Julia Child's Heirs Battle Oven Maker

Angered by use of Child in Thermador ads
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 29, 2012 12:37 PM CDT
Julia Child's Heirs Battle Oven Maker
In this Aug. 21, 1978, file photo, American television chef Julia Child shows a salade nicoise she prepared in the kitchen of her vacation home in Grasse, southern France. .   (AP Photo, File)

Julia Child was many things—celebrated chef, author, TV star—but there was one thing she certainly wasn't: a shill. "It was sort of a life philosophy that she had," explains her great-nephew, which is why Child never pushed a certain roast pan, a brand of olive oil, or even, notes the Los Angeles Times, cookbooks written by her own friends. And it's fueling a big stink between her heirs and Thermador, the manufacturer of the appliances she used on TV and in her home.

The LAT explains that Thermador this year launched a campaign, created without the OK of the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts, that trumpets Child's use of their products (one magazine ad captioned "An American Icon and Her American Icons" shows the chef with two Thermador ovens). The foundation demanded Thermador ax the campaign in July and threatened a lawsuit. Thermador dropped the ads from its site, but its parent company last week filed a suit of its own: It wants a judge to declare that it can rightfully use the Child-Thermador connection, claiming that it's not an endorsement but an indication of the "influence of Thermador products on American society and culture." The foundation filed a suit of its own on Monday. Click for more from the LAT, which recounts a suit Child herself filed over an unauthorized endorsement. (More advertising stories.)

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