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Great Lives from History: American Women

Julia Child

by Micah Issitt

Chef, entertainer

Julia Child was a famous television chef who brought French cuisine into American homes and became one of the first cooking-show celebrities to gain international fame. Child also wrote a series of respected cookbooks, including the classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961).

Born: April 15, 1912; Pasadena, California

Died: August 13, 2004; Montecito, California

Also known as: Julia Carolyn McWilliams

Area of achievement: Culinary arts, entertainment

Early Life

Child was born Julia Carolyn McWilliams in August 1912 in Pasadena, California. Child's father John McWilliams, Jr. worked as an investor and property manager in the farming business and her mother, Julia Carolyn Weston, was a wealthy heiress. Child noted in later biographies that she did not develop a strong interest in food as a child as both her mother and her family's cook prepared unexciting food that did little to cultivate an interest in cuisine. Hailing from a wealthy family, Child was a debutante who attended private schools as a child, though she confessed later to being something of an athlete and troublemaker among the other girls of her social circles.

The McWilliams children were all tall, with Julia Child reaching 6'2” before she reached secondary school. Child attended the Katherine Branson School, a boarding school in Ross, California, where she became a star on the basketball team. She attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts where she continued playing basketball and earned a B.A. in English and history in 1934. Child moved to New York City where she took a position as a copywriter for W. & J. Sloane furniture company. Child said later that she was fired from her first copywriting job for “insubordination” and she returned to California in 1937 where she attempted to find work writing for various local and regional publications.

Life's Work

After the onset of World War II, Child applied for work with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the intelligence organization that preceded the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Though she was hoping to work as a field agent for the OSS, Child found herself relegated to office work in Ceylon, the British territory now called Sri Lanka. In Ceylon, Child met Paul Child, the leader of an OSS chart making department who, though ten years her senior and several inches shorter, began courting her. In addition to his intelligence work, Child had numerous interests including being an aficionado of global cuisine, an artist and poet, and cultivating a life long study of Japanese judo. Child later wrote that her husband introduced her to gourmet food while the couple traveled together in Asia and sampled a wide variety of Asian cuisine.

The couple married in 1946 and returned to the United States for a year in Washington D.C. before Child received his next posting through the State Department, with the United States Information Agency in Paris, France. While their travels had inspired her interest in cooking, Child confessed in interviews that she was a poor cook and that her husband was forced to suffer as she attempted to improve her cooking skills. In France, Child discovered French cuisine, an experience that changed her life. At 37-years-old, Child enrolled in a formal cooking program at Le Cordon Bleu, one of the world's most prestigious culinary institutes, and supplemented her education at the school with private lessons with Cordon Bleu Chef Max Bugnard.

As Child's interest in cooking deepened, Child joined a cooking club, Le Cercle des Gourmettes where she became friends with two French women chefs, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck. The three women went on to establish an informal cooking academy, L'Ecole des Trois Gourmandes in Paris. Beck and Bertholle were hoping to write a culinary guide for American audiences and Child, who had experience as a writer and copywriter, stepped in to contribute to and translate the resulting text. Work on the cookbook was slow as she and her husband moved through postings in Oslo, Sweden and Marseille, but Child traveled to Paris frequently to resume her work on the book with Beck and Bertholle. In 1956, Child and her husband returned to the United States, settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Eventually, Child began shopping their 800-page manuscript to publishers, but was rejected by Houghton Mifflin, who felt that the book was too long and complicated for the target audience. From there, Child took the book to Judith Jones at New York's Alfred A. Knopf publishers. Having been given a revised copy of the book after its rejection by Houghton Mifflin, Jones was excited by the idea and agreed to accept the manuscript for publication. The cookbook was published in 1961 under the title Mastering the Art of French Cooking and became an almost immediate classic in the genre, introducing American cooks to the complexity of French cuisine with clear, precise instructions and an encouraging attitude that communicated Child's belief that cooking was a matter of careful study and practice.

Julie and Julia

Julia Child's famed first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was the inspiration for the popular cooking blog by Julie Powell, who recorded her attempt to cook every recipe in Child's weighty tome in a single year and wrote at length about each experience. Powell turned the popularity of her blog into a book, with the title Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, with a paperback edition published later with the title Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously.

While Powell's book and blog were a major success, Los Angeles reporter Russ Parsons took a printed version of the blog to Julia Child while Child was living in her Montecito retirement home. In response to Parsons, and several other interviews, Child criticized Powell's attitude and suggested that Powell was simply engaging in a “gimmick” or “stunt,” using Child's fame and the similarities in their names as a marketing ploy. Child also criticized the decision to attempt cooking all of the recipes in the lengthy book in a single year as a failure to understand what Child was attempting to communicate about cooking, the pleasure of creation through careful effort. Serious about her craft, Child also disapproved of having her hard work used as a device for someone's self promotion.

Powell was reportedly devastated to learn that her idol disapproved of her blog but after Child's death, Powell's book and Child's posthumously published autobiography My Life in France were melded together to create the Academy Award-nominated film Julie & Julia, staring Meryl Streep as Child and Amy Adams as Powell. Despite Child's disapproval, the film inspired a renewed interest in Child's writings and her cooking program, bringing Mastering the Art of French Cooking back onto national bestseller lists.

Child's life took another unexpected turn when she appeared on a 1962 episode of a book program on WGBH Television in Boston to promote her cookbook. Child chose to prepare an omelet on the show and the show's producer, Russell Morash, was intrigued by Child's unusual charisma. The network offered Child her own cooking program, initially slated for 26 segments, for which Child was paid $50 per show. The program, which debuted in early 1963, was titled The French Chef and, before she'd finished the first set of segments, it was picked up by television station in New York and San Francisco. Child won the first Emmy Award given to an educational television program.

Child's The French Chef, rapidly became the most watched cooking program in the world and transformed Child into an international celebrity. In 1966, she was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Child chose to remain on a public television station, despite the show's success, where she said she was allowed the freedom to experiment with whatever dishes came to mind. The show was eventually the longest running program in the history of public television and she went on to star in other iterations of the basic premise, including Dinner With Julia and other satellite cooking programs each featuring a different twist on the basic model.

While continuing to appear on television, Child wrote a number of further cooking guides and books exploring French cuisine, including the 1968 The French Chef Cookbook and a follow up to her first book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume Two in 1970. Child began cooking with other chefs, featuring them on her spinoff program Julia Child & Company, which debuted on television in 1978, and publishing a series of books containing recipes from the collaborative program. Child also published books on baking and collaborated on a book with famed French television chef Jaques Pepin in 1999. Her autobiography, My Life in France, was published in 2006.

Widowed in 1994, Child continued collaborating on books and appearing on television into her late 80s. In 2001, she moved to a Montecito, California retirement community, where she died in 2004.

Significance

Child was one of the first television cooking stars and her unique personality and casual approach to complex cuisine helped to spark widespread interest in gourmet cooking. She has been credited with paving the way for the beginning of America's gourmet grocery market and even with the establishment of the Food Network and the entire concept of celebrity television cooking. She was the first woman inducted in to the Culinary Institute of America's hall of fame and helped to establish several important gourmet food societies and organizations in the United States.

Child won both a Peabody and an Emmy Award for The French Chef, and won further Emmy Awards for two of her further spin off programs. In 2000, she became a recipient of the French Legion of Honor in recognition of her role in promoting French culture and cuisine world wide. The was also elected to become a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, three years later, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. After her death, Child's kitchen, originally designed by her husband, was reproduced in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. Her two-volume Mastering the Art of French Cooking remains a classic.

Further Reading

1 

Child, Julia, Julia's Kitchen Wisdom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Later series of essays by Child addresses basic cooking techniques important to chefs working with a variety of cuisines. Specific chapters address different types of food including salads, vegetables, meats, and eggs.

2 

Child, Julia and Alex Prud'homme, My Life in France. New York: Anchor Books, 2006. Autobiography of Child's life focuses on Child's time spent in Europe learning about French cooking and traveling.

3 

Child, Julia, Bertholle, Louisette, and Simone Beck, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970. Child's first and most widely-respected cookbook translates traditional and classic French dishes for English-speaking chefs and home cooks.

4 

Connant, Jennet, A Covert Affair. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Examination of Julia and Paul Child's work for the Office of Strategic Services examining the rise and dissolution of the OSS and the creation of the CIA.

5 

Polan, Dana, Julia Child's: The French Chef. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Scholarly book delves into the cultural, social impact of Child's television series and the effect on American cooking, television, and the celebrity chef phenomenon.

6 

Spitz, Bob, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. Biography of Julia Child covers her early life, marriage and relocation to Europe, and career as a television celebrity chef.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Issitt, Micah. "Julia Child." Great Lives from History: American Women, edited by Mary K. Trigg, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLHW_0099.
APA 7th
Issitt, M. (2016). Julia Child. In M. K. Trigg (Ed.), Great Lives from History: American Women. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Issitt, Micah. "Julia Child." Edited by Mary K. Trigg. Great Lives from History: American Women. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2016. Accessed September 17, 2025. online.salempress.com.