TV chef, author and beloved American icon, Julia Child, was born on August 15, 1912 in Pasadena, California. Known for her cheerful enthusiasm and unpretentious manner, she made complex cooking techniques accessible to the home cook. Her first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking – a nine-year collaboration with two other authors – became a standard in the kitchen of many chefs, and her first cooking show, The French Chef, brought the art of French cuisine directly into the homes of Americans.
But Julia didn’t initially set out to become a famous chef. In fact, she didn’t learn to cook until she was 32 years old.
I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate. - Julia Child
With dreams of becoming a novelist, Child moved to Manhattan in 1935 after graduating from Smith College the previous year. She found work as a copywriter in the advertising department of an upscale home furnishings firm. Later, as World War II raged, she decided to work for the war effort and accepted a job with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) after being told she was too tall to enlist in the Women’s Army Corps or in the U.S. Navy’s WAVES, the women’s branch of the U.S. Naval Reserve at the time.
The OSS was the forerunner of today’s CIA, and Child began as a typist but rose to the position of top-secret researcher handling highly classified information. It was through the OSS that she met Paul Child, a fellow OSS employee, who became her husband in September 1946. To prepare for married life, Child enrolled in a Los Angeles cooking school. Those early days in the kitchen were not Julia’s finest. Her husband is quoted as saying, "I was willing to put up with that awful cooking to get Julia."
While living in France two years later, Child enrolled in the famed Parisian cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu. After she graduated, she connected with two French women looking for an American collaborator to help them with a book about French cooking for Americans. Volume One of Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published in 1961.
When she was invited to discuss the book on a book review show for Boston’s public television station WGBH-TV, she brought along supplies to whip up an omelet on the air. Viewers loved it and wrote in asking the station to produce a cooking show. That’s how her career with PBS began.
She went on to author many other cookbooks and hosted numerous shows including Cooking with Master Chefs, Baking With Julia, In Julia’s Kitchen With Master Chefs, and Cooking in Concert.
The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook. - Julia Child
Child passed away on August 12, 2004, just days before her 92 nd birthday. However, her legacy lives on as fans continue to buy her cookbooks and watch clips of her shows online.
In celebration of her 100th birthday four years ago, musical artist John D. Boswell produced “Julia Child Remixed” for PBS Digital Studios. The remix celebrates her wisdom, wit and kitchen skills. Given that she enjoyed Dan Aykroyd’s spoof of her on an episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975 so much that she kept a copy for herself, one has to imagine she would find the remix below quite entertaining.
Happy Birthday, Julia! Bon appétite!
Watch episodes of Julia Child's programs on WHRO:
Julia Visits A Young Emeril Lagasse
Three-Tiered Wedding Cake With Martha Stewart
Sources: IMDB.com PBS Food The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts