James Beard: America's First Foodie | Full Documentary | American Masters | PBS

0:20 Ungaro: We're here tonight in beautiful

0:23 Lincoln Center to celebrate the culinary arts.

0:26 Allen: The James Beard Award is the most important prize in American food.

0:29 They're the Academy Awards of the American culinary industry.

0:32 Batali: There is no greater night to put on my annual tuxedo and get down.

0:37 Woman: When I think of James Beard, I think, "Wow.

0:39 A good time, a good American, and great food." Pomeroy:

0:43 Just presenting the best of the best in a really classic and simple way.

0:46 Man #2: And he made it a little bit nerdy.

0:48 It's great to be kind of a food geek.

0:50 Niccolini: He did the original menu at the Four Seasons restaurant.

0:53 We still have some of his dishes on the menu today.

0:55 Man #4: James Beard's certainly a legend in his own time.

0:57 Lagasse: An amazing man.

0:58 Man #5: Larger than life.

0:59 Man #6: A pioneer.

1:00 Man #7: Everybody knows the name— James Beard.

1:01 They might not know exactly who he is, but they know his name.

1:04 Narrator: When this man speaks, master chefs listen.

1:07 This is James Beard.

1:09 Beard: This is Ceresota unbleached flour.

1:11 Let me tell you what "unbleached" means.

1:12 It means untouched, unartificial, unfooled with, untampered with, unmessed

1:16 with, unfiddled with, uncorrected, unperfected.

1:26 Allen: James Beard was an enormously important figure in American cooking

1:29 at a time when American cooking was really sort of a desert.

1:33 Jones: There wasn't a food world in the sense that we have one today.

1:37 There was the women's magazines, and they had a lot of recipes, fast and easy.

1:43 Lamb: Before Jim Beard, the average American table was meat and potatoes,

1:48 and casseroles were made from canned soup.

1:51 Higgins: It was much easier for the industry

1:53 to just make it simple and put in a box,

1:55 in a can and freeze it or package it and just sell it at a supermarket.

1:59 Jones: When James Beard came on the scene teaching you how to cook,

2:04 making you understand techniques and why you were doing something,

2:08 there really had never been anything like it.

2:10 Wolf: The first time I got to his house, I was hungry, and I said,

2:14 "Is there anything to eat?" thinking, you know,

2:16 slabs of foie gras, pot of caviar, right?

2:18 He said, "Yeah, there's some Skippy in the fridge." Allen: Yes,

2:21 he liked Beef Wellington, but he liked chipped beef on toast.

2:24 He loved macaroni and cheese.

2:26 He appreciated a great ham sandwich.

2:28 Wolf: His glasses would be down on a chain,

2:30 and you could see what he had in the previous meal on the glasses.

2:33 Greene: He was one of the founding fathers of eating well and carrying

2:37 on about it and gossiping about the other people who are doing it.

2:41 Wolf: He gave us benchmarks for eating, for cooking, and for living.

3:12 Allen: James Beard was born in 1903 in Portland, Oregon,

3:15 at a time when the city was going through a huge boom— a big timber town.

3:20 James had really picked the right mother.

3:22 She was a bit of a libertine, fiercely independent.

3:27 She was, herself, a tremendous cook, and a bit of a raconteur.

3:31 She ran an inn.

3:33 Batterberry: In the 19th century, our population was constantly on the move.

3:38 If you had just arrived from the East Coast or the Middle West,

3:43 you didn't look for a hotel unless you were very wealthy.

3:46 You said, "I'll find a good boarding house to stay

3:48 in," and the quality of the food was so important,

3:51 because it replaced home food.

3:55 Lamb: Jim Beard was a mama's boy.

3:57 His mother married his father only to have a child.

4:00 His father was very seldom in the picture.

4:02 He came and went as Jim was growing up and be

4:06 gone for months or years at a time and then appear again.

4:09 His mother was very popular socially in Portland and was

4:14 a very prominent guest and hostess for the best families.

4:28 Paul: Portland in those years was larger than Seattle,

4:32 aspired to be the San Francisco of the Pacific Northwest,

4:37 and so took its food and other parts of its culture very seriously.

4:43 The market culture really had a central role in Portland's culinary development.

4:50 If you can envision hundreds of vendors on a daily basis,

4:53 just clogging the sidewalk and the street corner,

4:57 selling everything edible as well as dry

5:00 goods and things that everyday shoppers would need.

5:04 Lamb: And Jim loved markets.

5:06 They had healthy, good food, and things were not changed by science,

5:10 and he and his brother would go down,

5:12 and they would shop, and they knew all of the purveyors by name.

5:16 Higgins: I can just imagine those vendors competing to make

5:18 sure they were the ones who gave this pudgy, little foodie kid of the day,

5:22 whose mother is the most influential food person in the city,

5:26 the most delicious morsel to wander through the market.

5:29 Schroeder: James Beard's nursemaid had taken him to the doctor

5:32 and stopped at the market to pick up some goods for Mrs.

5:35 Beard.

5:36 And after the vendor at the market packed it up and handed her the bag,

5:40 the nursemaid said, "Oh, can you please put that on Mrs.

5:43 Beard's account?" The vendor grabbed it back and said, "Ugh!

5:46 It's for her?

5:47 She'd kill me if I sold her that." Mrs.

5:49 Beard had an amazing palate.

5:52 She was extremely discriminating, and she herself was a gourmand.

5:56 In fact, I hate to say it, but I think she was really America's first foodie.

6:00 She's the one that made James Beard who he was.

6:02 She gave him the appreciation of all this delicious food.

6:21 Higgins: I've always felt, like,

6:23 a strong kind of kindred thing with James Beard,

6:26 maybe 'cause I was a hungry kid, too.

6:28 I grew up in a big family, single mother.

6:31 We gardened.

6:32 We raised a lot of our own food.

6:34 So from an early age, I had my own curiosity and a mother who was a good cook.

6:41 Beard's mom had a lot of interesting approaches to food,

6:45 what we would consider to be just classic country cooking,

6:48 and it was taking place in her kitchen

6:49 and out of her vegetable beds and fruit trees.

6:54 And so, you've got a pretty adventuresome woman who's willing

6:57 to talk to the farmer coming to the back door,

6:59 or buying vegetables from the Italian guy off the back of his truck,

7:03 and they would bring their vegetables and maybe

7:05 some other little special things out of California,

7:07 things that were very exotic to the common cook of that era.

7:11 And if she didn't know how to cook it, she would develop relationships with Mr.

7:14 Delfinio or Mr.

7:15 Antosi, and they would talk about how

7:17 their grandmother cooked that and introduced new ideas,

7:20 new sort of regional cuisine into Beard's mother's cooking.

7:24 Great stuff, and it reads like a menu of today.

7:30 Jue: He mentioned his mother often,

7:32 and he once said to me "If she had not been my mother,

7:37 we would have been very good friends." Lamb: It was a complicated relationship.

7:42 They both adored each other, but there was always conflict because,

7:46 well, Jim had to grow up and be a man.

7:49 Allen: He's described in his obituary as being a college dropout.

7:53 It's a little more complicated than that.

7:55 James went to school at Reed College— even then,

7:58 and certainly today, a haven for counterculture types.

8:02 He was a big man on campus, figuratively and literally.

8:06 He was interested in the arts.

8:08 He performed in many plays.

8:10 He was popular and well-known.

8:12 He was also popular with men with whom he had affairs— other students,

8:17 at least one professor.

8:19 This is at a time it was actually illegal to be gay,

8:22 and he was kicked out of Reed College.

8:24 I mean, he's lucky he wasn't thrown in jail.

8:26 James was a little too out at a time when nobody was out.

8:32 After leaving Reed College, James' mother sent him to Europe to study opera.

8:36 Lamb: He wanted to be an opera star,

8:38 but that was in the Valentino period when you had to be small and Italian,

8:43 and he was anything but that.

8:48 Allen: It was Europe that really opened his eyes and his palate

8:51 to great food— eating at the great restaurants on the Left Bank in Paris,

8:55 eating at the Ritz just opened a whole new world for him.

8:59 He was a gentlemanly companion for socialite women in Paris

9:04 and London whose husbands didn't want to go to parties.

9:06 James loved going to these parties.

9:08 He loved the glamour, he loved the food, and, as he liked to say,

9:11 "You know, if you have a nice dinner jacket and can talk about art,

9:14 you can eat really well for very little money." James comes back from Europe

9:18 in the '20s and bounced all over the United

9:21 States trying to create a career in theater.

9:24 He was bouncing between New York, Seattle, Portland, a little time in Hollywood,

9:30 where he appeared in a DeMille film,

9:31 and made his way back to New York in the late '30s,

9:34 and I think it was somewhere around this time that it began

9:37 to dawn on him that this acting-theater thing wasn't gonna work out.

10:03 Pomeroy: The time is just after prohibition, it's New York City.

10:07 There were about 250 cocktail parties a night,

10:09 and James was attending a lot of them.

10:12 He loved the booze, he loved the socializing,

10:16 but he didn't love the food that was served at those parties.

10:19 The hors d'oeuvres he calls "Doots" and "Doodads." So he

10:22 decides to develop his own catering company called Hors d'Oeuvre, Inc.

10:26 And he developed a sandwich that he became

10:28 quite famous for— The James Beard Onion Sandwich.

10:33 I read about the sandwich,

10:35 and I started making it when I had a catering company.

10:38 It sounded delicious to me,

10:39 because it's his mother's homemade mayonnaise recipe.

10:41 She used to make it in her boarding house,

10:43 and she would actually make it table-size.

10:46 You take homemade brioche...

10:49 slice some onion...

10:50 James' mother's mayonnaise...

10:55 ...a little bit of crunchy salt...

10:57 add a little parsley.

10:59 This is such a perfect example of James Beard's taste— simple,

11:05 classic, very elegant, awesome.

12:27 Reichl: If there's a restaurant of the 20th century in New York,

12:30 it's probably Le Pavillon.

12:33 It virtually transformed restaurants across the country.

12:37 Henri Soulé, who owned it, had this idea that some people were "his people,"

12:43 and they had to be people who loved food.

12:46 Boulud: Soulé created what they called a "Royale," which was

12:49 an area in the restaurant where if you really are powerful,

12:53 you belong in the Royale.

14:19 Davis: James Beard's first book, called "Hors D'oeuvre and Canapes",

14:22 around 1940— that was probably the first

14:24 cookbook written by a man with an American,

14:27 a New York approach to food that was about entertaining

14:30 and about sort of the good life in a way, but a very practical book.

14:34 "This is how you make a canapé." "This is

14:37 how you roll a cracker into a beautiful,

14:39 little hors d'oeuvre." It sort of tapped into this urbane entertainment,

14:44 food-as-more-than-just- sustenance idea,

14:46 and I think it was a revelation at the time.

14:49 Reichl: Certainly cookbooks, in those days, were the domain of women.

14:53 They were, like, good girls who wrote practical advice for people,

14:58 and it was a very small world, a very clubby world.

15:00 They knew each other,

15:02 and I think it would have been very strange for a man to write a cookbook.

15:09 Allen: James Beard wrote 22 cookbooks.

15:11 But they weren't just cookbooks— They were filled

15:14 with stories and anecdotes and tales and opinion and acid.

15:29 Stewart: Well, I've been cooking ever since I

15:30 was a young child with mother in the kitchen, so we had James Beard's cookbook.

15:36 We had "Beard on Food." We had "Beard on Bread." I consider him, like, a mentor.

15:41 I read his recipes in The New York Times every Sunday.

15:45 It was a big deal.

15:46 And then "Beard on Bread," and I really loved baking bread.

15:51 The recipes in the book— Oh, I still make some of them.

15:54 William Melville Childs' Health Bread.

15:56 Whole-Meal Bread with Potatoes I loved.

15:59 Cracked-Wheat Bread.

16:01 And I would make these breads and they were dense and heavy breads.

16:04 "Slice them very thinly for picnics

16:07 with homemade pâtes." Nothing was too much effort.

16:10 Whims: My mother had several James Beard cookbooks,

16:12 and there's one book that she gave me called "Menus for Entertaining." Say you

16:17 wanted to throw an afternoon tea party or a formal dinner party or a clambake,

16:24 and he would just lay out all the recipes for that.

16:27 It was like, "I can throw that party just like James Beard." Whiteman:

16:30 It was also Jim who made it okay for men to cook.

16:36 And it was also okay for men to now think about food as part of an adventure.

16:43 Ungaro: Here was a man who wrote columns for Gourmet

16:46 and Bon Appétit and newspapers all over this world every day.

16:51 And he was the first television chef to go on TV and teach America how to cook.

17:06 Beard: Good evening.

17:07 Well, here we are again, and, as usual, I'm left home to prepare the supper.

17:13 Collins: "Elsie presents James Beard in I Love to Eat" began in 1946 on NBC,

17:21 and it was the first nationally televised cooking show.

17:26 No one really had a television, so it was not really seen by many people.

17:32 The televisions that existed for public consumption in those days

17:36 were in department-store windows, they were in bars.

17:40 So a lot of his audience was men

17:43 who were watching him before the Friday night fights.

17:47 Beard: Today we're going to make chili con carne.

17:49 Elsie: And we're going to have a session of Kitchen Clinic.

17:52 Beard: And we're going to discuss sponge cakes.

17:55 Elsie: Tell me, do you ever use what

17:57 they call a "filler" in a— in your hamburger?

18:00 Either the large patties— Beard: What do you mean "a filler"?

18:03 Elsie: When people talk— I'm not accusing you,

18:04 but you know how people often put extra ingredients into hamburger— filler.

18:08 Beard: Oh, you mean cereal?

18:09 Elsie: Yes, that type of thing.

18:10 Beard: No.

18:11 Mnh-mnh.

18:11 I'm a purist.

18:12 Elsie: Mm-hmm.

18:13 Collins: It wasn't really the right time

18:15 for epicurean delights to be presented on television.

18:19 Elsie: Ready?

18:21 Collins: At least as he presented them,

18:22 and I think he was a little bit early to the party, maybe a few decades early.

18:28 And then Julia Child appears in 1963, on "The French Chef." Well,

18:34 of course, she didn't intend to change the landscape.

18:38 Child: What's missing in this picture?

18:40 The goose!

18:41 And here it is.

18:44 We're cooking a goose today on "The French Chef." Collins:

18:48 Julia Child was not only bringing in "French

18:51 Food" at the height of its popularity, but also was a very charming entertainer.

18:57 She just was her natural self and had a great personality.

19:01 Child: And here it is, just sitting up waving at you.

19:05 Jones: When Julia Child came on the scene with this really wonderful book,

19:10 I called Jim up, and I said, "I have a remarkable manuscript,

19:14 and I think you'll really be the person to appreciate

19:18 it." He called me back within two or three days.

19:21 He'd looked at the whole thing,

19:22 and he just said, "It's remarkable." And then he said,

19:27 "I wish I'd written it."[ Laughs] Davis:

19:30 When Julia Child wrote "Mastering the Art

19:32 of French Cooking" and was coming to America,

19:34 her editor, Judith Jones, who knew James Beard very well,

19:37 asked who she wanted to meet when she came to New York,

19:39 and she says, "James Beard." And Beard threw

19:41 a party to introduce her to the American experience.

19:44 Beard and Julia Child became best buddies.

19:48 They were both outsized figures.

19:50 They were both over 6 feet.

19:51 They both had sort of funny voices.

19:53 They both sort of commanded attention in a room.

19:55 And they found comfort in each other, sort of in this outside space.

19:59 Barr: James and Julia loved each other.

20:01 They loved to cook together.

20:03 They gave themselves the nickname "Gigi" for Julie and Jim.

20:08 Beard: What a lovely feast it is.

20:11 You know, Julia, when they had a collision like this, they

20:14 usually celebrate with a mulled beer drink that was an wassail.

20:21 Jones: It was love and envy.

20:24 I don't think Julia was envious of Jim, but Jim was a little jealous of her.

20:29 You know, Julia was great with an audience, and he knew he wasn't so hot.

20:34 Child: And a toast came from dipping toast into wassail.

20:37 Beard: That's right.

20:39 Child: Well, let's say "wassail" to the spirit of '76.

20:47 Wolf: Jim's entrée was social ladies.

20:51 He was a raconteur.

20:52 And remember, early on, after he'd studied opera,

20:55 he sang for his supper, and later on, he cooked for his supper.

20:59 Beard: New York 1956.

21:02 We're all set for tomorrow's blast.

21:04 We have 40 paid students.

21:06 And the first lesson is an hors d'oeuvre table,

21:08 chicken three ways, corn bread, salad, and a plain layer cake.

21:13 Not exciting, but the right thing for a beginning class

21:15 where everyone is getting accustomed to one thing or another.

21:18 For some reason, I am looking forward

21:20 to classes because I'm such a ham, I guess.

21:24 Carroll: Jim started teaching in New York City in the mid '50s.

21:27 First, with André Surmain at Lutèce,

21:29 and then later, in the kitchens at McCall's Magazine.

21:32 And then, eventually, in his house, on West 12th Street.

21:36 Greene: I decided that I should take James Beard's famous cooking course.

21:40 So I called, and they said I could not

21:43 enter the advanced class without taking the beginner's class.

21:46 I said, "But I'm Gael Greene.

21:49 I-I'm a restaurant critic.

21:50 I'm a cook.

21:51 I cook." They said, "No,

21:53 you can't take the advanced class until you take the beginner's

21:56 class." I remember when he was showing how to do mayonnaise,

22:02 and he put his giant hand on top of my hand

22:06 and moved it in the direction that you would move the fork.

22:10 Grausman: In the classroom, he was able to give someone the confidence

22:16 and encouragement to do things they had never done,

22:19 which gave that person the feeling that they had achieved so much,

22:24 and I think that was a gift that he had.

22:26 Carroll: In 1973, James began teaching classes

22:30 at Seaside High School in Seaside, Oregon.

22:33 It was an ideal setup because in those classes,

22:36 they got to work with the bounty of the Oregon coast,

22:39 and it gave James an opportunity to be back in his childhood home.

23:07 Lamb: Growing up, he spent the summers at Gearhart, Oregon.

23:10 Mary Hamlet was his childhood friend.

23:13 Mary would tell you about the time he made mud

23:15 pies at the beach and forced her to eat one.

23:17 So he was a foodie very early on.

23:20 It was why he came back here to cook in the summer with the fresh seafoods,

23:25 the wonderful berries, because he said, "I can get the things I remember,

23:28 and we can do them the way they were." Narrator:

23:31 James Beard continues to return to the Oregon

23:33 coast each summer to vacation and to teach cooking.

23:37 Beard's students have come from all over the country

23:40 and paid $450 a piece to take the one-week class.

23:44 Jue: I was lucky enough to be chosen to attend James Beard's

23:50 first cooking class when he held them in Seaside, at the high school.

23:55 And we became the disciples of James Beard.

23:59 Lamb: This was not a demonstration class for us to watch.

24:02 We would go in, there'd be a menu on the board,

24:04 and you would pick what you wanted to do.

24:06 Then he would come around while we were cooking and critique us.

24:11 And then we'd go have lunch and eat what we'd cooked.

24:15 So we'd taste-test our own cooking.

24:18 Jue: We just all became this wonderful group that cooked

24:23 all day and ate all afternoon and then partied all night.

24:28 So one day I asked Jim, and I said,

24:30 "How do you get up and do it for six weeks?" And he says, "Oh, that's easy.

24:35 They just roll me over and blow me up." Carroll:

24:39 James Beard needed a fair amount of assistance in those classes.

24:42 There was lots of organizing and lots of shopping to be done.

24:45 And on the West Coast, he had me and Marion Cunningham.

24:49 On the East Coast, he had Barbara Kafka.

24:52 Jones: Everybody was vying to be Jim's favorite.

24:54 And sometimes it got a little bit nasty.

24:58 Kafka: I have done everything in the food and wine industry,

25:02 from being a consultant to writing cookbooks to teaching.

25:08 Whatever it is, I've done it.

25:09 Batterberry: Not everybody loved Barbara.

25:12 She was extremely knowledgeable, extremely precise.

25:17 Kafka: Keep it simple, get it right,

25:19 know what you're doing, don't complicate things.

25:23 Then you can be creative.

25:24 Go right ahead.

25:25 Be my guest, but first learn your job.

25:28 Fabricant: Barbara Kafka is one of the brightest

25:30 people I've ever met and very opinionated.

25:35 Jones: She was extremely, uh...high-handed with Marion Cunningham.

25:41 Wolf: Marion Cunningham was his pal.

25:43 She was the manifestation of what Jim loved—

25:46 a survivor from difficult times who had an inherent elegance,

25:51 force of personality, stature, presence, and had been a gas-station attendant.

25:59 Reichl: She'd never been on a plane.

26:00 She was terrified of heights, of people, of everything,

26:04 and she went to this class that Beard was holding up in Portland,

26:08 and she was liberated.

26:10 Lamb: He took her from an alcoholic housewife to one

26:14 of the finest cooks in California and a teacher and so forth.

26:18 Wolf: This woman had been through a lot and had come out

26:21 the other side to write "Fannie Farmer," a cookbook that sold millions.

26:25 Carroll: I remember being in an elevator with James and Marion Cunningham,

26:29 and Marion said, "James, you've just been so wonderful to me.

26:32 You have given me a career that I would never have had otherwise.

26:36 How can I ever thank you?" And he leaned

26:39 on his cane and his eyes darted about, and he said, "Marion, you can't." Tower:

26:43 The James Beard/ Marion Cunningham relationship is

26:46 very indicative of what James Beard was like.

26:49 She was a slave.

26:51 And I use that word because I think it eventually grated on her.

26:56 She turned into a very mean bitch.

26:59 Reichl: She was very huffy about Barbara.

27:03 And they, I don't think, were ever in the same room.

27:07 And you couldn't have two more different people.

27:09 Jones: He and Marion had such a delicious relationship.

27:13 They just adored each other.

27:15 And Barbara didn't have that kind of intimacy.

27:19 Reichl: Jim Beard kind of loved the fact that they fought over him.

27:23 Jones: I think it was really just Barbara was obsessed, she had to be top dog.

27:28 Wolf: I've never told anyone this, certainly on the record.

27:30 I was in a room with Barbara,

27:32 and the discussion was who was going to be the next James Beard.

27:35 And Barbara said that she should be, and if she lasted long enough, she would.

27:39 They were talking about who was next.

27:42 You know, and the fact of the matter is,

27:43 when somebody's an original, no one's next.

27:49 Reichl: Now, he got a lot of invitations to go to dinner with people.

27:53 And at that time, there were a lot of press events,

27:56 a lot of products had all kinds of marketing promotions going

27:59 on— luncheons all over the city— and they all invited Jim to come.

28:04 And he would say yes to every single one.

28:07 I didn't hear him talk about needing money, and he was comped so much that most

28:14 of what he did for teaching classes or traveling, were paid for by someone else.

28:20 Tower: James Beard never paid for anything.

28:23 He certainly didn't pay for the limousines

28:25 and the hotel suite and the dinners and the champagne.

28:28 Jones: I remember that first lunch.

28:31 I had to pay for it, and I didn't have enough for the tip, and I was mortified.

28:37 And he said, "Oh, we'll just let it go.

28:40 I'm gonna tell him we'll stop by with the tip."[ Laughing] "We'll stop

28:43 by with the tip." But he didn't offer it out of his own pocket.

28:47 Niccolini: I said to Tom Market, I said, "Well,

28:49 I have to ask the question," like, "Who ever pays his bills?" I mean,

28:53 he gets up and leaves all the time,

28:55 and you ask me just to sign his name on the check and that's it.

28:57 And he said, "Well, James Beard, you know,

28:59 has never paid for a meal in his entire life." Beard:

29:02 My eggs pipérade requires very accurate heat control.

29:05 So that's why I use the Corning Gourmet Range.

29:09 Jones: Jim Beard took money for things to promote them, if he believed in it.

29:14 He needed the pennies.

29:16 Wolf: Well, that was at a time when you weren't supposed to take endorsements.

29:18 Yeah, those days are long gone.

29:21 I mean, now if you don't have an endorsement deal, you're actually not a person.

29:24 Jones: I mean, this is a business, and he's got a name.

29:27 And if you really believe in something, why not?

29:31 Beard: Hmm.

29:31 I'll have that recipe for my next book.

29:34 Woman: Do you cater?

29:48 Davis: Beard consulted on several restaurants and had

29:51 a very close relationship with Joe Baum.

29:53 They created iconic American restaurants that really

29:56 ushered in an era of American dining.

29:58 Baum: The Four Seasons opened in 1959 to huge fanfare, huge expectations.

30:05 It's philosophy was theatrical,

30:08 and this incredible temple of design on every single level.

30:13 And it was really focused on the entire experience.

30:17 Niccolini: And I think this is basically the relationship of James Beard,

30:21 considering he was an actor in his previous life.

30:23 You have to understand that you have to think about the service.

30:26 You have to think about the decor.

30:28 Food alone does not carry a restaurant.

30:30 You have to add everything all together.

30:33 Waxman: He helped design it.

30:34 He helped with the architecture.

30:35 He helped with the plates, the silverware,

30:37 the glassware, the menus, the lighting.

30:41 He was the king of the Four Seasons.

30:42 It was his place.

30:44 Niccolini: The cost of opening the restaurant in '59 was more than $5 million.

30:48 The Grill Room is basically where the so-called "power lunch" word came from.

30:53 And his table was always the center booth at the Four Seasons restaurant.

30:57 It was the first restaurant in America

30:58 that started serving American wine on the wine list.

31:01 I mean, there was no other restaurant

31:02 in America that would even touch American wine.

31:04 And James Beard had a lot to do with it again.

31:07 Baum: And it was his idea, over 50 years ago,

31:10 to create a restaurant where the menu changed with the seasons.

31:13 And that's why they named it the Four Seasons.

31:16 They were dealing directly with farmers and producers who

31:20 were growing things specifically for their restaurant, like in 1959.

31:25 Tower: The menus were all about foraging.

31:27 So it said, for instance,

31:28 "The clams are from Hook Point in Amagansett," or something like that.

31:33 The American culinary scene now thinks they invented that.

31:36 It was invented by Four Seasons and James Beard.

31:39 Baum: Preceding the change of every season, it was like a theatrical opening.

31:44 Everybody got all dressed up.

31:46 The press was invited.

31:47 And I remember being part of that excitement.

31:51 Davis: I actually think that the Four Seasons

31:53 is really the first "American Restaurant" with a capital

31:55 "A" and a capital "R." They really changed

31:58 the game for restaurants that came after it.

32:16 Larry: I had the great fortune of growing up

32:18 with a grandmother who had a self-sufficient farm on Eastern Long Island.

32:21 And I really wanted the ingredients that I remembered from my childhood.

32:25 I remember the fruits and vegetables, the going out and picking them,

32:29 nice and fresh, and using them fresh,

32:31 and that's what I wanted for the restaurant.

32:33 You know, I wanted to get back to where cooks

32:35 knew that cauliflower didn't grow with a plastic bag over it,

32:39 that things came from farms.

32:41 We have to start having a one-on-one relationship with our farmers,

32:45 and that was back in the mid-'70s.

32:48 I decide I would open my own restaurant in 1983.

32:51 And I couldn't think of a name for the restaurant at all, so I called Jim up.

32:56 I said, "Jim, what do you think a good name

32:57 for the restaurant?" and I barely got it out of my mouth,

33:00 and he said, "An American Place." Reichl:

33:03 I mean, long before farm-to-table, before farmers markets,

33:07 I will never forget going to An American Place

33:10 and seeing Larry Forgione with cream in a jar,

33:13 and he was shaking it, and I said,

33:15 "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm whipping the cream.

33:17 Mr.

33:17 Beard says that you can get cream like this," and he went out and found it.

33:24 Larry: Jim loved strawberries, and especially strawberry shortcake.

33:28 That was one of his favorites.

33:30 I have a recipe that he gave me that was handed down from his mother.

33:34 We had it on the menu at An American Place for as long as I can remember.

33:39 Marc: You know, I remember, like, asking my father, you know,

33:41 "What is it about James Beard, you know, that you love so much?" And, you know,

33:46 he kind of smiled and said,

33:47 "You'd be able to go over his house and talk about morels for two hours.

33:51 And then after you were done talking about morels,

33:53 you'd talk about goat cheese for another three hours and some

33:56 woman who made the best goat cheese that he's ever had,

34:00 and he'd talk about what the woman looked like

34:01 and the color of her hair and, you know,

34:03 her favorite dress that she liked to wear," and he would

34:05 associate all these things with just this one spoonful of goat cheese.

34:10 Larry: You know, Jim never really changed over all the years.

34:13 He still believed in the philosophy of American food

34:16 and the great bounty that America had to offer.

34:19 And it just took us a while to catch up to him.

34:22 Fabricant: He was the pioneer in the beginnings

34:25 of any kind of farm-to-table movement.

34:28 Many of the chefs that he did mentor over the years

34:32 are chefs that you now see in that very movement.

34:39 Waters: A lot of people were dropping out

34:41 in the '60s and trying to live their own way,

34:44 whether it was on a farm or whether it was eating healthy food.

34:50 And I think it wasn't really until we sort

34:54 of came to our senses about the purity of food,

34:59 and it was juxtaposed against fast food.

35:03 It became very revolutionary.

35:06 Allen: It's very common today to go to restaurants where

35:08 you feel like you're having dinner at a friend's house,

35:11 with very fresh food from the farmers market.

35:13 That was not common at all in 1970.

35:16 People who were architects and musicians, not even chefs before,

35:19 found their way into this little Alice Waters hippy commune at Chez Panisse.

35:23 They came to work with her and be a part of this revolution.

35:27 Tower: I was a failed architect, I was broke,

35:29 and I took the first job that came along, which was the chef at Chez Panisse.

35:33 If I'd known what it was like to be a chef,

35:35 I would never have done it, quite frankly.

35:37 Chuckles] James Beard wrote an article in 1975,

35:41 saying that one of his favorite restaurants

35:43 in the United States was Chez Panisse.

35:45 And everybody who read his columns went,

35:48 "James Beard has a favorite restaurant in Berkeley?

35:50 How is that possible?" Waters:

35:52 After Chez Panisse opened, Marion Cunningham said,

35:56 "I'm bringing James Beard." And I remember we made a special dinner.

36:01 And I know he was sitting over here.

36:04 And he was a very open, expressive, charming person.

36:09 After he left, he said to Marion Cunningham,

36:13 "This is not a real restaurant." And I knew what he meant.

36:18 I did know what he meant.

36:20 And I consider it a great compliment.

36:33 Lamb: The house was like Grand Central Station.

36:36 People came in to just talk to him.

36:37 People came in for an autograph.

36:39 Wolf: This was very orchestrated chaos.

36:42 He lived on two floors of a brownstone

36:44 that were designed to never have a stay-over guest.

36:47 It was a singular residence.

36:49 It was about him, and it was about him receiving people.

36:51 He would call me up and he would say,

36:53 "I'm tired and the Ambassador from Spain is coming.

36:55 Can you come over?" And I'd come over

36:57 in my little jeans and T-shirt and sit on the floor,

36:59 quietly listening until he nodded off,

37:01 and then I talked to the Ambassador from Spain, or whoever it was.

37:03 Barr: Beard was the fount of all information and gossip.

37:06 He was not the greatest person to lock himself away

37:09 in a room and finish the book he was meant to be finishing.

37:13 That was really, really hard for him.

37:15 He was the kind of person who always needed to have people around him.

37:18 He prized his role as being the source of all gossip and information,

37:23 and that's what kept him in the mix and kept him in the center of things.

37:26 Tower: He would talk about people who would be

37:29 absolutely horrified to hear that he didn't love them.

37:33 Wolf: I used to say to him,

37:34 "Why don't you like Giuliano Bugialli?" And he'd say,

37:36 "Well, well, well..." I'd say, "Jim, why don't you like him?" He said,

37:39 "I don't like the way he smells." Stuart:

37:43 Jim sat in a desk that faced the street,

37:47 so he faced two windows and could see anyone who walked back and forth.

37:53 Sometimes he didn't bother to get dressed,

37:55 and he would sit in his jockey underwear and wave at people,

37:59 and people would wave, and then they would be taken aback a little bit.

38:03 And his shower— they built it on the balcony,

38:07 at the top of the stairs, in his greenhouse.

38:09 Someone across the way,

38:11 if they wanted to, they could look towards Jim's house and see him showering.

38:17 Lamb: Some neighbors complained.

38:18 They'd call and say, "Will Mr.

38:20 Beard put on a robe?"[ Chuckles] And he said,

38:23 "Just look the other way." Stuart: He wasn't a modest man.

38:27 Jones: He couldn't bear not to answer his own telephone.

38:30 He'd pick it up and he'd say, "Well, yes?

38:32 Mm-hmm?

38:33 And what degree was your oven?

38:35 Well, you shouldn't have basted it." And it would be somebody out in Omaha.

38:40 Tower: He was a people-person.

38:42 He was a real friend to everyone.

38:45 And everyone that knew him adored him, because he was real.

38:49 Reichl: I was invited to a party, and Marion Cunningham,

38:53 who I met for the first time at that party,

38:56 sort of saw me looking lost, off in the corner.

38:59 And she said, "Would you like me to introduce you

39:02 to James Beard?" And she took me up and introduced me,

39:08 and I said something like...

39:11 90% of the garlic that is eaten in the United States is grown in California.

39:18 ...and he looked at me, and he said, "Really?" And I was done.

39:23 Marion found me a little bit later,

39:25 and she said, "Oh, I should've stayed with you.

39:27 He's much nicer to boys."[ Chuckles]♪♪ Allen:

39:33 James wasn't always very vocal about it,

39:35 but he knew that he was gay from a young age.

39:38 He figured it out one day at the beach.

39:40 Tower: Jim was very brave in his coming out early.

39:44 He was always a gentleman.

39:45 It was a private matter.

39:47 He never flaunted it.

39:48 I'm blushing slightly now remembering that he'd invite you up to his room

39:52 and then we'd be talking and scheming and writing menus and talking about food.

39:56 And then, suddenly, the bathrobe would fall open and there's

40:00 Buddha with the family jewels hanging to the floor,

40:03 and I'm like, "Yeah, well..." Aaron:

40:05 We were in the Four Seasons, Jim and me, facing the entrance.

40:10 He looks up, and he sees a friend of his who's also gay.

40:16 His friend is walking in with a woman,

40:19 and Jim gets his whole 7 1/2 feet up and says,

40:24 "If there's anything I can't stand, it's a hypocrite!" Wolf:

40:29 James was in a relationship for something like 40 years, 38 years.

40:32 We used to call it the most expensive cocktail ever,

40:36 because he picked him up in a bar in Rome, and that was it.

40:38 Stuart: Gino Cofacci, Jim's companion, lived upstairs.

40:46 Jim sent him to Europe to study pastry.

40:48 And then Jim helped him get accounts in restaurants to make pastry.

40:54 And they had a personal relationship for a while,

40:56 but they led completely separate lives.

40:59 Wolf: For many years, everybody accepted that he was kind of a ward,

41:03 but the fact of the matter is he was an ex.

41:05 They were no longer an intimate couple, but they were a couple.

41:09 Lamb: There would be weeks they wouldn't see each other,

41:11 or even speak if they were upstairs and downstairs.

41:14 And it was a cantankerous affair, I think.

41:17 Stuart: And it was always a little bit of a mystery

41:19 as to why he still took care of him.

41:23 Lamb: How can I say this nicely?

41:24 He was almost mentally ill.

41:26 He was such a perfectionist.

41:29 And an Italian temperament— he could be lovely

41:33 one minute and flying off the handle the next.

41:36 Stuart: Jim somehow felt some kind of responsibility for him,

41:40 because in his will, Gino was left the life rights to his apartment upstairs,

41:46 plus a financial stipend.

41:49 Lamb: The tragedy was, Jim had a pug dog that Gino adored

41:53 and took care of, and the week after Jim's death,

41:56 Gino was walking the dog and it bolted,

41:58 ran right in front of a car, and was killed.

42:00 And that was almost the end of Gino.

42:02 He just could hardly handle it.

42:04 It just seemed like the dog wanted to go with Jim.

42:12 Carroll: James Beard loved feeding people.

42:13 He lived to bring people together and to bring people around a table.

42:18 And it was very upsetting to him to find out that there

42:22 was not enough food available for housebound seniors in New York City.

42:27 Greene: I called Jim.

42:28 We said, "Let's organize." And actually,

42:31 I think it was Joel Grey who gave us the name

42:34 "Citymeals On-Wheels." And we went on from $35,000 to, 32 years later,

42:40 we are raising $19 million a year.

42:52 Boulud: Last year, we started a program called

42:54 "Chefs Deliver." This dish is classic French cuisine,

42:58 with all the seasonal vegetables of early summer, cooked with love by a chef.

43:04 I think James Beard would've been very proud.

43:07 The idea is to bring a little bit of brightness and contact and a little

43:13 bit of joy to people by having a meal prepared by the chef himself.

43:18 I prepared for you a beautiful veal stew...

43:21 It's also the human touch.

43:23 People feel connected.

43:25 ...with a little bit of love from all the chefs in New York.

43:28 Man: That's what make good cooking, is love.

43:29 Boulud: Doing Chefs Deliver, it's saying "Thank you" to James Beard

43:33 for what he did when he started, for sure.

43:49 Greene: Jim had several serious illnesses and was in the hospital.

43:55 And you often thought he might be on his last moments,

44:00 but he actually had eight lives.

44:04 I was in the hospital one evening at about 5:30, 6:00, and suddenly,

44:09 the elevator doors opened and there was a line of chefs,

44:14 all in their chefs' caps, carrying Jim's dinner.

44:17 Chuckles] Jaffrey: We went in, and there he is in his bed,

44:21 sitting up, lots of people.

44:23 It's a party going on.

44:25 Waxman: So, I would send over care packages, and then Denny,

44:28 who's his doctor, called me up and said, "Jonathan, I know what you're doing.

44:31 I know that you stuck a bottle of Glenlivet in the package." Stuart:

44:35 When he was in the hospital, he was complaining about the chicken soup

44:39 and said maybe a chicken walked through it,

44:41 but that's the closest a chicken ever came to that soup.

44:45 Greene: He was not allowed to eat salt.

44:48 And he said to me, "If you can't eat what you want to eat,

44:52 what's the point in living?" Stuart: He had been in the hospital so many times,

44:58 we thought he was gonna get through whatever it was and that he would be home.

45:04 Carroll: James Beard was interviewed

45:06 by a reporter from the Eugene Register Guard.

45:10 And he didn't feel well that day,

45:13 but we drove down to the beach and James didn't want to get out of the car.

45:18 But the reporter insisted, so he got out of the car,

45:22 he took a few steps on the beach,

45:24 and he took what is now quite a famous picture.

45:27 And the first time James Beard saw that photograph, he cried.

45:31 He said, "It's just the end." Larry:

45:35 I received a call in the middle of the night from his doctor,

45:38 letting me know that Jim had passed and that Jim had a little

45:41 message for me to just say that everything is gonna be all right,

45:45 and he's in good hands.

45:47 Reporter: James Beard, one of America's leading authorities on food,

45:51 died of cardiac arrest in a New York hospital Wednesday.

45:54 Beard's portly frame was often seen on television,

45:57 sharing his vast knowledge of food and drink.

45:59 He trained and inspired numerous American cooks,

46:02 and to many, he became their mentor.

46:04 Beard wrote 18 books on everything from outdoor cookery to pasta.

46:08 He was 81.

46:13 Lamb: After he passed away, his childhood friend, Mary Hamlet,

46:16 and I took Jim's ashes to the beach at Gearhart.

46:20 I spread them on the beach.

46:22 Then we went to the old hotel in Seaside and had a stiff drink and drove home.

46:27 Laughs] The thing Jim always said was, "I want no monuments.

46:33 I don't want a tomb.

46:34 I don't want people to make a god out of me.

46:38 Remembrance in love, yes, but not a phony tribute."♪♪ Stuart:

46:52 When Jim died, Manufacturers Hanover Trust was the executor of the will.

46:58 They gave the contents of the house to William Doyle Gallery to auction,

47:03 and the proceeds would go to Reed College.

47:06 I don't know why he left everything to Reed,

47:09 except that he also went back there when they gave him an honorary degree.

47:15 Lamb: The only thing he ever said to me about Reed was,

47:18 "I think it's time they apologized." They had never communicated

47:22 with him at all until they gave him an honorary doctorate.

47:28 Wolf: You know, Reed College kicked him out for fiddling with a boy,

47:30 and he gave them a bunch of money, which I think is kind of wonderful.

47:34 It made them acknowledge him, you know.

47:36 It was a rather flamboyant and generous "screw you." Stuart:

47:41 Jim died in January 1985, and the auction was in October.

47:47 And then they put Dumpsters outside in the street so the house

47:52 could be cleaned to be put on the market to sell.

47:56 There was a group of us who were trying to decide

47:59 if there was anything that could be done to save that house.

48:04 That was sort of the beginning of The Beard Foundation.

48:08 Puck: Larry Forgione called me one day after Jim died,

48:12 and he said, "You know, we should preserve his house.

48:15 He used to teach cooking classes there.

48:17 That should be a monument to American cooking, really." Larry:

48:22 And we got together with all of the great chefs of America and said,

48:25 "We need to raise this money to put this down payment down on the house.

48:29 Let's do a series of dinners across the country—

48:32 The James Beard Night." And there were hundreds of chefs,

48:35 hundreds of restaurants across the country that said,

48:38 "Absolutely." And we raised the money for the down payment.

48:41 And then we came up with the idea of opening the house up to chefs

48:45 to be able to come in and do dinners in order to keep it running and functional.

48:49 The first official dinner at the house was Wolfgang Puck.

48:54 Puck: And I said, "Oh, my God.

48:56 What a great honor to cook in this icon's kitchen." So here I went then,

49:01 to New York, and I remember we did the dinner.

49:04 We were cooking downstairs, bringing the food upstairs into the dining room.

49:08 And that was really the beginning, but also then,

49:12 every chef from all over the country was honored

49:15 to come and cook at the James Beard House.

49:23 Higgins: There's never a time that I've been there

49:25 that I haven't felt his presence in some way.

49:28 I still really love that feeling of the first couple times working

49:32 with the bad oven and the electric burners and, you know, the Pyrex cookware.

49:36 Very, very Beardian, I guess you would say.

49:40 Boulud: A young chef today who is just starting to be known,

49:43 the dream is to go and cook at the James Beard

49:46 House and the dream is to become a great American chef.

49:49 And I think it's the rite of passage as a young American chef.

49:54 If you want to earn recognition, if you want to earn respect,

49:57 and if you really want to fulfill your dream,

50:00 you have to cook at the James Beard House.

50:02 Zimmern: And the Beard Award goes to...Bâtard.

50:07 Cheers and applause] Allen:

50:10 There's not a chef alive that doesn't desperately want

50:12 a nomination for a Beard Award and the opportunity to win.

50:16 This is the Oscar, this is the Tony,

50:18 this is the Emmy, this is the Grammy all rolled into one.

50:22 The evening, itself,

50:23 of the James Beard Awards is a very interesting night because about 85%

50:27 of the people walking in the door are gonna lose, and they know that.

50:32 Pomeroy: I have a lot of beautiful dresses

50:34 to show for all the years that I didn't win.

50:37 Waxman: Well, I was always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

50:41 It's always an honor when your peers nominate you for something.

50:45 I'm wondering if they're doing it 'cause I'm getting old

50:47 now and people are feeling a little sorry for me.

50:49 Allen: The James Beard Awards is a night

50:52 of watching people's careers change right before your eyes.

50:55 It's a big, big deal.

50:56 It can change people's businesses.

50:59 Boulud: The second James Beard Award I won was Best Chef in America.

51:03 It was, maybe, the biggest day of my life.

51:06 Woman: For my team.

51:08 Higgins: I was a recipient of the James Beard Award.

51:10 I got it around here somewhere.

51:12 Puck: I won the James Beard Award twice.

51:15 I think they might have forgotten that I won already or something.

51:18 Whims: But the most amazing thing about it is

51:20 that I got invited to be part of the club.

51:23 Allen: I will never, as long as I live,

51:25 forget the night that I won a James Beard Award.

51:27 It was like an out-of-body experience.

51:29 It was awesome.

51:31 Carroll: Someone asked me once if I thought James Beard thought about a legacy,

51:35 and I don't think he ever did.

51:37 I think it was enough for him to get through this life

51:40 without thinking about what was going to be beyond this life.

51:44 I think he would be very happy to know

51:46 that his name and his face— that they live on.

51:49 He might even be a bit surprised to know that.

51:52 Allen: I think that is what a foodie

51:54 really is— someone who loves the craft of cooking,

51:57 who loves to eat, who cherishes the convivial table.

52:00 So, James Beard, as America's first foodie— absolutely.

52:08 Indistinct conversations][ In di st in ct c on ve

52:24 rs at io ns]♪♪[ Cork pops][ Glasses clink] All: To Jim!

52:51 Announcer: "James Beard: America's First Foodie" is available on DVD.

52:55 To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.