System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Julia Child, Television Chef and author
August 15, 1912 - August 13, 2004
Julia Child, the celebrated cook, author and television personality who elevated the nation's culinary standards through her television series and books, has died. She was 91.
Child passed away in her sleep on Friday August 13, 2004, at her home in an assisted living centre in Montecito, a coastal town about 90 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Child, who died two days before her 92nd birthday, had been suffering from kidney failure.
Born Julia McWilliams on Aug. 15, 1912, in Pasadena, California, she was one of three children of John and Caro McWilliams. Her father was a well-to-do real estate investor and businessman; her mother, a loving nonconformist, amateur athlete and patron of the arts.
Julia McWilliams was an extrovert and a tomboy -- hiking, golfing, swimming and playing tennis while growing to a gangly 6-foot-2. She was known for her stamina, irreverence and pell-mell impulsiveness. Neither Julia's mother nor the hired cooks, who fed the family a standard American meat-and-potatoes diet, inspired Julia to spend time in the kitchen.
After graduation from a private boarding school in California, she attended Smith College, her mother's alma mater, in Northampton, Mass., majoring in history. But she preferred physical and social activity over her studies. Upon graduation in 1934, she thought she might become a novelist or a writer for the New Yorker magazine. Instead, she ended up in the publicity department of a New York City furniture and rug chain. For three years she wrote advertising copy for W. & J. Sloane, returning to California shortly before her mother died, in 1937. She spent four years at home, writing for local publications and briefly working in advertising again. Always civic minded -- as were her parents -- she volunteered with the Red Cross and, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, decided to enter government service.
A job with the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C., presented her with this opportunity to volunteer for work in China and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) where, in 1944, she met Paul Child, a widely traveled OSS officer and artist known for his sophisticated palate. Paul introduced her to the wonders of food.
While with the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, Julia helped the U.S. spy agency develop shark repellent. This was a critical ingredient in protecting explosives used to sink German U-boats during World War II. On Sept. 1, 1946, Julia and Paul were married. Two years later, Paul was assigned to the U.S. Information Service at the American Embassy in Paris. In Paris, Child enrolled in the famed Cordon Bleu cooking school, motivated at least in part by a desire to cook for her epicure husband.
After her formal training, Julia opened "L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes," a cooking school in 1951, with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, whom she had met in France. Their techniques and recipes reached a larger audience with their book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. It was published in 1961 and was followed by “The French Chef Cookbook”; “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. II,” with Beck; “From Julia Child’s Kitchen”; “Julia Child & Company”; “Julia Child & More Company”; and “The Way to Cook,” in October 1989.
Upon returning to the U.S., Julia participated in a television interview at WGBH-Boston. The interview was so engaging that the station proposed a series of TV cooking shows. And so, on February 11, 1963, "The French Chef" was born, enlivening the kitchens and expanding the palates of Americans forever. After some 200 programs on classical French cooking, Julia explored contemporary cuisine with "Julia Child and Company," "Julia Child and More Company," "Dinner at Julia's," "Baking with Julia," the "Master Chefs" series and "Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home" with Jacques Pepin. Child preached a delight not only in good food but in sharing it, ending her landmark public television lessons at a set table and with the wish, “Bon appetit.”
Her original career goal as a writer served her well as she wrote frequently for newspapers and magazines during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Her columns for McCall's, Parade and Food & Wine, as well as her regular appearances on ABC's "Good Morning America" and the Food Channel, continued to spread her fame and her philosophy that food is meant to be enjoyed.
Since the 1980s, she devoted attention to promoting the serious study of food and cooking. One of her lasting contributions to the field of culinary education is the American Institute of Wine and Food, which she founded in 1981 in San Francisco California, with Robert Mondavi and Richard Graff and co-founded the James Beard Foundation in New York City in 1986.
More recently, she teamed with fellow television chef Jacques Pepin for the 1994 PBS special, “Julia Child & Jacques Pepin: Cooking in Concert” and a 1996 sequel, “More Cooking in Concert.”
Paul Child, who was 10 years Julia's senior (he was born in 1902) was a full partner in her career. Not only did he awaken her passion for food but he also encouraged her cooking and helped with the television show by shopping and doing other behind-the-scenes work, as well as serving as her manager and official photographer. He died in 1994, after living in a nursing home for five years. The couple had no children
Julia Child left the couple's home in Cambridge in 2001, after living there for 42 years. She moved to a retirement community in Santa Barbara California, donating the house and office to Smith College. She gave the kitchen, which Paul had designed and which served as the set for three of her television series, to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., where it is now on view.
Child won distinguished awards in both broadcasting (a Peabody in 1965 and an Emmy in 1966) and cooking. In 1980, she became the first woman member of La Commanderie des Cordons Bleus de France.
Child also had been collaborating on a memoir with a grandnephew, Alex Prud'homme, and had completed two chapters, said her longtime editor at Knopf, Judith Jones. Work on the memoir likely will continue, she said. A memorial service for family members was planned, but Child asked that no funeral be held.
