[Alyson Kuhn] I saw an advance screening of “Julie & Julia” last week in Napa. I enjoyed the film so much that I was sad when it ended. One little line, spoken by Julie, piqued my interest in a big way. Julie’s husband asks her how the world knows so much about Julia Child and her husband Paul and their years in France. She replies that Julia wrote tons of letters to her friend Avis, and Paul wrote tons of letters to his twin brother Charlie… and nothing ever got thrown away. Oh, really?
Later in the film, Julia says that she and Avis have been pen pals for years but that they’ve never met. Nary a pinch, or even a soupçon, of fabrication here. Simply searching for “Julia Child correspondence”, whisked me to a summary of Avis DeVoto’s papers at Harvard University Library. The inventory includes Julia Child’s correspondence by year {1952-1968}, with three years being so voluminous that they are divided into January-June and July-December. One of the many things I love about correspondence – as differentiated from a memoir – is that the letter-writer is in the present looking forward, whereas the memoir-writer is in the present looking back. In the film, Norah Ephron beautifully depicts Julia’s story from Julia’s “present tense,” almost as if the action were filming her letters in delicious detail.
The archive at Harvard also contains “Christmas cards and valentines designed by Paul Child” – several of which are shown in the film. Here’s an amuse bouche for you: We see Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci deep in a tubful of bubbles, smiling euphorically. Pouf! goes the flash taking the photo that will become their valentine card… and then we see the conversation balloon being rubber-stamped on a card to carry the message. Totally charming. The 1960s were the heyday of French postage stamps superbly engraved with reproductions of Impressionist masterpieces… and I can’t help but hope that Julia and Paul used great stamps on their correspondence, and that the envelopes have survived as well.
Alyson Kuhn, the editor of Felt & Wire, was intrigued by the mousse of secrecy in the theatre lobby. N-O cell phones. Patrons were wanded, handbags were searched, many people good naturedly walked back to their cars to stash their phones… Reminiscent of “Diva,” where the opera-loving postman illegally records his diva performing Lucia di Lammermoor, while a much more dangerous cassette has been secreted in his mailpouch. We can appreciate the studio’s wanting to spin their own sugar, so to speak, and The New York Times ran a frothy piece the very next day.
2nd photo: The couple’s 1956 Valentine’s Day card. From the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
