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Julia Child: Cooking With Flair

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Her original success was co-authoring the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, two French women with whom she shared a cooking school in Paris. The massive book took ten years to prepare. When it was initially sent out to publishers, the manuscript was turned down. It was too long and did not follow a traditional pattern of presentation. Eventually in 1961 Alfred A. Knopf -- still her book publisher -- was far-sighted enough to take it on. It has been a cook's bible ever since.

Then came television. And more cookbooks. She collaborated again with Simone Beck on Volume Two of Mastering. Since then on her own she has written The French Chef's Cookbook, From Julia Child's Kitchen, and Julia Child and Company.

Her latest series of 13 PBS programs, rehearsed and taped at Boston's Channel 2, is "Julia Child and More Company." It was particularly difficult for her. She worried she was running out of ideas, but insisted that each program meet her professional standards before it got her stamp of approval. The programs are tentatively scheduled to be introduced nationally in January 1980.

It will be her last for television. The venture involved 12-hour workdays, custom cooking in a production group surrounded by research staffers and assistant cooks, rehearsals with real food, critiques, still photographing, more run-throughs to perfect timing and minimize mistakes, and finally a weekly taping session. The staff worked from a loose script which left enough leeway to give her programs the appearance of spontaneity, yet each program had to be wedged into 28 minutes of air time.

Even as the series was being filmed, another phase of Julia's work began. Her latest book, of the same title, will be published by Knopf before the release of the television series and in time for the Christmas trade. Now she divides herself between her kitchen and her typewriter, between Cambridge and New York.

In-some respects Julia Child's 15 years of being work-oriented have taken their toll on her personally. They have not diminished her standards or her enthusiasm, but they have affected her stamina. Now, after 250 televised cooking lessons since 1963, when "The French Chef" was first aired in the Boston area and then went on to become a national passion, accumulating awards and an Emmy for Julia Child, the French Chef says she needs a rest.

The late Arthur Fiedler, for whom Julia once narrated a recording of "Tubby the Tuba" with the Boston Pops, always contended that the more you do, the more you can -- that to rest is to rot. "But Arthur Fiedler was an exceptional human being. It was his way. I'm 66 years old. I want more uninterrupted time to spend with Paul. We enjoy each other's company. I need to further my own interests and my knowledge."

Hers is a common symptom among hard-working teachers who look forward to recess as eagerly as any of their students. Eventually Julia will go back to the classroom, but this time it will be as a student again. She wants to take pastry lessons from a chef in France. She wants to free herself from a strict work schedule, to have more time to experiment, to travel, to work up new ideas.

One of Julia's dreams is to inspire her producers to continue cooking lessons on TV but with a series of notable and different cooks. It would continue what she's started.

"Maybe there will be more professionally trained chefs because of me," she says. "More and more women are getting into the business. In the United States there seems to be more interest in professional cookery among the young than there is anywhere else in the world.

"Taste is such an important -- and neglected -- part of living, don't you agree?"

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