Julia Child

Child grew up rich in Pasadena, the daughter of a Princeton-educated land manager and a paper-fortune heiress, and stood six feet two by her teens in an era with no use for a tall woman. She took a history degree at Smith College in 1934, drifted through office jobs and an unpublished novel, and tried to enlist when the war came — the Women's Army Corps and the Navy both turned her away for her height. The Office of Strategic Services took her instead, first as a typist, then as a researcher who helped develop shark repellent meant to keep sharks from triggering underwater explosives aimed at German submarines. Postings to Ceylon and China followed. In Kunming she met Paul Child, a State Department officer a decade older and unmarried.

Paul's next posting took them to Paris in 1948, and Child, who could not yet cook, enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu and then studied privately with French chefs before founding a cooking school with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. The three spent years testing recipes for American kitchens. Houghton Mifflin rejected the resulting manuscript as too much like an encyclopedia, and Knopf published it in 1961 as Mastering the Art of French Cooking. A television appearance to promote it, cooking an omelet on a Boston public station, led to her own show, The French Chef, which began national broadcast in 1963 and ran a decade, unedited, so her mistakes aired along with everything else. She published nearly twenty more books, won a National Book Award in 1980, and founded the American Institute of Wine and Food in 1981.

The woman known for unhurried, generous television warmth held ungenerous private views for years. Associates and biographers describe Child's discomfort with gay men earlier in her career, attitudes common enough among her generation but jarring against the folksy inclusiveness of her public image. The AIDS epidemic of the 1980s changed her directly: a close associate died of the disease, and Child became a visible, financially committed supporter of AIDS research and care rather than staying quiet the way most celebrities of her stature did. She never dramatized the reversal or apologized publicly for the earlier views — she simply started showing up, writing checks, and using her name. The Childs never had children of their own. The Smithsonian eventually inherited her actual kitchen, counters raised to fit a woman six feet two who never lowered her standards for anyone.

She died at her retirement community in Montecito on August 13, 2004, of kidney failure, two days short of her 92nd birthday. The Smithsonian had already taken her actual kitchen, rebuilt to scale inside the National Museum of American History. Smith College received the Cambridge house. France made her a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 2000, and the United States gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003. The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts, established in 1995, still funds food scholarships and grants. Meryl Streep played her in a 2009 film built around the same manuscript a publisher had once rejected as too much like an encyclopedia.

Julia Child's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Mastering the Art of French Cooking book
  With Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, after Houghton Mifflin turned it down 1961
• The French Chef television
  Broadcast unedited, mistakes included, for a decade 1963
• Julia Child & Company television
  One of several later WGBH series 1978
• American Institute of Wine and Food company
  Founded with Robert Mondavi and others 1981
• Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts company
  Still funds culinary scholarships and grants 1995

• 1934 aged ~22 Graduates from Smith College with a history degree
• 1942 aged ~30 Joins the Office of Strategic Services after the military rejects her for height
• September 1, 1946 aged 34 Marries Paul Cushing Child
• 1948 aged ~36 Moves to Paris when Paul is posted there by the State Department
• 1951 aged ~39 Graduates from Le Cordon Bleu and co-founds a cooking school with Beck and Bertholle
• 1961 aged ~49 Mastering the Art of French Cooking is published by Knopf
• February 11, 1963 aged 50 The French Chef begins national broadcast
• 1981 aged ~69 Founds the American Institute of Wine and Food
• August 13, 2004 aged 91 Dies in Montecito, California

• James Beard 1903–1985
  Cookbook author and teacher whose advocacy helped define a distinct modern American culinary tradition. contemporary and rival
• Alice Waters b. 1944
  Chef and activist who popularized farm-to-table dining, seasonal ingredients, and food education in the United States. influenced
• Meryl Streep b. 1949
  Most nominated actor in Oscar history, renowned for her chameleon-like ability to inhabit diverse roles. portrayed her on film