TTT Interviewee: John Ferrone Session #3 Interviewer: Judith Weinraub New York City Date: April 1, 2009 Q: This is Judith Weinraub. It is April 1, 2009 and I’m sitting with John Ferrone in his apartment in Greenwich Village. Good afternoon, John. Ferrone: Good afternoon. Q: I thought we might start today by talking about the people who came to dinner and what the dinner parties were like at the Beard house, I mean at James’s apartment, as opposed to the Beard House. You went to many dinners at his home, yes? Ferrone: Yes, many dinner and many cocktail buffets, which was his favorite way of entertaining. Q: Why? Ferrone: Well, he could fit more people into his apartment, into his house, and they were, I’d say, semiannual. Q: Celebratory or what? Ferrone: Maybe connected with the holidays. And he would have thirty or forty people at a time for the buffets. Q: Could you describe one? Where would the food be laid out? Ferrone: I’m thinking of the Beard house on 12th Street. He had, for his cooking classes, a horseshoe-shaped arrangement of cooking tops, stovetops, and he would use this horseshoe— Q: You mean he would be in the center of it? Ferrone: Well, in the center of it or just outside it, but the food would be laid out on the horseshoe surface, and he had servers usually inside the horseshoe. Q: Servers passing the food? Ferrone: Carving the food where necessary, as well as passing it. Q: What kind of things might have been carved? Ferrone: Well, he always had a beautiful roast beef that the Coach House would do for him. Q: Would cook for him, actually? Ferrone: Would actually cook for him. Q: Oh, that’s pretty cool. Ferrone: And he’d have someone carving it to be served on French bread in small slices, and he generally always had smoked Polish sausage, which his houseman, Clay Triplette, would get for him over on Second Avenue, and that would be served in chunks. Q: You also talked the other day about the sausage poached in wine, is that correct? Ferrone: Yes, they poached it. Q: The same sausage. Ferrone: Poached in red wine. Q: And how would that be served, also in chunks? Ferrone: Cut in pieces, yes. And there was a time when he knew someone who had a quail farm, and small bits of quail would be served, as small enough as it was. Q: What do you mean, small bits? Ferrone: A leg— Q: Oh, I see what you mean, I see. Yes. As an appetizer? Ferrone: I’m trying to think how it can be managed standing up, but he did serve it. And he had served quail eggs, too, hard-boiled quail eggs. Q: Oh, now that was early, wasn’t it, for quail eggs? Early in America. Ferrone: Early in America. I’m just trying to think when it might have been. In the seventies, I would guess. He hated precious food for cocktails, which he called doots, little bits and pieces, little canapés. Q: Doots? How would you spell doots? Ferrone: D-o-o-t. It was a made-up word anyway. You can spell it any way you want. Q: Yes. Ferrone: So he liked substantial food, and he also liked substantial food so that people wouldn’t fall on their faces after too many drinks. Q: That’s a good reason. [laughs] Was this meant to take the place of a meal? Ferrone: In effect, yes, so people wouldn’t have to go out hungry in search for dinner after the cocktail buffet. You could sustain yourself just from eating what he provided. Q: There would be wine, wine and liquor? Ferrone: Both. Q: Could you describe the cast of characters, both generally and specifically, at some of these gatherings? First, I guess, the kinds of people. Ferrone: Heterogeneous, I would say, ranging from the food establishment to people like the Pedlars. Sylvia Pedlar was a designer of lingerie, and her husband, I think, was in advertising. Q: Personal friends? Ferrone: Personal friends. I have no idea how they connected originally. There would be personal friends dating from his Portland days, like Isabel Callvert and her husband, Ron. Q: Were they living here? Ferrone: Living here in Manhattan. Peggy Loesser, who was a children’s book editor who also dated from Jim’s days in Portland. And in the food establishment, there would be people like Helen McCully, who was food editor of McCall’s and then of House Beautiful, and Alvin Kerr, who was working for Gourmet. And Clementine Paddleford was known to show up, and Irma Rhode, the woman that Jim started Hors d’Oeuvre Inc., Irma and her brother Bill, that is. Craig Claiborne occasionally. Q: Were these considered events not to be missed? Ferrone: Yes. There was always a very festive atmosphere at Jim’s, a feeling of great bounty and elegance and conviviality. I know that going to Jim’s for dinner, it was always for me a kind of everlasting Christmas. Q: Let’s talk about the dinners, then. What would a typical dinner be like? How many people might there be? Ferrone: Oh, it could range from me alone to eighteen, which I remember one dinner— Q: Why were there eighteen that time? Was someone in town? Ferrone: If I remember, it was a very early dinner when he was still living on 12th Street, at 36 West 12th Street, living in a studio apartment with very inadequate kitchen, and he served lobster en croute. Q: Oh, my. Ferrone: I know that Craig helped prepare the puff paste. But there were eighteen guests for that party, and it was champagne and lobster and— Q: Wow. Was there an occasion of any particular kind? Ferrone: I can’t recall. I don’t think it was any particular occasion. Q: Maybe just celebrating getting that many people into a studio apartment. [laughter] The dinners that you were there for, just you personally, would there be a couple of courses or what? Ferrone: There’d be two or three courses. Very often Jim was kitchen-testing recipes, and I’d be the guinea pig, or there’d be three or four people, close friends. Q: So he would have a first course and a second course? Ferrone: Yes. Q: What kinds of things? Ferrone: It’s difficult to remember specifically. Q: Well, I meant like soups or always appetizers or— Ferrone: Seldom soup. Could be. Nothing comes to mind specifically. Q: But there would be some kind of first course and then— Ferrone: There would be a first course and a main course and a dessert. And in the later days, often his companion, Gino Cofacci, who had become a baker, would provide the dessert. But Jim, as I say, was always kitchen testing, and sometimes he would give me the leftovers to cart home, which was very nice, and sometimes there was enough so I could summon friends to join in. Q: That’s very nice. Ferrone: And eventually I had to cook for Jim. After I first met him, I was eating at his apartment down the street twice a week, three times a week. It became embarrassing. I felt I had to reciprocate in some way, but I found it daunting. Q: So how did you get the courage to cook? Ferrone: I finally fell back on a family recipe for lasagna, which I thought might be a novelty for him. You use tiny, tiny meatballs instead of the usual ground meat, and he found that intriguing. And I learned that was the key to entertaining him, to come up with at least one surprise in a menu. Q: Was that hard? Ferrone: Eventually I got more adept at it. For example, for one New Year’s Day dinner, I did a persimmon sorbet which I made up. Q: I am very impressed. Ferrone: I’m not sure that I was the first ever to do it, but I was the first that I knew of, at any rate. So we cooked a lot for each other back and forth and cooked together, both here in my inadequate kitchen and his house. Q: How would that work if you were cooking together? Would he— Ferrone: He would direct me. Q: Were you prepping or being a sous chef? Ferrone: Prepping, being the sous chef, in effect. We had great fun together. Q: We talked a little bit about your inviting him to your country house occasionally. How would you work the meals there? Ferrone: He was there, I’d say, a total of three times, not that often. Then only menu that I can recall, I remember going—he was always interested in marketing wherever he went, so we went to the local farmers’ market, and he wanted a Shoofly Pie since we were in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and I said the Shoofly Pies are absolutely terrible. He said, “Well, let’s give it a try.” So we went to one bakery and bought a Shoofly Pie, and it was the most delicious one I ever ate, which gave a lie to my pronouncement. But one meal I remember doing with him, I think there were other guests— Q: I was wondering if you invited other people when he was there. Ferrone: There were two or there other people on hand, I remember, and we did a pork loin stuffed with prunes and a smoked pork loin stuffed with apricots. Q: Delicious. Ferrone: And, you know, you had a slice of each, which was fairly inventive, I think. He came a couple of times during the vegetable-growing season, and we harvested loads of tomatoes and zucchini and green beans. Q: Did you can or cook them or what? Ferrone: I used to can the tomatoes, yes, and I canned peaches from the local orchard, and I canned pears, and I made raspberry jam and concord grape jelly, in my heyday, but now I’m reduced to just canning peaches. Q: That’s not bad. You know, talking about this fresh produce, I have wondered, and I wonder what you think, if growing up in Portland in a very different kind of market than the eastern situations, if that played a role in his appreciation for fresh food. I don’t know whether you ever talked about that. Ferrone: Well, he always spoke about the markets in Portland, and I’m sure set the scene for him for the rest of his life. But wherever I was with him, he always wanted to go marketing. I would spend some time with him in the south of France, and we went to the markets in St. Remy and Nice and Cannes, and he never lost interest in— Q: It’s so much fun going to those European markets. Ferrone: Yes. Q: It’s really great. One more thing about the dinner parties. Did he have a regular seat in his own place? Ferrone: In the later days, he sat in a kind of director’s chair outside the famous horseshoe. Q: Was it at the head of the table? Ferrone: No, it was sort of outside looking on, a rather high director’s chair. Q: How interesting. And why was that? Would he have access to the kitchen and to the— Ferrone: He was sitting in the kitchen. Q: Aha. Ferrone: Sitting in the kitchen. Everybody was milling around the food, naturally, and he would be— Q: Then they would sit down— Ferrone: —he would be presiding. No, this is for the cocktail buffet. Q: Oh, well, I meant what about the dinner parties? Ferrone: It seems to me that he always had round tables. I’m just trying to think of the 12th Street arrangement. Certainly in the 12th Street apartment, the 36th West 12th Street apartment, he had a round table, so there was no head of table. I don’t recall the seating arrangement on 67th West 12th , but I don’t think he made a thing of being at the head table. Q: Why don’t we talk some about what it was like to work with him, both with the articles and with the books, what the working method was in terms of—well, first of all, let’s talk about the articles first. Would you discuss what he was going to do, or did he just present you with some notes, or how did that work? Ferrone: Well, in the early days, he would just bang out a rough draft on his portable typewriter. Q: These would be columns with a theme? Ferrone: Not columns, articles for Woman’s Day, House and Garden, and assorted other magazines. He’d bang out the rough copy, not looking back to make a single correction. There’d just be strikeovers and words run together, and it needed a lot of cleaning up, a bit of rewriting, but the basic material was there. And in those early days, he was pretty poor, so he worked alone. It wasn’t until later that he acquired a staff and a secretary, and he began to talk his material into a tape recorder. Q: When would that have been? Ferrone: I would say in the seventies. Q: So he banged out these rough drafts, and what would you get? You’d get the rough draft? Ferrone: I got the rough draft. Eventually, his secretary would transcribe his tape material and I would get a much cleaner copy. Q: And then what would you do with it? Ferrone: I would do the same thing, but it was easier. The worst example I could think of for his banging out rough copy was his memoir, Delights and Prejudices. His agent, John Shaffner, decided that I might be the person to edit it. Jim was given a contract with Atheneum, and I was handed a manuscript on single-spaced onionskin. Q: For Delights and Prejudices? Ferrone: For Delights and Prejudices. Q: Wow. Ferrone: Without any organization whatsoever, and I had to organize it, suggest new chapters. Q: How many pages would that have been? Ferrone: Oh, probably somewhere around two hundred pages. Q: With no discernable organization? Ferrone: None. [laughs] I remember looking at the beginning and saying, “Ah, this would make a nice ending,” and then pulling it out and saving it. But single-spaced onionskin, there was no way to make editorial marks. It had to be redone completely. But it worked out all right. Q: Did he have any kind of pride of ownership in his words? Ferrone: No. He never looked back. Once it was out of his head and out of his typewriter, he lost interest. And I think the fact that it wasn’t entirely his own work made him less interested in feeling proud of it. Q: But was he embarrassed that it wasn’t entirely his own work? Ferrone: Who knows? I don’t know if he was embarrassed or not. He suffered it. [laughs] He realized he needed help. And, goodness knows, he worked with enough people along the way, beginning with Isabel Callvert. Q: Just going back to the working method, so you would organize it, and then you would end up with a final copy, yes? Ferrone: A final copy, which I would send to him, and I would seldom get back and feedback. Q: You would send it to him and then he’d send it on to the magazine or whoever? Ferrone: Yes. But I seldom got any feedback or, “This is a great job,” or anything as far as—I didn’t expect to hear from him. Q: What about “Thank you”? Ferrone: Probably. Q: Let’s talk about the books. We talked about Delights and Prejudices. But was that the general working method? Ferrone: Yes. The James Beard Cookbook was the one book that I did as an in-house editor. Dell Books was the publisher. I was working on the Dell Books staff. Q: That took a long time, didn’t it? Ferrone: There he was working with Isabel Callvert, so I was getting much cleaner copy. It was totally organized. Isabel saw to it that it was in great shape. Q: Did you go over any kind of outline before he started or during the process? Ferrone: I don’t remember. I don’t think that there was much discussion about it, but it was very successful. Q: How long did it take, that book? Ferrone: It was published in 1959, and it seems to me we then began discussions about it, I’d say, 1956. I’d known Beard about a year. No, I’d say longer than that. I’d known him several years, and I think I told my boss that Beard was available for another cookbook, and my boss seemed interested; Frank Taylor, that is. And the question was what kind of a book should he do. Q: The question between you and Frank Taylor? Ferrone: For the staff altogether. And there’s some doubt as to how it came about, but I think it was Frank’s wife, Nan Taylor, who said, “It’s time we had another good basic cookbook. We haven’t had one since Fannie Farmer and Irma Rombauer.” So that’s how the idea got started. We went off for a posh dinner at Chambord, Frank, his wife, Jim, and I, to finalize this arrangement. At that time, the Chambord was the upscale French restaurant in New York. I recall that the dinner costs like $110, which was astronomical for those days, but that’s where it all started. When the book was published, it was published as an original paperback. It got some publicity from Craig Claiborne in the Times, and it sold out all over town and sold three hundred thousand copies in its first year. Q: How did he feel about it being an original paperback, do you recall? Ferrone: As being a paperback at all, you mean? Q: As opposed to a hardback, yes. Ferrone: Well, we weren’t in the business of doing hardcover books. Q: You mean Dell wasn’t, yes? Ferrone: Yes. Q: But still, that didn’t bother him? Ferrone: No. It reversed the process, because ultimately it was reprinted in hardcover. Q: People seem to treasure those early copies. Ferrone: Well, the early James Beard Cookbook had a photograph of Jim beaming over an enormous platter of choucroute garnie, which many people found gross, but it was essential Jim, really. I was there when the picture was taken. I remember it quite well. So in subsequent editions, you find Jim benignly stirring an oyster stew. [laughs] Q: Was Dell surprised at how well it sold? Ferrone: Everybody was surprised at how well it sold. Q: Do you remember what their expectations were? Ferrone: No. But, you know, it was a mass-market book, and in those days we did enormous printings, fresh printings. Well, three hundred thousand copies in its first year. Q: That’s great that this was so successful. Ferrone: So that was the only in-house book I did with him. I did do a revised version of his Fowl and Game Cookery. It was one of his early books, which we redid at Harcourt Brace as Fowl and Game Bird Cookery, which I largely revised myself. Q: And what about Menus for Entertaining? Ferrone: Menus for Entertaining was the second book that Jim was under contract for, along with The James Beard Cookbook. He was supposed to do an international cookbook, but never fulfilled that contract, so Menus for Entertaining was the book he did to satisfy that agreement. It was as close as we ever came to a collaboration. Q: How so? Ferrone: The idea was essentially mine, and I outlined the book for him and we worked very closely on it. I wrote bits of it myself. That’s the only one that— Q: What kinds of bits? Ferrone: Oh, connecting bits or maybe a short introductory paragraph. Q: How was the book divided? Were they seasonal menus or event kind of menus? Ferrone: There were summer menus. There were cocktail buffets, there were outdoor picnics, holiday dinners, breakfasts. Q: By this time, of course, he was quite well known. Did he have any sense of what his role was vis-à-vis the public? Ferrone: Well, I’m sure he did. He was greeted all over town with great affection and great recognition. Q: Let’s think about that a little bit. You ate out with him a lot in restaurants, yes? Ferrone: A lot. Q: And most of them were in the Village? Ferrone: No. Q: So where did you go? What kinds of restaurants did you go to with him? Ferrone: A lot of French restaurants, French and Italian. One of his favorite restaurants was Quo Vadis. Q: Quo Vadis. What did he like about it? Ferrone: Well, the food was great. The reception was great. Q: Where else? Ferrone: The Four Seasons, which he helped put together. All the Restaurant Associate restaurants, you know, Forum of the Twelve Caesars. Q: Was he ever critical of their menus? Ferrone: I don’t recall specifically. The one restaurant that he liked down here was the Coach House, which was his home away from home. We often ate there together at Christmastime, but also during the year. Q: What did he like about it? Ferrone: Again, the food was quite wonderful. Q: What kind of style at that point was the food? Ferrone: It was a strange mixture of American food with Greek touches, because the owner was Greek. They had a good bakery there. John Clancy provided wonderful desserts. I’m just trying to think whether John was his full-time chef. I think he may have been. Q: But you didn’t go to little neighborhood places at all? Ferrone: Oh, a lot of them. We used to go to small dining restaurants, Rocco’s on Thompson Street, and—I’m just trying to think of the other one up the street. The restaurant that he tried to buy Gran Titcino, which was around for a thousand years, and Jim wanted to buy it. At one point, he was desperate to start a restaurant of his own and tried to interest Helen Evans Brown in joining him in that venture. Q: Why did he want to do that? Ferrone: I can’t explain his urge to want to run a restaurant, but he did, and he explored all sorts of places. He came close to buying Gran Titcino. but the owner changed her mind at the last moment. He was so disappointed. He looked down in Maryland at the Maryland shore for a place, and he told Helen Brown he would move to the West Coast if necessary, that she would join him in a restaurant. Well, he finally gave up on the idea, but he persisted for a long time. Q: Because surely he knew how much work it would be. Ferrone: Yes. He was acting as advisor to restaurateurs, so he knew perfectly well what he was in for. Q: When you went to restaurants with him, was he expected to pay? Ferrone: Generally not. He would leave a generous tip, but it was rare that he would—if I took him, quite a different thing. We used to eat at La Gauloise over here on Sixth Avenue, too. This was before your time, I think. Q: In New York, yes. Ferrone: In New York. What other restaurants did we go to uptown? Q: How would you decide where to go? Or how would he decide? What mood he was in? Ferrone: Probably he was invited. Q: Oh, interesting. Ferrone: Because appearing at a restaurant was a kind of publicity for the restaurant. Q: It was a kind of publicity? Ferrone: Yes, an imprimatur. Q: Did you notice press paying attention to that or what? Ferrone: Not to visit, not to an ordinary visit, no. Q: I was wondering if he had any important influence on you, if you could describe that in any way. Ferrone: Well, certainly on my cooking habits since he was my guru in the kitchen. I would pick up new ideas from him every time I went to have dinner at his place. He opened up my cooking ability. Q: Actually, who taught you to cook? How did you learn? Ferrone: No one taught me. My repertoire was very small when I first came to New York. I had a few Italian dishes under my belt, I think. Q: From your home? Ferrone: Yes, but my repertoire expanded enormously after eating with Jim for a year or two, and he influenced me in my style of living and the furnishing of my apartment. I arrived with nothing in New York and had a tiny studio apartment with three sticks of furniture in it, a sling chair, a table with two chairs, a studio bed, a kitchen that was carved out of the wall, no bigger than six feet long, I would say. And I moved from place to place, accumulating antiques until I came to the present apartment, where I amassed more than I needed. But Jim and I together collected Asian ceramics, used to give each other Christmas presents of porcelain. Q: Where did he get the taste for Asian ceramics? Ferrone: Where did he get it? Q: Yes. Ferrone: Well, in Portland, growing up, he was greatly influenced by the Chinese chef that his mother employed and his father’s close connection with the Chinese community. It was rumored that his father had a Chinese mistress and may even have had a Chinese child. Q: What was his father’s connection with the Chinese community? Ferrone: He was a customs officer, customs inspector, and I guess in the line of his work he was involved in the Chinese community. And his mother employed a Chinese chef in her home. Q: Did you ever talk about that chef with him? Ferrone: He writes about him quite— Q: Yes, but I wondered if he ever talked to you about it. Ferrone: Not specifically, no, but that chef was a great influence on his cooking habits, I think. But he was surrounded by Chinese artifacts, too, I think. Q: You mean that his mother would have purchased? Ferrone: His mother would have collected. Q: And used in their surroundings? Ferrone: Well, I don’t know how it might have been used. Q: Tell me which things in here that you purchased from the auction after his death. Ferrone: Well, the Chinese Ancestors, the hanging, was given to him by his childhood friend, Mary Hamblet, and there’s some ceramics I have over on the coffee table, and there’s a large ceramic artichoke in the corner, which you can’t see from here. Q: You wanted them because you liked them or they reminded you of him? Ferrone: Well, both. Also these copper candlesticks behind me— Q: Oh, they’re beautiful. Ferrone: —which I think Jim said were eighteenth century French. Q: They’re very beautiful. Did he use that kind of decoration when he entertained? Ferrone: Oh yes. That’s something else that he influenced me with, the idea of mixing, for serving food, a mixture of dinnerware rather then the monotonous parade of the same pattern for every course. Q: Did he take delight in doing that? Ferrone: He did. He would choose dishes to suit the particular food he was serving. Always very interesting. And he’d find a lot of his dishes in France, especially in the days when he used to travel by ship. You know, he would send a barrel of stuff back home. And in the early days he would buy—well, I’m still using dinnerware, dishes that he gave to me after one of his trips. He would give me nine dishes in case I broke one. But I have two or three sets of dishes. Q: That’s very thoughtful and practical at the same time. Ferrone: And he gave me a great pile of wonderful Ironstone, English Ironstone dishes that he no longer wanted. Q: He would give them to you when he bought new things, or how would that work? Ferrone: Just discarded. Q: Tell me how you found out that he left the royalties of his books to you and what the circumstances of that were. Ferrone: Well, I had no expectation of anything at all. At the very most, I thought he might leave me the royalties to one book, particularly American Cookery, which we worked on for four years. But shortly after he died, I got a telephone call from the executor of his estate, and he and a group from the Manufacturer’s Hanover, the bank handling the estate, were in Jim’s house on 12th Street, and they wanted to come see me. And in trooped four people, including the executor, Morris Galen, who was a lawyer in Portland. Q: And someone that Beard knew? Ferrone: Not too well. When he was drawing up his will, he consulted his friend Mary Hamblet for a lawyer, and she had suggested a law firm in Portland, and Galen was the one who was chosen to represent Beard. At any rate, they arrived and broke the news to me that I had been left all the royalties. I was absolutely stunned. Q: It is pretty amazing. Ferrone: And very lucrative in the beginning years, but there’s so many books out of print now so it’s just a dribble. But nonetheless, it was enormously generous of him. Q: What did you think your role was after he died, either because you had the royalties or because you’d worked with him? Ferrone: Well, he’d once said to me cryptically, “You’ll know what to do with the books.” I think he expected me to look after his literary legacy. Q: What would that mean? Keeping the books in print? Ferrone: Keeping them in print, updating them, revising them, promoting them, all of which I’ve done. I revised The James Beard Cookbook twice. Q: You revised it according to what standard? Ferrone: Just looking at it and seeing that certain things were dated or things that I knew that Beard wouldn’t have included a second time around, things that were very basic things that were missing. Q: You mean like basic recipes that were not in the book? Ferrone: For example, including a recipe for salsa, which wouldn’t have been a current recipe in Jim’s day, in 1959. Q: That book is about to have a big anniversary, isn’t it? Ferrone: Next month, The James Beard Cookbook will be fifty years old and has been continuously in print all that time. Q: Is something special planned for the anniversary? Ferrone: No. I tried to interest the Beard Foundation into doing something for it. I wanted them to do a choucroute garnie dinner. Q: Oh, perfect, yes. Ferrone: But they couldn’t see themselves doing it. Q: How does it sell now? Ferrone: Oh, it might sell—I haven’t looked at recent figures. It might sell a few hundred copies a year now. Q: Tell me about Halo of Truffles. Ferrone: That came about when Clay Triplette, Jim’s houseman, called me after Jim died and told me there was still a mass of stuff in the basement. The house had been cleaned out so it could be resold, and so I went and collected, rescued material, not knowing what I was taking, just carrying a couple of shopping bags full of papers home with me and stuffing them under my bed. I didn’t get to look at them until about a year later and found the correspondence between Jim and Helen Evans Brown. Jim had kept her correspondence, because they’d always talked of doing a book of their letters. Q: Was it in an orderly— Ferrone: No. And he had his own letters because Phillip Brown had sent them back to Jim to read before he gave them to an archive somewhere or other. So it had just happened that Jim had not returned them when he died. So there happened to be both sides of the correspondence. But as I started reading them, I knew that there was a wonderful story there. The letters were almost totally undated, so I had a mammoth job of dating them by evidence in the content of the letters themselves or a date saying “Tuesday the 19th,” and having to look at a perpetual calendar to find out how many Tuesdays the 19th there were in any given period. Q: Wow. That must have taken quite some time. Ferrone: It took me about two years to date the letters. I did Jim’s first, I didn’t do Helen’s, and I thought Jim’s letters were more interesting anyway. So I eventually managed to put the collection together, and Helen Evans Brown’s husband, Phillip Brown, helped me with some identification of people who weren’t known to me, referred to. Q: His were more interesting because—what would he include in them that made them interesting? Ferrone: Well, he wrote with more flair, and his life was more interesting, I think. He traveled a great deal more. Helen was pretty much—they went to Europe too, but Jim traveled more quite simply and was more active in the food world. He was doing food demonstrations and acting as consultant to restaurateurs and the food industry, and Helen’s territory was more confined. Q: Would he talk about all these things in the letters? Ferrone: Yes. The letters are very entertaining, I think, and they talked about the state of food in this country, which is very important. Q: In terms of lamenting it, being happy about it? Ferrone: Lamenting the state of food. Q: What did he think was wrong with it or lacking? Ferrone: Well, that it was pretty much in the hands of the nutritionists and the home economists, who had no idea of the sensuous approach to food, the joy of tasting it and looking at beautiful presentation. And Jim and Helen were the preachers of good, honest ingredients, seasonal if preferable. Q: Of course, that seems very logical and now it’s an absolute mantra. Ferrone: Yes. Q: But at the time, what did it feel like to you? Ferrone: Well, it was an uphill battle for them. Q: Because? Ferrone: Because they were so dominated culturally by the unimaginative standards in the food industry. Q: You mean of the industry, of magazines, of what? Ferrone: I’m getting tired. Q: Okay. [Recorder turned off] Q: When you think of James Beard now, what kind of a man do you see, what kind of person personally and in terms of his influence? Ferrone: I think he was a very charismatic person who influenced a great many people. He was generous and quirky and enormously important to the food world and to our cultural life in general. Q: Because? Ferrone: I think he helped to improve the standards of eating in this country immeasurably through his various cookbooks, through his extensive food demonstrations that he did throughout the country. And, as far as I’m concerned, he was one of my dearest friends, one of my great mentors in all sorts of ways, not only in food, and it was a great joy to be in his company. I often think, though, that despite his fame, he wasn’t really happy in his own skin. I remember one time when he was approaching his seventies, he thought he wasn’t going to live beyond then, and he said in a despairing moment, “The next time around, I want to come back as a devastating, slim, blond baritone.” But I think that those of us who knew him and loved him wouldn’t want him to come back in any other form then the one he was in. Q: Thank you, John. That’s lovely. Thank you for sharing your memories with us. Ferrone: My pleasure. [End of interview] Ferrone – 3 - PAGE 33