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Recently in Salon People

Nothing Personal
Everybody wants a piece of "The Body"
Nevada brothel to commemorate governor's visit; Brooke Shields' biological clock's a-rockin'; Stiller and Garofalo didn't do it -- really. Plus: Exciting results of Gore vs. Bradley cockroach race.
By Amy Reiter
[08/20/99]

Nothing Personal
Of plummeting pants and racing roaches
Charlize Theron: "I drop trou all the time ..."; a couple of cockroaches named Gore and Bradley; Hef sez: Thumbs down on Nick Cage. Plus: Newt spares no expense on his horn-blowin' honey.
By Amy Reiter
[08/19/99]

Rogues' Gallery
Tony: Portrait of a cereal killer
When hot tubs are outlawed; what if God was a doper? Son of Sam killer not lookin' back; and the importance of knowing where your wallet is at all times.
By Douglas Cruickshank
[08/19/99]

Nothing Personal
Gulp! Deep Throat disclosure hard to swallow
Limelight-lovin' 19-year-old uses anagrams to "unmask" mysterious Watergate source; Marilyn Quayle disses Dubya. Plus: Busted! "Dick" star's fans defend breast boasting.
By Amy Reiter
[08/18/99]

Nothing Personal
In the eye of the Newt storm: Thar she blows!
Gingrich affair heating up D.C. Exactly when did it begin? Somebody say "blackmail"? Finally, some good news: Cher definitely not involved; and more good news: Experts say Prince Philip is not an idiot!
By Amy Reiter
[08/17/99]

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"You must have the courage of your convictions," trills a black-and-white Child as she pan-flips a large potato pancake. Losing half of the contents onto the electric range cooktop, she scrapes up the errant potatoes with her spatula and puts them back in the pan, assuring me, her momentary confidant, that it's OK to make a mistake -- no one sees us alone in the kitchen anyway. As an adult, I find this reassuring. I, like Child, am not a natural born cook.

Pre-Emeril, pre-Fat Ladies, long before the rise of Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower and Wolfgang Puck and without the magic of editing, Julia Child was re-outfitting the American kitchen and re-educating the American palate. In the process she became the most important culinary figure this country has produced, as well as one of the century's most admirable women. As befits a woman who stands 6-foot-2, Child has done everything in a very big way.

Raised in Pasadena, Calif., Julia McWilliams, privileged and mischievous (she once impressed her friends by scaling a fence to freedom after being apprehended for hurling mud pies at passing cars), was unfamiliar with the family kitchen, where a hired cook was in charge. She instead preferred playing in her family's backyard tennis court, writing and performing plays and smoking her father's cigars while hiding with her pals (McWilliams' father found this hobby so distasteful he offered her a $1,000 bond if she promised to give up smoking until she was 21. She took the deal, and after collecting the dough on her 21st birthday, began puffing away, as many as two packs a day for the next 30 years).

Her career as a cut-up continued at Smith College, her mother's alma mater. She played on the school's basketball team, where she excelled at the "jump ball" portion of the game, and studied enough to get by. Equipped with a new 1929 Ford convertible, McWilliams ferried her all-girl crew to Prohibition-era speakeasies and found that driving with the top down was a benefit when one of the girls overindulged. Train trips home to California for holidays meant four-day cross-country parties during which McWilliams' highly developed sense of fun kept everyone laughing. She later declared, "I was an adolescent nut. Someone like me should not have been accepted at a serious institution." Nevertheless, she graduated from Smith and returned to California with ideas of becoming a lady novelist. Not yet a cook, but always a hostess, McWilliams was again the life of the party. But she was also the quintessential good citizen, volunteering with the Pasadena chapter of the American Red Cross until World War II broke out.

At a time when women were being told to get out of the kitchen and into the factories, McWilliams, who had never been in the kitchen in the first place, headed to Washington in a flurry of patriotism. Landing an administrative position with the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA, she pushed papers by day and hosted cocktail parties by night. And when it was announced that volunteers were needed to staff new overseas bases, McWilliams lost no time signing up and departing for Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) by way of India.

After a month-long journey on the high seas with 3,000 soldiers, McWilliams, one of only a handful of women, arrived in Ceylon to begin her new job as a research assistant in America's first intelligence organization. While the trip alone would've done in many, McWilliams was thrilled to be surrounded by sophisticated international spy-types. Soon promoted to administrator, she was required by her job to process highly confidential documents. While somewhat bored by deskwork, she was enthusiastic about being part of such an organization. The drudgery of the job was partly alleviated by the glamour of a top-secret clearance and the exotic location. Plus, she met Paul Child.

Having dated many of the OSS women, he had a reputation as both a loverboy and a lover of food. Although these were two areas the still-naive McWilliams knew little about, she and Paul Child struck up a friendship. As well as being an artist and photographer, multilingual and sophisticated, he was in charge of building the war room at the command. McWilliams found him extremely impressive.

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