Oprah_ A Biography Part 8

In your face and up your nose, Oprah left her audiences (and eventually Donahue's) gasping and begging for more. "The difference between Donahue and me is me, " she said. "He's more intellectual in his approach. I appeal to the heart and relate " she said. "He's more intellectual in his approach. I appeal to the heart and relate personally to my audiences. I think it's pretentious to think you can go into a lot of depth on a subject in only an hour." Never plagued by self-inflicted doubts, Oprah appeared supremely confident, especially after Donahue moved from Chicago to New York City.

The only signs of her internal combustion were nail-biting and nonstop eating. Otherwise, she seemed unintimidated by the talk show king. "We're stomping him in the ratings, you know, and suddenly he's gone [left town]. It was maaaahvelous."

Publicly she flicked Donahue a modic.u.m of respect ("He listens"), but privately she complained that for the six months they were both in Chicago he did not contact her.

"He never called just to say 'Hi Ope, welcome to town.' " She never forgot the slight.

Everyone else called, though, including Eppie Lederer, aka Ann Landers, the city's most famous resident. Oprah sent her a $1,000 jeweled Judith Leiber bag to say thank you, and invited the advice columnist to be a frequent guest on her show. The welcome call that paid pure gold came from Dori Wilson, a former model who owned her own public relations firm. "As a black woman I wanted to reach out and help Oprah feel good about our city. So I invited her to lunch....She was the most driven person I ever met. Wanted to go straight to the top....I rifled my Rolodex for her and helped with publicity here and there, pitching stories to various publications....We became good friends for several years. Then, well, I guess you could say she dropped me."

During their first lunch, in 1984, Oprah asked Dori to recommend a lawyer/agent, and Dori called her friend Jeffrey D. Jacobs. ("The D D is for is for dependable, dependable, " Jacobs told " Jacobs told clients.) "Jeff was then with Foos, Meyers and Jacobs and represented a lot of talent in Chicago, including Harry Caray [broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs] and the boxer James 'Quick' Tillis."

In Jacobs, Oprah found a Moses to lead her to the Promised Land. It was like Sears meeting Roebuck. Over the next eighteen years Winfrey and Jacobs built the House of Oprah, but then, just as Sears dropped Roebuck, Winfrey jettisoned Jacobs. Their friendship fractured over professional jealousies, and Oprah decided to reign over her own kingdom--one monarch, not two. She no longer wanted a partner, especially a hardcharger like Jacobs, whom she once described as "a piranha, which is what I need." By 2002 she was ready to be her own piranha. Following their acrimonious split, the lawyer was able to walk away from Harpo having earned approximately $100 million, with Oprah worth $988 million. "One of the reasons she is so financially successful," said Jacobs before their split, "is that we understand it's not just how much you make, but how much you keep."

Fortune magazine described Jeff Jacobs as "the little known power behind the magazine described Jeff Jacobs as "the little known power behind the media queen's throne"; others called him "Oprah's brain." As her consigliere for almost two decades, he handled every aspect of her business, becoming her lawyer, agent, manager, financial advisor, promoter, protector, and confidant. Keeping it further in the family, Jacobs's wife, Jennifer Aubrey, became Oprah's dresser, until TV Guide TV Guide gave her gave her its "Worst Dressed" award. Then Aubrey was jettisoned.

Within months of their meeting in 1984, Oprah became a full-time job for Jeff Jacobs, and by 1986 he had left his law firm to become her in-house counsel. He negotiated her contracts, supervised her staff, and oversaw production of her show. He also managed her endors.e.m.e.nt opportunities, her speaking engagements, and her charitable contributions. He foresaw the future market for branding and pushed her to establish Harpo, Inc. ( Oprah Oprah spelled backward); she was so grateful that she gave him 10 spelled backward); she was so grateful that she gave him 10 percent of the company and made him president. Having refused to hire an agent, a manager, or an attorney--"I don't get why anyone would want to pay 40 percent of their earnings in commissions and retainers"--she felt she got full value from Jeff Jacobs. "If something were to happen to him, I don't know what I would do," she said. "I don't know."

Oprah became an immediate sensation in Chicago, leaving in her wake nothing but breathless admirers. Cabbies honked, bus drivers waved, and pedestrians hugged her.

People on the street ran into restaurants just to watch her eat. "These are the glory days, I'll tell you," she told the writer Lyn Tornabene. "I walk down the street and everyone is saying, 'Opry, how ya doin'?' 'Hey, Okra, how ya doin'?' " She even surprised herself with her success. "I've always done well," she said, "but I didn't expect it to happen this fast. I even did well in Nashville. People would call and say, 'You're all right for a black girl.'

The callers meant well."

Oprah enjoyed playing with the subject of race. " 'I say, Mabel, is that girl colored?' 'Why, ah believe she is,' " she would say, imitating an imagined viewer first tuning in to her show. "When I give a speech, the little old ladies say, 'What'd she say?'

'She said she used to be colored?' " Depending on which publication she was talking to, she either emphasized or dismissed her struggle as a black woman in broadcasting. She told African American magazines she found it tough to watch white news people advance ahead of her, although none ever had. "There was another obstacle," Oprah said, voicing her deepest insecurity. "I was too black-looking. A lot of producers and directors were looking for light skin, tiny noses, small lips. It was a heartache for me and a source of anger as well." To white reporters she claimed she never experienced discrimination.

"Even when I was growing up on a farm in Mississippi I believed I would do great things. Everybody was talking about racism, but I always believed I was as good as everybody else. It never occurred to me that I was less than all the little white kids." She told Cosmopolitan: Cosmopolitan: "Truth is I've never felt prevented from doing anything because I was "Truth is I've never felt prevented from doing anything because I was either black or a woman."

Oprah identified herself as a woman first and then as a black woman, but certainly not as a black spokeswoman. "Whenever I hear the words 'community organization' or 'task force,' I know I'm in deep trouble. People feel you have to lead a Civil Rights movement every day of your life, that you have to be a spokeswoman and represent the race. I understand what they're talking about, but [I] don't have to do it, don't have to do what other people want [me] to do. Blackness is something I just am. I'm black. I'm a woman. I wear a size 10 shoe. It's all the same to me."

Yet she understood the commercial advantage of being a woman of color. "There aren't a lot of black women in the Chicago media," she said. "When I came on the air here it was like you could hear TVs clicking all over the city." She entertained her audiences with stories about being "a little nappy-headed colored chile," and gave them just enough shuffle and jive to feel hip. More important, though, she brought a heartwarming black presence into white suburban homes that lacked diversity. Debra DiMaio said the station manager was delighted he had managed to find someone who wasn't an "Angela Davis type who'd picket the station with a gun in her hair."

Oprah became the first black woman to successfully host her own daytime talk show on national television, although Della Reese had hosted a daytime variety show from 1969 to 1970. Oprah arrived at a time when African Americans were finally triumphing on the air: Bryant Gumbel reigned over the number one rated network morning program, The Today Show, The Today Show, and Bill Cosby dominated prime time with and Bill Cosby dominated prime time with The The Cosby Show, the country's most watched television program. As a black female, Oprah the country's most watched television program. As a black female, Oprah benefited from affirmative action, but she also brought immense talent to her place at the table.

Much too shrewd to leave success to serendipity, she became the grand marshal of her own parade. She courted the Chicago media, befriended columnists, and burbled to reporters, granting every interview requested. She even gave full access to a waiter who wanted to write about her. "I had never done a one-on-one interview before I met Oprah,"

said waiter-turned-writer Robert Waldron. "I first called to do a piece for Us Us magazine, magazine, and was given four days of interviews, but then the piece was killed by the owner, Jann Wenner. Alice McGee, who handled Oprah's fan mail then, wanted me to place it elsewhere, so she helped me get the article on the cover of The Star The Star [tabloid]. Oprah was [tabloid]. Oprah was delighted. Then I went back and proposed writing her biography. I nearly fainted when she said yes." The book, t.i.tled Oprah!, Oprah!, was published in 1987. was published in 1987.

"Oh, those were the good old days," said Robert Feder, former television critic of the Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago Sun-Times. "Oprah was a reporter's dream then...open, accessible, genial, "Oprah was a reporter's dream then...open, accessible, genial, and extremely cooperative....I could always get her on the phone....She'd call and leave me voice messages....We'd lunch once a week in her office, where she'd pad around in bare feet or prop her cowboy boots up on her messy desk." At the start of each television season she sat down with Feder for a Q&A session about her plans and projects. For years he kept on his office wall a framed photo of the two of them that she had signed: "Hey, what a team! Oprah." Feder, her biggest cheerleader for a decade, removed the photo in 1994, the year many Chicago reporters call "The Dawn of the Diva."

Upon her arrival in town, Oprah saturated the media with so many items about herself and her thighs and her eating binges and her nights without a man that by the end of 1985, Clarence Petersen of the Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune p.r.o.nounced her "the city's most overcelebrated celebrity." Even Feder wrote, "Cool it on any more stories about Oprah p.r.o.nounced her "the city's most overcelebrated celebrity." Even Feder wrote, "Cool it on any more stories about Oprah Winfrey--until she wins an Oscar." But reporters could not get enough of Oprah, who was as enthralled with herself as they were. During an interview with The Philadelphia The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine she gushed like a geyser: she gushed like a geyser: I'm very strong...very strong. I know there is nothing you or anybody can tell me that I don't already know. I have this inner spirit that directs and guides me....I'll tell you what being interviewed has done for me. It's the therapy I never had....I'm always growing. Now I've learned to acknowledge and accept the fact that I'm a kind person. I really like me, I really do. I'd like to know me, if I weren't me. And me knowing that is the most important thing.

The writer ended her profile by saying: "Thank you, Oprah. Now, please, hush up."

But Oprah didn't, couldn't, wouldn't hush up. Instinctively she knew that talking, talking, talking kept people from probing, probing, probing. The more she seemed to reveal about herself, the more she could hide, and still appear to be open and forthcoming. Her stories--the ones she chose to tell--were winning and farm fresh, which always left audiences rooting for her success.

"My greatest gift is my ability to talk," she told the writer Bill Zehme, "and to be myself at all times, no matter what. I am as comfortable in front of the camera with a million people watching me as I am sitting here talking to you. I have the ability to be perfectly vulnerable at all times."

Most of the media welcomed her self-promotion. What they may have branded as arrogant in someone else, they accepted as authentic in Oprah. She was allowed to play in the same league as baseball great Dizzy Dean, who said, "If you done it, it ain't braggin'."

Shining her own star paid off so well that when she went national in 1986, she demanded control of her own public relations so she could continue shaping that image.

As the local host of The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, she received her first national she received her first national publicity in Newsweek, Newsweek, when she dethroned Phil Donahue in the ratings. She was thrilled when she dethroned Phil Donahue in the ratings. She was thrilled to get a full page in the national news magazine, but she resented being described as "nearly two hundred pounds of Mississippi-bred black womanhood, bra.s.sy, earthy, street smart and soulful."

"I did not like it," she told the writer Robert Waldron. "I don't like the term 'street smart.' I think it's a term that gets put off on black people a lot. Rather than say intelligent, it's easier to say we're street smart and that kind of explains a lot of things.

'Oh, well, she made it because she's street smart.' Well, I am the least of the street smarts.

I've never lived on the streets. I don't know anything about it. I never was a hustling kid. I mean, I had my days of delinquency. But I was never like a hustling kid, or streetwise. I wouldn't last ten minutes on the streets."

Despite her defensiveness, she admitted that the Newsweek Newsweek article "opened a lot of article "opened a lot of doors for me," including the ultimate in celebrity beatification: an invitation to appear on The Tonight Show.

"They said if I appeared with [subst.i.tute host] Joan Rivers, I could come back and appear with Johnny Carson. I said, 'Nooo problem.' "

The warden of the Cook County Jail was so taken with Oprah that he allowed inmates to stay up past their regular curfew to watch her that night.

Jeff Jacobs, who accompanied Oprah and her staff to LA, told her to tape a couple of shows to promote ABC's miniseries Hollywood Wives. Hollywood Wives. This would ingratiate her with This would ingratiate her with the network that owned and operated WLS, bring a little glamour to her local audience, and promote her appearance on television's premier late-night show. So with her camera crew in tow, Oprah lunched at Ma Maison and strolled the shops of Rodeo Drive with Angie d.i.c.kinson, Mary Crosby, and author Jackie Collins, sister of movie star Joan Collins.

The night before, she met her friend Maria Shriver and then-fiance Arnold Schwarzenegger for dinner. "We sat in a restaurant booth and Arnold played Joan Rivers.

He kept pumping me. 'Why are you successful?' 'Why did you gain weight?' "

At the time, Joan Rivers was famous for skewering Elizabeth Taylor with fat jokes: "She's got more chins than the Hong Kong phone book...." "Her b.u.mper sticker says, 'Honk if you have groceries.' " "The three biggest b.o.o.bs in Virginia are John Warner [husband number six] and Elizabeth Taylor." So it was inevitable that the subject of Oprah's weight would come up during her seven-minute appearance on The Tonight The Tonight Show.

Standing behind the curtain on January 29, 1985, Oprah listened to Joan Rivers's introduction: "I'm so anxious to meet her. They talk about her as streetwise, bra.s.sy, and soulful. Please help me welcome--Miss Oprah Winfrey."

Oprah felt put down. "I thought, 'Uh oh...She's read too much about this streetwise...Negro woman. I mean when you hear that you think I'm gonna come out with a chicken and a watermelon wearing a bandana around my head."

Oprah walked out in a royal blue suede dress dripping with strands of sequins and split up the front to reveal white hose and an $800 pair of blue suede shoes sparkling with rhinestones. In the fashion of the day, her hair was teased and sprayed to a lacquered hardness. Her eyes were painted purple and red, and her red lips were outlined in purple to complement the dress, which she said had been custom-made in Chicago by someone named Towana. Her earrings dripped with dangling rhinestones. She looked like she had come straight from a lounge act, without time to change at the truck stop.

Joan asked about her childhood, and Oprah spun her stories of "whuppins" and "pet c.o.c.kroaches" before the conversation turned to dieting.

"How did you gain weight?" said Joan.

"I ate," said Oprah.

"You're a pretty girl and single. Lose it."

Oprah said later she wanted to slap the comedienne. "But...I'm on national television for the first time....Then Joan Rivers, who is this small, made a bet with me to lose weight. I said okay. I'm on national television. What else am I going to say?"

Rivers said she would lose five pounds if Oprah lost fifteen. They shook hands and agreed to meet back on the show in six weeks to see who had won.

Oprah returned to Chicago the next day and made a reservation for her "final feast" at Papa Milano. She invited her staff to join her. "They are my family," she said.

"We eat almost every meal together." She alerted the media to cover the revel, which Debbi DiMaio said started at 7:30 A.M. with grilled cheese sandwiches. Then came breakfast at the Pancake House. "I ordered real pancakes, potato pancakes, and an omelet," said Oprah. "When they brought the pancakes out, they said, 'We made these reluctantly because we want you to win your bet with Joan. Don't eat them all.' Then for lunch I had my last super-duper order of French fries. So I had my favorite food-potatoes--twice."

The dinner menu consisted of pizza, pasta e f.a.gioli, garlic bread, sweet peppers, ravioli, salad, cannoli, cookies, and spumoni. The next day a picture appeared in the Chicago Tribune of Oprah feeding a slice of pizza to her then-boyfriend Randy Cook, a of Oprah feeding a slice of pizza to her then-boyfriend Randy Cook, a tall, light-skinned African American man with a mustache.

"I was Stedman before Stedman," Cook said many years later. "I lived with Oprah in her apartment from January through May 1985."

Their five-month affair became a torment for Oprah years later, when Cook decided to go public with their relationship and write a book. By that time Oprah was living with Stedman Graham, who ran Athletes Against Drugs. Cook's book proposal was t.i.tled The Wizard of O: The Truth Behind the Curtain: My Life with Oprah Winfrey. The Wizard of O: The Truth Behind the Curtain: My Life with Oprah Winfrey. His His

chapters included:.

Oprah Introduces Me to Smoking Cocaine Oprah: Drugs, s.e.x, Out of Control Oprah and Gayle He described how Oprah introduced him to drugs and freebased her own crack cocaine in her twenty-fourth-floor condo. He wrote graphically that they became "carnally driven monsters" and indulged in "animalistic s.e.x." He said Oprah regularly gave him her bank card to withdraw money to buy their drugs. She was the financier; he was the supplier. He claimed he became addicted because of Oprah, and his life spiraled out of control. When he bottomed out, he lost his job, declared bankruptcy, and finally got into a twelve-step recovery program. "One of the steps requires me to make amends,"

he wrote. "For me this means reaching out to Oprah. I go to her studio to talk but Oprah completely denies my existence."

Rejected and angry, Cook decided to write a tell-all. He sent his proposal to publishers, but no one wanted to publish a book about a beloved American icon cooking up crack cocaine and smoking herself sky-high. So Cook contacted Diane Dimond, the investigative reporter for Hard Copy, Hard Copy, a tabloid news television show devoted to celebrity a tabloid news television show devoted to celebrity exposes that ran in syndication for ten years.

"In my experience with Hard Copy, Hard Copy, which was owned by Paramount Pictures, which was owned by Paramount Pictures, there wasn't anyone we couldn't cover," said Diane Dimond. "I did stories on Michael Jackson and Heidi Fleiss [the Hollywood Madam, who went to prison], and she had the names of all my bosses in her little black book. I covered O. J. Simpson and I broke the William Kennedy Smith rape case, so no one seemed off-limits. But I found out fast that Oprah Winfrey was definitely the one untouchable when Linda Bell Blue, my producer...got a call from none other than Jonathan Dolgen, head of Paramount, who screamed and yelled until Linda promised to call me off....She told me that we could not be seen as attacking one of the most successful black women in America....I had talked to Cook and his lawyer several times...but at that point I had to drop the story."

Cook told The Star that Oprah was using her influence to stop him from telling that Oprah was using her influence to stop him from telling his story. Oprah denied the charge and called him "a liar" and "a drug addict" who could not be trusted or believed. Further, Cook alleged, she said he would be very sorry if he told his story to anyone else. He backed off, eventually relapsed into drugs, and finally reentered recovery.

By then Oprah had learned that someone else claiming to have done drugs with her in Baltimore had also sold a story to the National Enquirer, National Enquirer, and while the story had and while the story had not been published, she felt threatened that soon her drug past would be splashed all over the tabloids. "We did have a story in the works ent.i.tled 'I Was Oprah's Drug Dealer,' but it got killed at the last minute," recalled the Enquirer Enquirer's senior editor. "As I recall, he came to us and we paid him, after he pa.s.sed a lie detector test."

"I interviewed the guy in Baltimore who claimed he was Oprah's boyfriend when she worked at the local station," said the writer Jerry Oppenheimer. "He did c.o.ke with her and, as I recall, he had also sold drugs for a living when he was involved with her. He had photographs of the two of them together--that was always a National Enquirer National Enquirer requirement, that and pa.s.sing a lie detector test--and I felt he was credible...a street guy but pretty articulate and very nice, very likeable."

Like most celebrities, Oprah came to despise the tabloids. Early in her career she had cooperated with them on stories about herself, even provided personal photographs, and paid someone to plant "do-good" stories about her donations to charities. But once she became famous, she reviled the grocery store weeklies as "verbal p.o.r.nography" and railed against their coverage of her. She fired employees who leaked information to them and inst.i.tuted a company rule that no one was allowed to say her name outside of the office. In public they were instructed to refer to her as "Mary," so that conversations overheard in restaurants or bars would not become tabloid fodder. They also were forbidden to take candid pictures of her. She became obsessed with the coverage of her weight in the tabloids, and their unflattering photos frequently brought her to tears.

"I once put a reporter on twenty-four-hour coverage of Oprah on vacation at Necker Island with Stedman," said a former a.s.signment editor for the National Enquirer. National Enquirer.

"When Stedman went out to play golf, Oprah called room service and ordered two pecan pies. Our reporter helped the waiter with delivery. Oprah answered the door. No one else was in the room with her. An hour later she called room service to pick up the empty tins outside her door, which our guy photographed....Of all the stories we did on Oprah and her weight over the years, that one stands out in my mind because of what it told me about the kind of obesity bingeing she did in secret when no one was around."

Her dearest friends pleaded with Oprah to ignore the tabloids: "They are not you,"

said Maya Angelou. "You are not in those stories." But Oprah knew that her audience was the tabloids' audience: they shared the same demographics. The women who watched her show every day shopped for groceries every week, and they saw the sensational stories each time they approached the cash register. Oprah a.s.sumed that most people were like her and believed what they read.

Having been sold out to the tabloids by money-hungry relatives and friends in the past, she now decided to take control. Meeting with her staff at the end of 1994, she discussed presenting a show on drug abuse so that she could allude (generally, with no specifics) to her own drug experience. The show would feature mothers, because women look more sympathetic than men do talking about dealing with their addictions. The hour would be taped--not live--so the show could be edited, if necessary. By then Oprah's ratings had fallen off by 13 percent in the last two seasons, but she remained high in public esteem, and some on her staff worried about the possible backlash from such an admission. But she felt she had no choice.

The show, taped on January 11, 1995, was heavily promoted. During the taping, Oprah broke down and made her tearful admission: "I did your drug," she told a mother who was talking about her addiction to crack cocaine. "It's my life's great big secret that has always been held over my head." Beyond that she offered no specifics as to where, when, or with whom she had done drugs, but her public admission now insulated her from anyone from her past stepping forward.

Oprah's revelation made national news, and her spokeswoman, Deborah Johns, told reporters that it was "totally spontaneous." Tim Bennett, president of Harpo Productions, concurred. "[P]urely spontaneous," he said. "From her heart, from Oprah."

But Chicago columnists Bill Zwecker and Robert Feder, with sources deep inside Harpo, knew better; they reported that Oprah's admission was a premeditated ploy to boost her ratings and came about because unnamed others had threatened to reveal her secret themselves.

"Nothing is spontaneous with Oprah," said a former employee in 2007. "It may seem spontaneous, but it's all as carefully ch.o.r.eographed as Kabuki. She's fabulous on television--no one's better--but nothing is left to chance....She's like Ronald Reagan. In Hollywood he was considered a B actor, not one of the greats. Not even close. But he was a magnificent communicator on television, with just enough acting ability to appear sincere. Oprah is the same way. She knows how to cry on cue. She once told me that every tear is worth half a ratings point, and she can cry on a dime." The former employee noted that Oprah's biggest revelations came during or right before sweeps weeks (February, May, July, and November). "Ratings are everything to Oprah."

Whether her drug-use admission was designed to fuel her ratings or to defuse the tabloids, Oprah had been able to reveal her secret in a soft and sympathetic setting, and felt a great weight lifted. "I no longer have to worry about that now," she said. "I understand the shame. I understand the guilt. I understand the secrecy."

Following Oprah's public drug admission, Randy Cook filed a $20 million lawsuit against her for slander and emotional distress, but she was racked and ready. "I will fight this suit until I am bankrupt before I give even a penny to this liar," she was quoted as saying. In court doc.u.ments, she later denied making the "liar" statement. By then Cook, with no visible means of employment, looked like a desperate man trying to feed off a former relationship with a famous woman who was now worth millions. His lawsuit was dismissed by the U.S. District Court of Illinois, but he appealed, and the U.S. Seventh Circuit reinstated several counts of his complaint. After two years of legal skirmishes, Oprah was forced to respond to his interrogatories. In her answers, she finally admitted what she had so long denied: That she and Cook had had s.e.xual relations, and that she and Cook had used cocaine on a regular and consistent basis.

Cook won the right to a jury trial, but before a date could be set, he dismissed his suit "at the behest of [my] dying mother." He said his family and friends begged him not to go to court against Oprah Winfrey, but as late as 2007 he was still looking to be paid for his story of the five-month affair he had had more than two decades earlier, and he was still trying--unsuccessfully--to peddle his tell-all book. He claimed that he and Oprah were addicts when they lived together in 1985, but he did not know how she got off drugs. "On a few occasions, Oprah and I would be up all night getting high. Gayle King was set to arrive at the condo those same mornings....We would clean up all the evidence and act like nothing happened moments before Gayle walked through the door. It wasn't until Oprah and I broke up that Gayle found out [about the drugs]. But when she did, she intervened and very well could have been the one who got Oprah off drugs for good," he said. "The last time I saw Oprah was in 1985 before she left to film The Color Purple. The Color Purple. " "

Eight.

AN IMMUTABLE bond exists among black women born in the South and rocked in the arms of grandmothers who wore Sunday church hats, swayed to spirituals, and instilled reverence for "the ancestors." When these women meet as strangers they embrace as sisters because they are connected to the soil of country roads in Arkansas, bayous in Louisiana, backwoods in Georgia, and swamps of Mississippi. They know each other before they are introduced.

"It was that connection to the goodness and strength of southern women that bound me to Oprah," recalled Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The The Color Purple. "I wrote the role of Sofia based on my mother and gave Quincy Jones "I wrote the role of Sofia based on my mother and gave Quincy Jones [producer] and Steven Spielberg [director] a picture of her when she was Oprah's age. So when Quincy saw Oprah on television he was looking at my mother....When I met Oprah, I, too, saw my mother. That's the root of my affection for her, and despite the distance she's put between us since we made the film in 1985, I still feel grateful to her. She arrived to carry the spirit of my mother and she did it really, really well."

Oprah credited her self-confidence to her Southern roots. "I'm very blessed because I was raised in the South in Nashville and Mississippi," she said. "The whole Southern upbringing left me feeling I can do anything. It didn't do to me what it does to a lot of people. I never in my life felt oppressed."

Almost all the women who worked on The Color Purple The Color Purple had some connection to had some connection to the South, and that sensibility of sisterhood contributed to what Alice Walker called the "holy experience" of making the movie. Before she sold the film rights, she insisted that the producer and director commit themselves to a diverse cast and crew. "I got it in writing that at least fifty percent of those hired had to be black, female or other minority,"

she said. "It was a happy set because we all came together in a blessed way to tell the story."

The director, Steven Spielberg, did not want a cast of unknowns for what he called his first serious film. After signing Whoopi Goldberg, then unknown, for the lead of Celie, he hoped to sign Tina Turner for the singing role of Shug Avery. He planned to eliminate the lesbianism in the novel and film only one sweet kiss between Celie and Shug, but he wanted Whoopi Goldberg to feel comfortable. "If I'm going to kiss a woman, please let it be Tina," Whoopi said. Turner was also the first choice of the writer, the producer, and the casting director. a.s.suming she was on board, Quincy Jones scheduled her meeting with the director, but, as he said later, she flipped on him.

"I wouldn't do a black picture if I was dying," Turner said. "It took me twenty years to get out of that black s.h.i.t and I ain't going back."

Jones said he was so shocked he couldn't open his mouth. "But I certainly understood her feelings about not wanting to play an abused woman." He knew about the years of beatings she had endured from her former husband. So the role went to the actress Margaret Avery, who performed brilliantly and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. But Tina's rejection left the cast with no known stars and a soupcon of bile. "She turns down The Color Purple The Color Purple and she does and she does Mad Max: Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. All the while saying that she's seeking credibility as an actress," All the while saying that she's seeking credibility as an actress,"

said Whoopi Goldberg. "Give me a break."

Quincy Jones wrote in his autobiography that Tina Turner's reaction reflected the att.i.tude of Hollywood at the time. "n.o.body wanted to make a black movie," he said, explaining the resistance he had to overcome to get the film made in 1985. Statistics backed him up. During that summer's release of teenage films, there had not been one black female face on-screen. So Jones decided to pursue the popular mainstream director of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, whose magic made millions believe in the humanity of a whose magic made millions believe in the humanity of a wrinkled rubber alien who looked like Elmer Fudd. The producer then had to convince Alice Walker that Steven Spielberg was the right person to make her book into a major motion picture. Reluctant at first, Walker finally came around. "I guess if he can make people believe in Martians, he can do the same for our folks," she said.

Decades after writing the novel that brought her wealth, acclaim, and international recognition, Alice Walker maintained that The Color Purple The Color Purple was a gift given to her to was a gift given to her to give to others. Her lack of ego about writing the saga of a poor country girl's life of physical and s.e.xual abuse by men elevated the process of filming for everyone. "We all wanted to make Alice proud," said Margaret Avery.

Oprah said that being chosen for the role of Sofia was the single happiest day of her life, and filming the movie was "the only time I ever felt part of a family surrounded by unconditional love." She recalled the experience with near-worshipful awe. "It was a spiritual evolvement for me," she said. "I learned to love people doing that film."

She forged strong friendships on the set, but few survived the pa.s.sage of time.

She fell out with Whoopi Goldberg, who would later compare her to Lonesome Rhodes, the power-hungry monster in A Face in the Crowd; A Face in the Crowd; she tangled with Akosua Busia, who she tangled with Akosua Busia, who also appeared with her in Native Son Native Son and wrote the first screenplay for and wrote the first screenplay for Beloved, Beloved, the the movie Oprah felt would make her a film legend. She pulled away from Alice Walker and offended Steven Spielberg, but she held tight to Quincy Jones. "I love him more than any human being in the world," she once said. Revered for his musical genius, "Q," as his friends call him, opened his influential Hollywood circle to Oprah and made her part of his celebrity world. She once sent him a T-shirt that read: "Oprah Loves Me Unconditionally. I Can Never f.u.c.k Up."

Later she would say that it was divine destiny that she got the role of Sofia in The The Color Purple. "I wasn't really, really, really surprised," she said. "It's exactly what was "I wasn't really, really, really surprised," she said. "It's exactly what was supposed to happen. To me."

Whether from G.o.d or good luck, her casting could definitely be credited to her girth. In the spring of 1985 she had gone to a fat farm to try to lose weight and win the bet she had made with Joan Rivers on The Tonight Show. The Tonight Show. While pounding the track, she While pounding the track, she received a call from the casting director, Reuben Cannon, who warned, "If you lose one pound, you lose the part." She immediately packed her bags and hightailed it to the nearest Dairy Queen.

At that point, the thirty-one-year-old talk show host was riding a comet of local fame across Chicago: "I could practically do no wrong," she said. She knew that a major role in a Steven Spielberg film could throw her star into the stratosphere. "I wanted that role more than anything I've ever wanted in my life," she said. When she found out she was in the running, she begged her lawyer not to negotiate too hard. "He was pushing, pushing, pushing. I said, 'Jeff, I'd do it for nothing--please, please don't ask for any money money money.' He said, 'You're not doing it for free.' " Quincy Jones and Steven Spielberg had already accepted scale ($84,000 apiece), and so had the rest of the cast ($35,000 apiece).

"It was a labor of love for everyone," said Oprah.

She auditioned on April Fool's Day of 1985, with Willard Pugh, who was to play her husband, Harpo, in the film. "After we were through, Steven said he'd like to see us upstairs in his office," she said. "He then told us he wanted us for the roles. I went nuts. I jumped on Steven's sofa, knocking over his NASA s.p.a.ce shuttle model in the process, and that was nothin'--Willard pa.s.sed out."

The director had occasion to recall that moment twenty years later, when his friend Tom Cruise, promoting Spielberg's War of the Worlds, War of the Worlds, jumped on Oprah's couch jumped on Oprah's couch to demonstrate his love for Katie Holmes, soon to be his wife. There had been rumors in the tabloids about Cruise possibly being h.o.m.os.e.xual, and Oprah seemed to fan that speculation by telling reporters she was not convinced of the star's heteros.e.xual enthusiasm. "I just didn't buy it," she said. "Didn't buy it." Following Cruise's appearance on her show, the phrase "jump the couch," meaning "strange or frenetic behavior,"