James Beard - Career

Career

He trained initially as a singer and actor, and moved to New York City in 1937. Not having much luck in the theater, he and his friend, Bill Rhodes, capitalized on the cocktail party craze by opening a catering company, "Hors d'Oeuvre, Inc.", which led to the publication of Beard's first cookbook, Hors D'Oeuvre and Canapés, a compilation of his catering recipes. Rationing difficulties during World War II brought his catering business to a halt. In 1946, he appeared on an early televised cooking show, I Love to Eat, on NBC, and thus began his rise as an eminent American food authority.

According to Julia Child, Beard was on the culinary road map in 1940 with the publication of his first book, Hors d'Oeuvre and Canapés. Beard started out with a catering business in New York, followed by lecturing, teaching, and writing both books and articles. Child states, "Through the years he gradually became not only the leading culinary figure in the country, but 'The Dean of American Cuisine'." According to the James Beard Foundation website: "In 1955, he established The James Beard Cooking School. He continued to teach cooking to men and women for the next 30 years, both at his own schools (in New York City and Seaside, Oregon), and around the country at women's clubs, other cooking schools, and civic groups. He was a tireless traveler, bringing his message of good food, honestly prepared with fresh, wholesome, American ingredients, to a country just becoming aware of its own culinary heritage."

James Beard brought French cooking to the American middle and upper classes in the 1950s. Beard starred on TV as a cooking personality. David Kamp notes that this show was the first cooking show on TV. Kamp contrasts Dione Lucas's cooking show and cooking school with that of James Beard, noting also that their prominence in the 1950s marked the emergence of a New York-based, nationally- and internationally-known sophisticated food culture. Kamp notes, "It was in this decade that Beard made his name as James Beard, the brand name, the face and belly of American gastronomy." Kamp points out that Beard was able to meet Alice B. Toklas on a trip to Paris, illustrating Beard's extensive network of fellow food celebrities that would follow him throughout his life and carry on his legacy after his death.

Beard entered into ethically questionable endorsement deals promoting products that he might otherwise have not used or suggested in his own cuisine. Such endorsements included Omaha Steaks, French's mustard, Green Giant Corn Niblets, Old Crow bourbon, Planters Peanuts, Shasta soft drinks, DuPont chemicals, Adolph's Meat Tenderizer, among others. Kamp explains that Beard felt that he was a "gastronomic whore" for doing so. Apparently, mass-produced food that was neither fresh, local, nor seasonal, was a betrayal of Beard's gastronomic beliefs, but arose from his desire to pay for his cooking schools. McNamee writes that "Beard, a man of stupendous appetites - for food, sex, money, you name it - stunned his subtler colleagues."

In 1981, along with friend Gael Greene, Beard founded Citymeals-on-Wheels, which continues to help feed the home-bound elderly in New York City.