Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child (78 page)

University of Texas:
Harry Ransom Hall of Humanities (HRHRC), Austin, TX. Knopf Archives.

TVFN
. The Food Network. Sue Huffman, Senior Vice President, Programming.

United States Department of Justice
. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC. J. Kevin O’Brien, Chief, FOI, Information Resource Division.

United States Information Agency
. Lola L. Secora, FOIA/Privacy Act Officer, Office of the General Counsel. USIA Alumni Association, Dorothy Robins-Mowry, Director.

Veterans of the OSS
. Jeffrey Jones, President, Rockefeller Plaza, NYC.

WGBH
, Boston.
The French Chef and
other tapes, 1963+. Henry Becton, Jr., President; Mary A. Ide, Archivist.

N
OTES

U
NLESS OTHERWISE
noted, all Julia Child quotations are based upon her numerous interviews with the author. Dates of Paul Child’s letter-diary to his brother, which numbers in the thousands of pages, are given only if they fall outside the time period of each chapter.

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES

CHAPTER 1
BEGINNINGS (1945, 1848–1912)

Unpublished Sources

Interviews
: Basic to every chapter is the information drawn from numerous interviews with JC. Unless otherwise indicated, all JC quotations are based on these interviews. Family members: DC 3/30/93, 12/20/94, and 2/2/96, John McWilliams III 8/13/93, Dana Parker 6/6/95, Saba McWilliams 5/30/95, Philadelphia Cousins 3/31/95.

Correspondence
: H. Alexander Smith to JC, 2/25/65 (Smith claims he introduced the Weston girls to McWilliams and Hemmings); J. Alexander McWilliams to NRF, 6/3/95; John McWilliams III to NRF, 1/2/95; Carolyn McWilliams to DC, 10/1/33.

Archives
: Family archival materials generously provided by JC, DC, and John McWilliams III include: “Carolyn Weston Diary 1900–1905;” “Julia Mitchell Weston 1865–1897” diary.
Smith College. Berkshire Athenaeum
, Pittsfield, MA.
Princeton University:
alumni office records.
Schlesinger:
PC letter-diary to CC, 1945; JC to AD, 3/3/53.
Pasadena Public Library. Pasadena Historical Society
.

Published Sources

“How like autumn’s”: PC, “Birthday, 1945,”
Bubbles from the Spring
(n.p.: Antique Press, 1974): [39]

“There were a lot of women”: William F. Schulz, “Lunch Together,”
The World
[National Unitarian Magazine] (Nov./Dec. 1992): 32.

“Without Julia”: Donna Lee, “The Man Behind JC,”
Boston Herald American Magazine
(May 10, 1981): 10.

“earliest restaurant”: Peter Farb and George Armelagos,
Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980): 194. Hon-Lo, the first cookbook, was compiled by Emperor Sheunung: 244.

“It wasn’t like lightning”: Edith Efron, “Dinner with JC,”
TV Guide
(Dec. 5, 1970): 46.

“going fever”: John McWilliams,
Recollections of John McWilliams: His Youth, Experiences in California, and the Civil War
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, [1919?]): 47.

“Weston Field”: Thomas Weston, Jr., and Donald M. Weston, Jr., eds.
Weston: 1065–1951
(Pittsfield, MA: Sun Printing, 1951): 27.

CHAPTER 2
A PLACE IN THE SUN (1912–1921)

Unpublished Sources

Interviews
: This chapter relies heavily on a number of interviews with JC and DC as well as: John McWilliams III 8/13/93, Philadelphia Cousins 3/31/95, Orian (Babe) Hall [Hallor] 2/19/94, Charles Hall 2/9/94, Elizabeth Parker [Kase] 2/19/94, Elton Davies 2/22/93, Gay Bradley [Wright], 2/5/96, Eleanor Roberts [Phillips Colt] 9/11/94, and Freeman Gates 4/24/93. Group interview with Pasadena Polytechnic School classmates Mary Frances Snow Russell, James Bishop, William (Bill) Lisle, Kenneth O. Rhodes 1/31/94.

Correspondence
: Byron S. Martin to NRF, 1/26/95; Marjory Ellen Lacey [Warren] to NRF, 10/14/93; Lora B. Bragin to JC, 2/27/95; Mary Stuart Batson to JC, 9/27/67; JC to Mary Stuart Batson, n.d.; Dana Parker to NRF, 4/5/95; Charles Hall to Mary Francis Russell, 1/15/94.

Archives
:
Family archives:
Caro McWilliams letters to DC, “Carolyn Weston Diary 1900–1905,” JC diary written in the 1930s.
Private:
Babe Hall/Julia McWilliams childhood correspondence; Elizabeth Kase, “Betty Parker memoir,” 1986.
Pasadena Historical Society. Pasadena Public Library:
records, city telephone books, histories,
Pasadena Evening Star, Pasadena Star-News. Pasadena Polytechnic School:
records.
Schlesinger:
JC to AD, 3/3/53.

Published Sources

“First we’d do”: Susan Goodman, “Penthouse Potluck,”
Modern Maturity
(Nov./Dec. 1996): 35.

“I started doing”: Curtis Hartman and Steven Raichlen, “JC: The Boston Magazine Interview,”
Boston
(April 1981): 78.

“Our house”: Anne Bryn, “JC Aims to Keep Fun in Food,”
Atlanta Journal & Constitution
(April 12, 1990): W8.

“dismal place”: Lewis H. Lapham, “Everyone’s in the Kitchen with JC,”
The Saturday Evening Post
(Aug. 8–15, 1964): 20.

“Fletcherizing”: Donald Dale Jackson, “The Art of Wishful Shrinking,”
Smithsonian
(Nov. 1994): 147–48.

“Don’t eat fried food”: in “Plain Talk on Food,”
Pasadena Daily News
(Nov. 6, 1912): 6.

“whose theology”: Gerald Carson, “The Yankee Kitchen,” in
The American Heritage Cookbook: An Illustrated History
(NY: American Heritage, 1964): 82.

“All my mother knew”: Roberta Wallace Coffey, “Their Recipe for Love,”
McCall’s
116 (Nov. 1988): 97.

“such an utter loss”: Ogden Nash,
Food
(NY: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1989): 31. In an essay on Boston food written with E. S. Yntema (“JC’s Boston Birthday Buffet,”
Boston Globe Magazine
, May 11, 1980, page 27), JC adds a small onion, 4 peppercorns, a bay leaf, specifies 2 cups of mashed potatoes, and calls it “Priscilla Weston’s Duxbury Codfish Balls with Egg Sauce.”

“Jell-O was distributing”: Robert Clark,
James Beard: A Biography
(NY: HarperCollins, 1993): 36.

“cut down your food supply”: J. C. Elliot and Arthur Taylor in
Pasadena Star-News
(March 7, 1916): 12.

“extrovert”: C. G. Jung,
Collected Works of C. G. Jung
vol. 6, 2nd ed. (Princeton, 1971): 157–58.

“When we went out”: JC, “What Is Your Favorite Place in California?”
Westways
(July 1995): 11.

“frontier legacy”: “Pioneer Californian Is Called,”
Pasadena Star-News
(Nov. 13, 1924): 1.

CHAPTER 3
EDUCATION OF AN EXTROVERT (1921–1930)

Unpublished Sources

Interviews
: For
Polytechnic School:
JC, Charles Hall 2/9/94, John McWilliams III 8/13/93, Orian (Babe) Hall [Hallor] 2/29/94, DC 3/9/94 and 5/10/95, Mary Ford [Cairns] 9/14/94, Elizabeth Parker [Kase] 2/19/94; Eleanor Roberts [Phillip Colt] 9/11/94; Robert Hastings 2/9/95, Gay Bradley [Wright] 2/5/96; group interview with Mary Frances Snow [Russell], William (Bill) Lisle, Kenneth O. Rhodes, James Bishop 1/31/94. For
Katharine Branson School:
JC, Dana Parker 6/6/95, Aileen Johnson [Whitaker] 3/21/94, Mary Zook [Beales] 3/11/94, Marjory Ellen Lacey [Warren] 10/14/93, Dorothy McWilliams [Cousins] (’35) 3/9/94, Clara Rideout [Noyses] (’33) 3/19/89, Harriet Kostic 3/11/94.

Correspondence
: For
Poly:
Charles Hall to Mary Frances Snow [Russell], 1/15/94; Joseph C. Sloane to NRF, 7/19/95. For
KBS:
Viola Tuckerman [Hansen] to NRF, 2/15/94; Barbara Ord [Bryant] (through her daughter, Babs Bryant Pomilia) to NRF, 3/16/94; Mary Zook [Beales] to NRF, 2/16/94; Roxane Ruhl [Simmons] to NRF, 3/10/94 and 4/15/94; Dana Parker to NRF, 4/5/95.

Archives
:
Poly:
Polytechnic School, Georgia McClay, archivist, 1030 E. California Blvd.; the school was founded when Troop Polytechnique Institute (founded in 1891) dropped its lower grades to form California Polytechnique University in 1907. Private: Julia McWilliams to Babe Hall, childhood letters [n.d.]; Elizabeth (Betty) Parker [Kase] memoir, 1986; JC fragmentary diary “Oh So
Private,”
1935–42.
KBS:
Special thanks to Harriet Kostic, Alumni Director of Branson School, for opening the confidential records (with JC’s permission), history of KBS,
KBS Scrapbook: 1920–1970
, the
Blue Print
literary journal, Oral History Projects.

Published Sources

“I was always”: Molly O’Neill, “What’s Cooking in America?”
New York Times
(Oct. 12, 1989): 16.

“New Women success story”: Maureen Honey, ed.,
Breaking the Ties That Bind: Popular Stories of the New Woman, 1915–1930
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma, 1995): 56.

“One of my earliest”: JC,
From JC’s Kitchen
(NY: Knopf, 1975): 431.

“courtesy, Christianity, and college”: Mark Baur, “A World of Its Own: The Katharine Branson School, 1917–1945,” typed transcript of thesis, n.d.: 40.

“the nut of Christianity”: JC to CC, 7/24/53 (from Matthew 22:37–38). She gave the same philosophy, in summary form, to “Proust Questionnaire,”
Vanity Fair
(March 1996): 212.

“enclosed, sprayed”: Bauer, “A World of Its Own,” 40.

“Father Love”: “Rites Close Father-Love Death Drama,”
Pasadena Evening Post
(Dec. 10, 1927): 1. Extensive coverage of the Stevens murders in
Pasadena Evening Star
and
Pasadena Star-News
, Dec. 8–10, 1927.

“love of jelly donuts,” Gayle Murphy,
Ross Valley Reporter
(March 19, 1980): 5.

“The peculiar nature”: Jung,
Collected Works of C. G. Jung
, vol. 6, 2nd ed. (Princeton, 1971): 427, 332–33, 159.

CHAPTER 4
SMITH COLLEGE (1930–1934)

Unpublished Sources

Interviews
: Classmates: JC, Charlotte Snyder [Turgeon] 8/14/93 and 5/23/94, Catharine (Kitty) Atwater [Galbraith] 8/9/93, Elizabeth (Betty) Bushnell [Kubler] 9/26/94, Mary Case [Warner] 11/3/93, Mary Coots [Belin] 11/93, Margaret (Peggy) Clark [VanderVeer] 2/13/94, Mary Ford [Cairns] 2/14/94, Anita Hinckley [Hovey] 5/25/94, Constance Thayer [Cory] 5/15/94, Gay Bradley [Wright] 2/5/96. Other interviews: DC and Sam Cousins 12/20/94, John McWilliams III 8/13/93, Mary Weston 5/19/94, Dana Parker 6/6/95, Orian (Babe) Hall [Hallor] 2/19/94, Charles Hall 2/9/94.

Correspondence
: JC to Anne Dodge, 6/20/66; JC to Philadelphia Cousins, 7/8/79; Maida Goodwin to NRF, 9/23/93 and 3/4/94; JC to Carolyn McWilliams, 1932–34; Carolyn McWilliams to DC, 1933–34.
Classmates:
Catharine Carton [Smith] to NRF, 3/12/94; Anne Winton [Johnston] to NRF, 4/20/95; Frances Proctor ’37 [Wilkinson] to NRF, 7/96; Constance Thayer [Cory] to NRF, 5/23/94; Roxane Ruhl [Simmons] to NRF, 3/10/94 and 4/15/94.

Archives
:
Smith College:
Sophia Smith Collection, Neilson Library, Smith Centennial Study Oral History, JC & PC, Oct. 10, 1972, transcript for
College. A Smith Mosaic; Sophian; Smith Alumnae Quarterly;
historical records of the college and JC.
Private: Smith College Year Book
, 1933 and 1934 (courtesy Mary Case Warren).
Schlesinger:
JC to MFKF, 5/29/86.

Published Sources

“It slipped”: Margo Greep, “JC Adds Spice to Banquet,” Smith College
Sophian
(April 13, 1978): 1.

“representing more than half”: Jules Tygiet,
The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties
(NY: Oxford, 1994): 310.

“five percent”:
Historical Statistics of the U.S.
, Part 1 (Wash. DC: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of Census, 1995): 380.

“model food of the twentieth century”: Laura Shapiro,
Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century
(NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986): 214.

“Inspired”: Nao Hauser, “JC: Her Life, Her Great Love, and Her Future,”
Chicago Tribune
(March 3, 1980): 4.

“She will return here”: “Pasadena Girl Achieves High Honors in East,”
Pasadena Star-News
(clipping).

CHAPTER 5
CAREER SEARCH (1934–1943)

Unpublished Sources

Interviews
: JC, DC, John and Josephine McWilliams III 8/13/93, Orian (Babe) Hall [Hallor] 2/19/94, Charles Hall 2/9/94, Peggy Clark [VanderVeer] 2/13/94, Mary Ford [Cairns] 2/14/94, Connie Thayer [Cory] 5/15/94, Charlotte Snyder [Turgeon] 8/14/93, Robert P. Hastings 2/9/95, Anita Hinckley [Hovey] (5/25/94), Katy and Freeman (Tule) Gates 4/24/93, Mary Frances Snow [Russell] 1/31/94, Gay Bradley [Wright] 2/5/96, John (Jack) L. Moore 5/20/94, Elizabeth (Betty) MacDonald [McIntosh] 11/3/93. Lawrence Deitz, a biographer of the Chandler family, on Harrison Gray Otis Chandler 1903–86. Transcript of Foreign Service Spouse Oral History, 11/7/91.

Correspondence
: Carolyn McWilliams to DC, 1934–37; Harold J. Coolidge to NRF, 3/22/94 and 7/8/96; Catharine Carton [Smith] to NRF, 3/12/94; Edwin J. (Ned) Putzell, Jr., to NRF, 1/14/94 and 1/31/95; Alice Carson [Hiscock] to NRF, 2/6/95 and 2/23/95; Elizabeth Cathcart Tisdel to NRF, 3/4/97.

Archives
:
Private:
JC (sporadic) diary 1935–42; JC unpublished writings, including essays and correspondence for W. & J. Sloane,
Coast
magazine, and plays for Junior League; “An Evening with JC: At the Valley Hunt Club,” tape 11/7/90; JC’s U.S. government documents; Richard C. Hiscock, “Development of Exposure Suits” (5-page report), n.d. (courtesy Alice Carson Hiscock).
Smith College:
alumni records; JC to Marjorie P. Nield (alumni office), 12/6/35; JC oral history transcription for
College. A Mosaic
, 10/10/72;
Smith Alumnae Quarterly. Schlesinger: JC
to AD, 2/12/53; JC to AD, 2/25/53; PC to CC, 10/25/71.

Published Sources

“Middle-class women”: Polly Frost, “Wild Child,”
Interview
, xix (Fall 1989): 63.

“I used to go to Grand Central”: Susan Goodman, “Penthouse Potluck,”
Modern Maturity
(Nov./Dec. 1996): 36.

“climate is a scandal”: John Steinbeck, “The Making of a New Yorker,”
New York Times Magazine
(Feb. 1, 1953): 27. See also Susan Edmiston and Linda D. Cirono,
Literary New York: A History and Guide
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976): 235.

“The Intelligent”: JC, “The Intelligent Woman Voter,”
Pasadena Junior League News
(Oct. 19, 1939): 13.

“Oh why do you walk”: a slightly misquoted passage from Frances Cornford’s “To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train.” My gratitude to E. S. Yntema for identifying this verse.

“increase his needs”: Dorothy Thompson, “On the Record: The W.P.A.,”
New York Herald Tribune
(Oct. 21 [1942]), clipping.

“a bunch of college professors”: R. Harris Smith,
OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency
(Berkeley: Univ. of CA, 1972): 13.

“potential postwar clients”: Stanley P. Lovell,
Of Spies & Stratagems
(NY: Pocket Books, 1963): 194.

“largely unvouchered”: Smith,
OSS
, 3, 5.

“helter-skelter but brilliant”: Smith,
OSS
, 1–2.