by Bob Spitz
If it had only been that easy when it came to her knee. The old appendage demanded constant care. For Julia, mobility was more than just a convenience, it was a vital necessity. With the bumper crop of appearances remaining on her schedule, she valued the importance of maintaining her stride. She prided herself on good fitness in general, staying active and vigorous even if it meant, at her age, working through a little pain. During those long book tours when she was always on the move, she would pop a few anti-inflammatories to keep her on the go. All told, it was a small price to pay.
But wear and tear was always a concern. In August 1997, on her eighty-fifth birthday, Julia was hopping between various events in Washington, D.C., scrabbling around like a teenager, when her knee suddenly gave way. It swelled up like a cantaloupe and an infection developed. Despite excruciating pain, she attended a book signing, but the pain became too great; she was afraid she’d pass out. “We need to go,” she told Stephanie Hersh, who took her straight to the airport.
In Boston, the doctor gave her antibiotics and advised her to stay off her feet. “It should clear up in a few days,” he said. But it didn’t—it got worse instead.
A few weeks later, Julia flew out to Santa Barbara, where she had recently settled in at the Casa Dorinda, a lovely retirement villa she and Paul had purchased years earlier. It had always been her intention to spend her golden years out West, although in Julia’s mind the golden years weren’t due until sometime well into the next century. Now, with Baking behind her, she planned to live at the Casa most of the year, with frequent visits to Cambridge and New York. The clinic at the Casa was a first-class establishment, and the doctors there recognized her persistent infection the moment they saw it. They immediately admitted her to the hospital, put her on intravenous antibiotics, and attempted to replace the knee. After two weeks and repeated procedures, the infection persisted, which delayed the implant. Instead, an antibiotic packet was placed directly in the wound, which Julia referred to as her Bouquet Gar-Knee.
But it was no laughing matter. It took several months for the infection to clear. The doctors were eventually able to replace the knee, but after the surgery, when Julia awoke, she seemed logy, almost aphasic: different. Stephanie Hersh, who hadn’t left her side since Washington, sensed that something was horribly wrong. “It’s the anesthesia,” the doctors assured her. “It’ll wear off soon.” “No,” she insisted, “something’s not right, I can tell.”
But a few days later, Julia was her old self again. There were some lingering symptoms, such as inflammation and pain. Julia had been immobile for so long that her muscles had atrophied and she could not walk. But her coordination would come back with some physical therapy. Nevertheless, Stephanie convinced her to have a CT scan. When the radiologist read the report, he confirmed her fears. “Yes, she’s had a small stroke,” he said.
“And that,” says Stephanie, “was the beginning of the end.”
In Santa Barbara, with Minou (Photo credit 26.2)
Twenty-seven
The Raft
Creatively, intellectually, and emotionally, Julia was solid as a rock. She had often said that her work kept her vital. “As long as I am able to continue doing what I love, there’s no stopping me,” she had told her friend Pat Pratt, who admired that dauntless pioneer spirit. “My work gives me purpose; my purpose is my work,” she explained to Stephanie Hersh after her operation, exercising like a demon to demonstrate her determination. On the threshold of her eighty-sixth birthday, she seemed hell-bent on defying it. “Her schedule never quieted down,” Stephanie said. “Julia was still doing every interview that came her way, as well as book-related things and traveling for different causes.”
Throughout the spring of 1998, 103 Irving teemed with enterprise and energy. The house “was a zoo,” but wonderfully wild, with people coming and going all day long; the usual menagerie: neighbors, friends, chefs, consultants, fund-raisers, writers, scholars, anyone at any time could walk right through the open kitchen door—and did, inviting themselves inside. Most mornings Julia was squirreled away in the upstairs office, writing articles for Food & Wine or catching up with correspondence. Occasionally, she made notes for a memoir many begged her to write, but wound up tossing them out afterward. The accounts she conjured lacked the power of the great diarists whose work she’d devoured over the years. “I don’t have it in me,” she conceded, but the idea continued to intrigue. It was a good exercise nonetheless, keeping her mind alert, her writing skills sharp.
There was always someone waiting when she finally made her way down to the kitchen. Julia looked forward to routine visits from one of the young Boston chefs, especially the men, “the boys,” whose attention she craved. Gordon Hamersley and Jasper White remained her all-time favorites. They were smart, serious chefs who observed the culinary strictures, but more important, perhaps, they were virile and tough-minded, her idea of he-men. And instead of food, they brought her news from the grapevine. “Julia loved gossip,” White says. “She always wanted the latest scuttlebutt, who was doing what, and to whom and how. She was a live wire; the electricity turned her on.”
Sara Moulton turned up from time to time to give her the behind-the-scenes poop at Good Morning America, or simply to ask some professional advice. Moulton, more than any of Julia’s protégés, had made the most of her apprenticeship and training. Not only was she thriving at GMA, but also at the fledgling Food Network, where she had her own how-to show that attracted a wide audience. Recently, she’d also signed on at Gourmet, where she developed recipes for each monthly issue.
“I’ve done this terrible thing,” she confessed to Julia one day that spring. Anguished, Moulton explained how they were working on an article about gratins for an upcoming issue of Gourmet. She and a few associates were testing the recipes that were credited to Madeleine Kamman, and they didn’t work. Moulton recognized the problem: the ingredients were hazy; Kamman hadn’t provided exact measurements. The editor wanted to kill the article, but Sara demurred. She thought, if nothing else, Kamman was a “great teacher” who deserved the space and acclaim. “So I called her up,” she explained to Julia, “and before I could get the problem out of my mouth, she said, ‘How dare you call me! You ripped off my recipe.’ ”
As it turned out, cooking teachers had longer memories than elephants. Years earlier, Moulton and Julia attended a demo Kamman did at which she boned out a salmon, and then put it back together with a smoked salmon-and-sour cream sauce. It was a nifty technique that impressed both women. A year or two afterward, Moulton did an article for Cook’s magazine with a similar recipe and technique, but without crediting Kamman. She “felt weird about it at the time,” but ran the story anyway.
“You’re right,” Moulton admitted. “I was wrong. Believe me, I’ll never do it again. I’ve learned my lesson.”
Kamman wasn’t satisfied. She continued to berate Moulton, unwilling to cooperate or discuss the faulty gratin recipes. As a result, the editor killed the piece.
Julia listened to Moulton through narrowing eyes. “Dearie, she didn’t invent that method of boning out fish,” Julia said. “She learned it in France, just like all of us. If you want to get anywhere in this profession, you need to follow my advice. Just call her up, and say, ‘Madeleine, fuck you!’ ” She made Moulton repeat it three times until she was satisfied with her delivery.
“Julia liked to swear,” Moulton says, “and she did it like a sailor, but much of it was targeted at Madeleine, whom she loathed.”
That Woman from Newton remained planted on Julia’s enemies list—a short one, Julia liked to remind people, that aside from Madeleine included only Madame Brassart and the two Joes: McCarthy and Stalin. Friends had tried everything to reconcile their differences, without success. Kamman continued to bad-mouth Julia every chance she got, and Julia continued to swear at every mention of Madeleine’s name.
Cooking teachers have longer memories than elephants.
Another visitor that spring
was Geoffrey Drummond, who seemed eager to entice Julia with forbidden fruit, which in her case was work. Drummond had her number. She loved being on TV; she couldn’t say no, and he devised new, exciting concepts that played right into her weakness. This one was irresistible: a series with Jacques Pépin, a spin-off of their Cooking in Concert shows.
Julia’s health, for the first time, was a determining factor. Her knee was healed—somewhat—but still a source of lingering pain. She hobbled around on it as best she could, often leaning on a chair or a helping hand to get her balance. Knowing that she’d be on her feet for an ongoing production, she used every trick and dodge she could to downplay her condition, but Drummond could see she was in a fragile state. Yet she was stubborn, fearless, determined to do the show. Jacques discussed it with Julia and saw that “there was plenty of fire left in her.” “She was an elderly woman,” Drummond says, “but she made me forget she was old.”
He wanted to make it easy for her to say yes. The original plan was to film the series in New York, at the French Culinary Institute, in front of a live audience, but it became apparent that Julia didn’t have the stamina. Instead, they’d shoot it in her house, with a full staff of assistants. There’d be no script, no rehearsal, nothing for her to prepare in advance. She and Jacques would decide on a number of recipes and just cook them on the air any way they wished. They could improvise, wing it, whatever they pleased. It didn’t matter how they did it or how long they took—twenty minutes, sixty, a hundred and twenty, all day; it would be edited afterward to fit the hour-long time frame. All Julia had to do was show up and be herself.
Drummond knew the key was their engaging personalities. Julia and Jacques were both perfectionists, headstrong, convinced their way was the right way, masters of their own kitchen. There was also a male-female tension that promised to throw sparks. Julia had neither forgotten nor forgiven the harsh treatment of women by French chefs. All these years, she’d exhorted women to stand up to those tyrants, to demand respect and equal rights in the kitchen. Jacques’s voice, that arch French accent, would push a few buttons. There would be plenty to feast on aside from the food.
What people loved about Cooking in Concert was the friendly rivalry. By bringing it into Julia’s kitchen, it would take on an intimacy, something viewers might regard as kitchen therapy.
Once Julia agreed, Drummond pushed for a book to accompany the series. The last thing Julia wanted to do was to write on deadline, not in her condition, not at eighty-six. All those late nights, trying to pound out copy—it made sense at one time, but not anymore. Still, she said, “Why don’t you run it by Judith,” a delicate proposition considering their itchy experience with Baking.
Drummond, reluctantly, sent a proposal to Knopf. He wasn’t optimistic about a favorable response, nor an advance that would be competitive with other houses. Publishers also had long memories, and hard feelings were hard to assuage. But Jones, who wasn’t inclined to hold grudges, saw the blockbuster potential right away. “I thought this could be a terrific book,” she recalls. “The idea of two voices was fabulous, and it taught something so essential: that there is no one way to cook.” It would be a “break-out for Julia,” working with Jacques, she thought. Jones had to have the book. She wouldn’t let this one get away.
She practically ran the proposal into the office of her publisher, Sonny Mehta. “This is going to be a monster—they’re going to be hilarious together,” she told him. Unlike her degrading experience with Alfred Knopf thirty-seven years earlier, Jones got immediate satisfaction from Mehta, who decided to make a preemptive offer: a million dollars guaranteed. It was staggering, an offer even Drummond couldn’t refuse. Besides, Julia wanted to work with Jones again. Judith knew her style; she’d protect Julia, particularly with a manuscript that would be largely ghostwritten.
Everything came together almost as neatly. The series was underwritten by KQED in San Francisco, which had a long-standing relationship with Jacques. He’d also discussed the show with his friend Jess Jackson, who owned the Kendall-Jackson Winery and stepped up to sponsor Julia and Jacques.
The series began filming in the summer of 1998, and from the first day of production it was everything everyone expected. The fireworks started flying the moment Julia walked on the set. “I think we should use an electric stove,” she said. Pépin looked at her, bewildered. “Why?” he asked. “You don’t cook on an electric stove.” The old gas range in her kitchen had never let her down. It was like a lover; she knew every inch of it, its touch, all of its quirks, its infidelities. Besides, they’d built a new counter especially for the show and had put a gas stovetop in it, ready to go. “No, I want an electric stove,” she insisted. “Jack doesn’t appreciate that sixty-nine percent of Americans use an electric stove.”
“But I don’t cook on an electric stove,” he told her, pleading his case.
“Fine,” Julia said. “You cook over there. I’ll cook over here.” She spread her arms out to define center stage, where the crew was already drawing plans for an electric range.
Appliances weren’t the only issue they wrangled about. “We could never agree—on anything,” Pépin recalls. “An hour before filming, Julia would change the menu. She would find the producer and decide on a dish we’d never discussed.” Jacques had no choice but to cook her recipe. He knew the score: “No one says no to Julia.”
He also knew his role—not just as Julia’s foil, but to be the perfect assistant so that nothing slowed down.
Julia’s role was much more provocative. “She loved getting into conflict with Jacques and challenging him,” says Geof Drummond. That was part of her incentive to do the series. “She loved getting his goat,” recalls Judith Jones, who was on the set for practically every show.
“We argued over every single dish,” Jacques says. “Because we used no recipes there was no reason to follow a particular structure, and that meant we could do what we thought worked best. I respected Julia’s palate; she had taste. But there were many times I thought she was flat-out wrong.”
Like the Greeks, they almost went to war over turkey. Julia insisted on cutting up the bird before roasting it, which Jacques thought was ridiculous, a recipe for disaster. He demanded they do it his way for once. “It’s going to work better,” he said, defending his technique. “It will not work!” she fumed. Julia was “mad as hell,” but gave in this one time—even madder when the recipe turned out perfectly. Other times she stood her ground and made her point, like when they collaborated on a roast of veal. Jacques wanted to add endive to the pot. “It won’t be good,” Julia warned him in an obsequious I-told-you-so voice. You could almost see smoke coming out of his nostrils. “The juice of the veal will braise the endive,” he assured her through clenched teeth, but he was wrong; it made the endive bitter.
Judith Jones didn’t help the situation. She stood off-camera, watching over her million-dollar investment, trying to motivate Julia to take a strong position. “You’re not going to take that French macho stuff from him, are you?” she’d mutter between takes. That was usually enough to light Julia’s wick. When production resumed, she’d come out swinging, like a battered boxer who’d been revived between rounds.
“Don’t let him get away with that,” Judith prompted.
From time to time, Jones would encounter Jacques on the porch, cooling off. “He’d ball up his fist and rattle off a stream of French expletives,” she recalls. “Then they’d call ‘Action!’ and, in front of the camera, his whole demeanor would change.”
“Ooooh, Julia, ma chérie, whatever you want. You don’t think that would be good? Okay, let’s do it your way.”
“She really frustrated him,” Jones says, “no question about it.”
The work was frustrating, but also long and hard. They cooked and filmed, filmed and cooked, until ten or eleven every night for the better part of three months. “Julia was already pretty shaky on her feet,” Drummond recalls. “I could see the physical strain was catching u
p with her.” There were days she could barely stand through a ten-minute take. Instead, she leaned her body against the counter and propped as much weight as possible on her hands. “She was worn out physically,” says Stephanie Hersh. “Her legs were bothering her—the knee, which had never really recovered—and she needed to frequently sit down in order to recharge.” Intermittent naps were also slotted into the schedule. “She needed rest; otherwise, she’d never make it through to the end.”
Each night, after work was officially over, the entire cast and crew tromped into the dining room, where they ate all the food that was prepared during the day. Julia began the feast the same way every night, by raising a glass of wine and saying, “Don’t we have fun!” Often, the meal lasted well past midnight. She reached deep into her reserve tank to keep up the pace.
By October 1998, Julia and Jacques’s cooking duet had lapsed into an endless round of fencing: thrust and parry, frustration and reprisal. Their disparate techniques seemed to draw them further and further apart. Jacques used kosher salt, Julia wouldn’t touch it; Jacques used black pepper, Julia only white. “The prices for some of these ‘gourmet’-type salts are ridiculous and I don’t want to be bothered with three kinds,” her co-writer transcribed from tapes for the book, when what she actually told him was: “Fuck ’em! Fuck ’em all!” Jacques made his own mayonnaise, Julia preferred Hellman’s. Jacques baked potatoes in the oven, Julia used the microwave. Jacques put white wine in his onion soup, Julia red. Fuck ’em! Fuck ’em all!
If their differences brought out Julia’s petulance, the sponsors brought out her guile. It was standard procedure to invite the sponsors to visit the set out of appreciation for their generosity. Kendall-Jackson had been nothing if not supportive of Julia and Jacques. Not only had they underwritten much of the costly production, they’d also sent cases of wine from their best artisan vineyards that were used throughout for the cooking. Out of courtesy, Drummond invited their Boston distributor to take in one of the shows and to bring along some rising-star chefs.
