group vied to mark her anniversary. As long as they agreed to donate the proceeds to AIWF, Julia served gratefully as guest of honor. But the endless meals wreaked havoc on her eighty-year-old waistline.
A ladies’ auxiliary in Natchez, Mississippi, for example, had prepared for Julia’s appearance for months. When the day finally arrived, she and her assistant, Stephanie, walked into an enormous town hall, down the middle of which ran parallel rows of buffet tables piled with platters of down-home Southern fare. Each of about fifty women stood proudly by the dish she had prepared, each placing a generous helping on Julia’s plate as she passed. “When we sat down, there was a mound of food on Julia’s plate, and mine had only grits on it,” Stephanie recalls. “She took one look at me and said, ‘Oh, dearie, you must be hungrier than that,’ and promptly slid her entire pile of food onto my plate.” At other functions, when Julia found the food inedible, it either wound up on Stephanie’s plate or in one of the small plastic Baggies she carried, which eventually disappeared into Stephanie’s handbag.
She was determined to keep her figure for a multitude of reasons. Health, of course, was always a primary focus. That bum knee of Julia’s, despite countless procedures, was unforgiving when it came to weight. The endless travel and constant activity was physically punishing enough, but excess poundage caused excruciating pain. Another concern was her television persona. “Nobody wants to see a fat Julia Child,” she insisted, ever mindful of her brand. The new series, Cooking with Master Chefs, was incentive to watch what she ate, as was her continuing appearance on Good Morning America. But when push came to shove, Julia minded her figure to please her new beau, John McJennett.
“She really enjoyed having him around,” says Marian Morash, “and his presence lifted her spirit enormously.” With John by her side, Julia felt comfortable returning to a heavy entertaining mode, throwing dinner parties every chance she got for a parade of culinary dignitaries. “Everyone who came to town was invited for dinner,” recalls David McWilliams, now living with his aunt Julia while attending graduate school in Boston. “She would have Stephanie call ahead and advise them: ‘We’re having lamb tonight,’ which meant whoever showed
up better be prepared to make something with lamb.” Julia never cooked dinner ahead of time. Never. The meals were left up to whoever walked in the door, whether it be Marcella Hazan, or Jacques Pépin, or the renowned pastry chef Jim Dodge. Everyone pitched in to make dinner at Julia’s. She loved watching other people cook in her house, and she supervised, however gingerly, suggesting subtle improvements and offering advice.
John McJennett was the exception. Not only didn’t he cook, he knew very little about cuisine, haute or otherwise. “He was a man of a different era,” recalls his daughter, Linda. “He didn’t want his green beans al dente or his fish cooked rare. As for wine, forget it. Give him bourbon and a good rare steak.”
McJennett presided at the head of Julia’s table, amused by all the prep work that swirled around him. Feigning helplessness in the kitchen and having a plain-vanilla palate, this he-man still managed to charm Julia. More than that. “He made her happy,” observed Corby Kummer. “He was like an old shoe that fit her style. She always looked very indulgently at him, delighted to have a Real Man around.”
David McWilliams enjoyed watching their relationship develop. “It was very sweet, like come-a-courting,” he recalls. “It reminded me of a schoolkid romance.” Occasionally, David would hear their car pull into the driveway after an evening out, and he’d steal onto the second-floor balcony to watch them. “John was just like a young boy, trying to give her a kiss, and Julia would make it difficult, but always give in.”
“He was crazy about her, and got progressively more serious,” says Rebecca Alssid. “Before long, John suggested it would be easier for both of them if he lived with her, at 103 Irving.” To friends, Julia would say, “I don’t want to be with another man like that.” Cooking and cleaning for someone new was too much to ask of her. “I’ve already taken care of one old man; I’m not going to take care of another one.” Teasingly, her nephew, David, proposed they consider getting married. He must have forgotten: Julia already was married.
With John on the scene, Paul’s presence in the house faded, but in his few lucid moments he’d call from his room at Fairlawn. If Julia answered the phone, he might ask her “Why am I here? I should be home. When are you coming to get me?” “It would just kill her,” says Stephanie Hersh, who overheard the conversations. “No, Paul,” Julia would respond patiently, “that’s where you live now.” Other days, he had no clue about what was going on. If he called and got the answering machine, the message left on it was often heartbreaking. “Julia, I hear your voice. Why won’t you talk to me?” By the end of 1993, however, “he didn’t know what a phone was or how to use it.”
Julia tried hard to keep his condition in perspective. “Luckily, he doesn’t know anything, whether I’m away or not, so that I can travel and can press on with my work,” she said. Nevertheless, she continued to visit Paul whenever possible, every day when she was at home in Cambridge. Otherwise she had the visiting nurses spend time with him or sent George, their gardener, in her place. Physically, Paul was in decent shape, but his mind had deteriorated more rapidly of late. He spent most of his waking hours paging through Time magazine, just staring, unable to grasp what he was reading. Even when Julia appeared in its pages, there was no recognition.
In fact, Julia had been ever more newsworthy for issues that had nothing to do with French cuisine. Food in America was becoming an increasingly political hot potato, from the use of pesticides to diet to how McDonald’s cooked their fries. Neither pro nor anti anything, Julia was a traditionalist. She believed in food that was classical and delicious, regardless of its source. “Eat everything. Have fun,” was the motto she lived by. Moderation, moderation, moderation—she couldn’t say it enough. Nutritionists, with their campaign against butter and fat, became the enemy to her. “They are ruining our food,” she protested every chance she got. They were “scareheads” or “emotional cultists” who spread “an awful lot of romantic hogwash.” Romantics were another species high on Julia’s hit list. “Romantics feel we should eat wild instead of farmed salmon, even though you don’t know the condition of the salmon on the line,” she fumed. Romantics were against cooking with modern machinery, like the Cuisinart, which was “just crazy,” according to Julia. And speaking of crazy, she had choice words for anti-veal activists, Rachel Carson’s aversion to synthetic pesticides, cholesterol alarmists, organic gardeners, and Meryl Streep.
The actress crusaded against the chemical Alar, used as a growth regulator on apples. In interviews, she claimed that Alar contaminated apples, putting children at risk of cancer and other diseases. “She’s not a scientist!” Julia complained. “Why take her word for anything?” It infuriated Julia that Streep was not only in league with the media but with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group. Julia had enough run-ins with them on issues like irradiation and fertilizers. (She was in favor of both—“in moderation,” of course.)1
More recently, she’d begun fencing with an anti-alcohol group that condemned the drinking of wine with meals. “Some people just can’t be sensible,” Julia bristled with indignation. “I feel we must attack these people and their silly ideas.”
With all these battlefronts raging, along with a lingering trickle of birthday blowouts, Julia struggled to focus on Cooking with Master Chefs. The series had gone off swimmingly, considering the groundwork involved. Since each of the shows was shot on location, in the cities where the chefs cooked, the travel took its toll. New York, New Orleans, Washington, Houston, San Francisco, Hawaii—“The travel was beating her up,” recalls Geof Drummond. Fortunately, as scripted, Julia was off-camera for much of the cooking, but her role was demanding nonetheless. She was always involved in the content, noting exactly what each chef did and testing their recipes, but as the series progressed she got more involved in the action. There was no holding her back, Drummond recalls. She worried constantly that Master Chefs wouldn’t be perceived as a Julia Child show and took every opportunity to wade into the cooking.
Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry about prep. The mise en place was handled by no less than Thomas Keller, who was between restaurants and happy to help. Some chefs, Julia felt, needed extra assistance. Julia liked what Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken brought to the kitchen, their provenance and French-based training, but their food completely mystified her. Dal and curries were not her cup of tea. The same with Amy Ferguson-Ota, whose Polynesian-influenced menus were beyond Julia’s grasp. Throughout the series, she still preferred French food to anything else. She was in heaven when Jean-Louis Palladin poached foie gras in an apple reduction and roasted duck breast in the fireplace. Jeremiah Tower’s spectacle with chicken was right up her alley. Julia showed somewhat more enthusiasm for Lidia Bastianich’s craft—she was particularly taken by the sauces that accompanied each dish—but she still had reservations about Italian cooking. “It really isn’t my kind of food,” she was overheard to say after the episode.
Perhaps the audience sensed her reservations—or maybe the restaurant fare didn’t excite—but the series wasn’t a ratings sensation. Apparently, the hosting job didn’t satisfy; viewers wanted to see Julia Child cooking or, at the very least, infusing the show with her inimitable personality.
Despite the soft response, Maryland Public TV ordered a second series, this time longer, with more of Julia’s involvement. The main difference, however, was location. This show would have a set—Julia’s own kitchen at 103 Irving Street. “It was getting to be too much for Julia to traipse around the country,” says Geof Drummond. “This would make the show easier for her and more personal, and for the chefs, coming to Julia’s house was like visiting the Vatican.”
In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs was a collaborative experience. Twenty-six of America’s most inventive cooks brought their best recipes to Julia’s table, where she questioned and analyzed everything that went into each dish. The old-guard French chefs were spurned in favor of mostly younger candidates, the country’s brightest r
ising stars responsible for sharply redefining restaurant cooking: Charlie Trotter, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud, Alfred Portale, Dean Fearing, Rick Bayless, and Monique Barbeau, among others, who were taking ingredients and twisting them. The result was a series of dishes of furious, explosive flavor—a smoked salmon napoleon, jalapeño Caesar salad dressing, foie gras ravioli, white peppercorn ice cream—in which the order of ingredients was often changed, while keeping the integrity of the dish.
It had taken Julia a long time to accept these changes. They flew in the face of all her classic French training. But there was so much innovation going on, especially in Boston. The local chefs she mentored and promoted—Jasper White, Gordon Hamersley, and Jody Adams, now included in this TV series—had moved well beyond their French training, and she began to understand and embrace what they were doing.
Once again, Julia Child was at the forefront of American food.
BUT SHE WAS at the backside of exhaustion. The production had turned her home into a makeshift TV studio: the kitchen served as the set, with monitors and equipment clogging the dining room, and a full-scale prep kitchen spread throughout the basement, crawling with cooks and assistants. “The work was nonstop,” recalls Stephanie Hersh. “Julia would get up at five in the morning, do hair and makeup, start filming at six, break twenty minutes for lunch, finish filming around four, work on the book for an hour, have dinner with the crew, work on the book for another two hours, sleep for five hours—then do it all over again. It was go go go go go!”
