Public Eye

Julia McWilliams Child of Pasadena was, famously, 6-foot-2 as a girl and young woman.

I was lucky enough to know her when she was in her 80s, writing stories about her, and twice she cooked lunch for Phoebe and me in her Santa Barbara kitchen. I think she was still over 6 feet then. Getting to know her in her kitchen was really very cool, a story you can go out to dinner on. (Salade nicoise the first time, lamb burgers the second, as I'm sure you were wondering.)

In Ariel Levy's profile of Nora Ephron in this week's New Yorker, she quotes Meryl Streep, who plays Child in Ephron's new movie, "Julie & Julia":

"It was a real unusual thing for a woman to be that height, and I think it had an enormous impact. It was a handicap of sorts, certainly in the world into which she was born, in Pasadena, where women went East to school to get a husband."

Julia went to Smith but no husband stepped forward until she was in her early 30s.

Here's Levy on Julia's life-changer, her size: "Who knows who she would have been if she'd come out delicate and married a Republican banker, as her father had expected. We might never have heard of hollandaise."

Can't wait to see the movie.

Yes, our daughter is named - half-named - after Julia. Second half: Julia Morgan, California's first licensed woman architect.