Gladys Bourdain, mother of late chef Anthony Bourdain, died last Friday at a hospice facility in New York City, her son Christopher confirmed to The New York Times. She was 85.
Gladys was a long-time New York Times copyeditor, starting her time there in 1984 and working there until 2006. She was also a writer who penned a profile of Julia Child for the paper in 1978. She previously worked at TV Guide, The Record of Bergen County, NJ, and Agence France-Presse.
Gladys also helped to launch her son Anthony's career by mentioning to New York Times reporter Esther Fein in 1999 that her husband David Remnick, who was the editor of The New Yorker, should consider a piece Anthony was struggling to get published.
“She came over, and she said, ‘You know, your husband’s got this new job,’” Fein told The Times this week:
“I hate to sound like a pushy mom, but I’m telling you this with my editor’s hat on, not my mother’s hat on. It’s really good, and it’s really interesting, but nobody will look at it, nobody will call him back or give it a second look. Could you put it in your husband’s hands?”
The piece was published under the name Don’t Eat Before Reading This. Anthony would later say that he had a book deal days after the piece was published. That book would later become Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.
After his death in 2018, Gladys got her first and only tattoo, which was Anthony's name on her wrist.
