Gladys Bourdain, journalist who helped son reach an audience, dies

NEW YORK — Gladys Bourdain, a longtime copy editor at The New York Times who helped kick-start the writing career of her son Anthony, the chef who became a world-famous memoirist and television host, died Friday at a hospice facility in the Bronx. She was 85.

Her son Christopher confirmed the death. He said she had been in failing health for some time.

Gladys Bourdain began her career at The Times in 1984 and worked there until 2008, developing a reputation as a strict grammarian on the culture and metropolitan desks. She also wrote for outlets like Opera News and Musical America.

She profiled Julia Child for The Times in 1978 after a visit to Child’s home in Southern France, describing her kitchen as “organized clutter.”

Anthony Bourdain became a hard-living chef, and in the late 1990s he wrote an article chronicling the seamier secrets of life in the restaurant business when Gladys Bourdain mentioned to him that she knew a Times reporter, Esther Fein, who was married to David Remnick, the newly minted editor of The New Yorker magazine.

“She came over, and she said, ‘You know, your husband’s got this new job,’” Fein (who left The Times in 1999) said Monday. “‘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. ... Could you put it in your husband’s hands?’”

The New Yorker published it. Anthony Bourdain later said that he had a book deal in a matter of days after that.

Expanding on the article, he wrote “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” (2000), a No. 1 New York Times bestseller.

Gladys Sacksman was born in Manhattan on Oct. 19, 1934, to Martha and Milton Sacksman. Her father operated a trucking company, and her mother was a homemaker.

She grew up in the Bronx where she attended what is now Lehman College. She worked for TV Guide, The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey, and Agence France-Presse before joining The New York Times.