How Anthony Bourdain's mother singlehandedly launched his career by getting his tell-all article published
Late chef Anthony Bourdain's mother, Gladys Bourdain, is no more. The acclaimed copy editor for the New York Times passed away on Friday, January 10, shared the publication.
And while she was 85 at the time, the news comes shockingly just 19 months after the sudden suicide of her son, Anthony, whom she loved and adored beyond words.
Anthony's brother and Gladys' son Christopher confirmed the news to the Times, where Gladys had worked for 24 years from 1984 to 2008. At the time of her death, she was reportedly at a hospice facility in the Bronx, having been sick for a long time.
It isn't certain if Gladys was unwell back in 2018 when the entire world was left shocked and shattered by her son Anthony's death from hanging himself in a hotel room in Paris, where he was shooting for upcoming episodes of his very popular food and lifestyle series 'Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown'.
That Gladys' relationship with her son was nothing but wholesome, is no secret. She was the one who helped Anthony get his article 'Don't Eat Before Reading This' published in the New Yorker back in 1999.
The feat became an automatic success for Anthony who soon bagged a deal for his bestselling book 'Kitchen Confidential' following the article, and was effectively able to launch his imminent illustrious career in television.
As the Times' obituary for Gladys reveals, at the risk of sounding like a "pushy mom", she had asked Esther Fein — a Times reporter at the time — to pass her son's essay to Fein's husband and the then-editor of the New Yorker — David Remnick.
"She came over, and she said, 'You know, your husband's got this new job'," Fein reminisced to the Times. "'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?'"
That kickstarted the enigmatic man on TV gallivanting about cultures and varieties of foods that the entire world grew to adore and be inspired by. But if Anthony's words are to be believed, their home dynamics were just like any other normal household.
Anthony would describe theirs as a "pretty normal". In 2016, he shared with People how growing up, "We all ate together. I found it kind of oppressive, actually. I envied the broken homes of my friends because they were left alone to misbehave unsupervised."
But not theirs': "My mom was a very driven person," he had added about Gladys. The mother-son duo's relationship was again upheld as an emblem when Anthony died on June 8, 2018.
Despise his long-drawn struggle with substance abuse, addiction, and mental health issues — specifically depression, Gladys had remembered her son to Today as a "feisty and very talented" spirit who was also a "lover of people of all kinds".
"He didn’t disguise anything," she had said in the interview, adding that "he was who he was, and it was out there for everyone to see."
Following Anthony's death, Gladys had also revealed to the Times that she planned on commemorating the late chef and celebrating his memory by getting the name 'Tony' tattooed in small letters on the inside of her wrist.
She wanted Anthony's long-time tattoo artists to ink the tribute and had stated it would be her first and only tattoo. In interviews, she had also mentioned how before his suicide, she and Anthony had spoken the last time on Mother's Day that year — less than a month before the devastating incident.
And while Gladys didn't understand why someone like Anthony would do something like that, she did tell his longtime friend and fellow renowned chef Eric Ripert, who had found Anthony in his hotel room, that "Tony had been in a dark mood these past couple of days."
Gladys separated from her husband Pierre before his death in 1987 and is survived by Christopher and three grandchildren.