It is incongruous, the voice issuing from this daisy-fresh, American blonde. In contrast to her Prom Queen appearance, her tones are patrician and two-packs-a-day husky. “This is one of the most beautiful turkeys,” purrs a young Martha Stewart, future lifestyle empress, in a TV clip from RJ Cutler’s documentary, Martha (Netflix). This November – the month of that most American holiday, Thanksgiving – is Martha month, for besides the documentary, there is also the new Martha: The Cookbook.
Stewart was the first self-made female billionaire who built a multi-industry empire that relied solely on the strength of who she was. Her personal tastes and aspirations are “perfectly perfect”, because Martha Stewart is never wrong. For many Americans, she is embedded in earliest memories, on television, smiling from magazines in the supermarket checkouts. To “Martha” is a verb, implying that one is engaged in an outrageously finicky activity, like planting a Dainty Bess rose or weaving caramel around a croquembouche.
When I lived in New York, the Chelsea headquarters of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO) was nicknamed the Death Star. Her Christmas parties were rumoured to be organised into concentric circles of increased prestige and better food, with Stewart reigning in the centre. The year that Stewart was convicted of perjury in an insider-trading scandal, we gathered on Halloween to count the Marthas in the Greenwich Village parade.
Stewart’s story is in many ways an American fable, of a working-class girl who climbs her way to the top, then falls, only to rise again. Born Martha Kosyra to Polish-Catholic parents in New Jersey, she started modelling in high school before getting a scholarship to Barnard, the all-woman “sister” to New York City’s Columbia University. Her mother was a teacher who cooked and sewed not out of joy but financial necessity; her father was a salesman with a knack for gardening, and an abusive alcoholic. (Stewart described him as “Mean. Mean.”)
Like many women of her generation, Stewart reinvented herself through marriage. At 19, she wed Andrew Stewart, then at Yale Law School, and adopted his last name. After graduating, Stewart became a stockbroker and then a caterer. Meanwhile, Andy helped clinch her first book deal, Entertainment. The couple separated after three decades, shortly after the publication of Weddings.
Stewart has lived roles that other people dream of – food guru, fashion model, corporate mogul, and appearing on the cover of Swimsuit Illustrated. She is also a convicted felon who served time. Still dewy at 83, she’s pals with Snoop Dogg, and shows flashes of a newly funny, post-jail Martha, such as when she instructed Justin Bieber on how to construct a prison shank from a pintail comb and Bubblicious gum.
Anecdotes of Stewart as a bully and a shrew abound, but Cutler’s documentary does not attempt to further expose the viper behind the goddess. There is far more vinegar in tabloid papers and biographies such as Just Desserts and Martha Inc. Nor does it linger on misty shots of food and flowers. The “good things”, as Stewart dubs them, lack the dramatic intensity with which her life is packed. A driving force behind Martha is the nuts and bolts of growing a business in a male-dominated world. Money was in Stewart’s blood, in part because she had grown up without it. Indeed, the diary that she kept on her honeymoon included lists of what was spent.
An old-fashioned innocence pervades her world, where ambitious young women sew their own dresses and crimp pies
The fact that Stewart granted Cutler unprecedented access to her personal archives reminds us that much of what we know about Stewart has been public information and secondhand accounts. The meat of Cutler’s Martha is Stewart herself, in video footage and photographs, and in the wounded letters she wrote to her husband Andrew. Framing the film is an extensive interview. In it she is given to moments of wit, such as her remarking that the prosecution team at her trial “should have been put in a Cuisinart and turned on high”.
An efficient way to show the real Stewart is to vex her, which Cutler does with aplomb. At first, she is wreathed with smiles, but as he persists with uncomfortable questions about her divorce, her trial and her family, her patience wears thin. “Can we get onto a happier subject?” she grimaces. The camera lingers when she pauses, revealing her impatience with Cutler with a sigh.
Although Stewart has criticised the documentary, she could not – given what the public knows about her – have expected a completely cream-puff result. So while Stewart has complained that this movie “was the first creative showdown I have ever had on a project”, Martha came out to glowing reviews. By casting light on Stewart’s fissures, Cutler has made her fascinating. It is as if she commissioned Lucien Freud to paint her rather than Norman Rockwell; she might not like what she sees, but it is wise for her brand. Martha is shrewdly timed to overlap with the launch of her new cookbook, which will be her hundredth. Without a doubt it will boost book sales.
Stewart was often prescient in her choices, defending her early collaboration with US shopping chain Kmart on the David Letterman show by pointing out that so-called downscale shoppers deserved beautiful things. Years later, detained in prison in West Virginia, she advised fellow inmates on entrepreneurship and heard about their lives. She gardened in the prison greenhouse with Susan Spry, who had been there for 12 years, and whose recollections of Stewart reverberate with affection.
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Sumptuously styled, Martha: The Cookbook contrasts sharply against this version of Stewart. Subtitled 100 Recipes with Lessons and Stories From My Kitchen, this is Stewart as she wants to be regarded. Dishes can be expensive, and caviar abounds. Stewart is best with techniques you wish you had thought of – like smashing a baked potato against the table to make their insides fluff. However, when I attempted her recipe for French cheese puffs, gougères – intriguing because it doubled the usual quantity of eggs for added air – they came out squashed.
Then there is the image taken of Stewart and her daughter Alexis over a pasta machine, serious and exquisite. “Because Alexis was so interested in cooking,” explains Stewart, “I hosted cooking lessons for her and several of her friends,” one of the many times that Stewart bathes the past in a romantic glow.
But, “It turns out that it was not at all natural to be a mother,” she confesses. The documentary, which leans heavily on the part that institutionalised sexism played in the public condemnation of Stewart, reiterates this throughout. “She took care of Lexi but she didn’t dote on her,” says a friend of Stewart’s. This contrasts with the portrayal of Anna Wintour, then editor-in-chief of Vogue and the central figure of Cutler’s The September Issue documentary from 2009.
Although Wintour is another New York City queen of workplace mean, her devotion to her daughter Katherine lends her softness. But so what if Stewart failed to fawn on Alexis? Alexis was born in 1965; everyone I know from that generation was brought up in a way that is today considered negligent. This was the era of key parties and Mad Men, for heaven’s sake. Perhaps my umbrage is credit to how Cutler humanises this woman.
Among the more honest moments in Martha is the footage of Stewart marching about her Hamptons estate in a vest. “Those last scenes with me looking like a lonely old lady walking hunched over in the garden?” she told the New York Times – “I hate those last scenes.” Stewart’s garden serves as her perfect metaphor, for even Mother Nature must succumb to her cultivation. She has declared she has never had plastic surgery, only “green juice”, Pilates and fillers, but until I saw the garden footage I hadn’t believed her. Here was a woman, still gorgeously preserved but not camera-ready, looking understandably exhausted. For many viewers, it brought connection to Stewart. Unsurprisingly, Stewart loathed it.
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There is a fairytale quality about Stewart, grown-up since birth and ageless ever after. An old-fashioned innocence pervades her world, where ambitious young women sew their own dresses and crimp pies. Is Stewart’s heart made of granite, and is she a liar? Perhaps. She is a woman convinced that how she presents herself is exactly how she is perceived. Even she believes in her version of herself – a plucky heroine who accomplishes everything alone. Self-made is a phrase frequently bandied in conjunction with Martha Stewart; she is a self-made billionaire with self-taught lockjaw diction. Most of her how-to demonstrations are done solo, despite being supported by hordes of staff. Still, watching her wander through the garden, we are moved by how isolated she seems, even though she would despise our pity. The princesses who inherit their kingdoms can afford to be sweet. However, Stewart’s castles are DIY. To build them takes grit, and to resurrect them when they have been reduced to rubble takes a vision so singular it can be blind.
Mei Chin is a food writer. Martha is now streaming on Netflix. Marth: The Cookbook is published by Random House
