Oprah_ A Biography Part 1

Oprah_ A Biography.

by Kitty Kelley.

Foreword.

I MET OPRAH WINFREY when I was on a book promotion tour in Baltimore in 1981, and she was cohosting WJZ's morning show, People Are Talking, People Are Talking, with Richard with Richard Sher. We sat down before the show began, and as I recall, Richard did most of the talking, while Oprah seemed a bit standoffish, which I didn't understand until later. He interviewed me on the air and then joined Oprah on the set with a compliment about our lively exchange. Oprah shook her head with displeasure. "I don't approve of that kind of book," she said. "I have relatives she wrote a book about and they didn't like it at all."

I looked at the producer and asked what in the world she was talking about. I understood what she meant by "that kind of book"--an unauthorized biography written without the subject's cooperation or control--but I was perplexed by her reference to my having written a book about her relatives. The only biography I had written at the time was the life story of Jacqueline Kennedy Ona.s.sis (Jackie Oh!), (Jackie Oh!), and my research had not and my research had not turned up any Winfrey relatives in that family tree.

The producer looked slightly uncomfortable. "Well...Oprah is close to Maria Shriver, plus she's very much in awe of the Kennedys....I guess she considers herself part of the family in a way and...she knows they were upset by your book because it was so revealing...and...well, that's why we decided to have Richard do your segment."

I jotted down the exchange on the back of my book-promotion schedule, just in case the publisher asked how things had gone in Baltimore. I had no idea that twenty-five years later Oprah Winfrey would be a supernova in our firmament, and I would devote four years to writing "that kind of book" about her.

For the last three decades I've chosen to write biographies of living icons without their cooperation and independent of their control. These people are not merely celebrities, but t.i.tans of society who have left their imprint on our culture. With each biography the challenge has been to answer the question John F. Kennedy posed when he said, "What makes journalism so fascinating and biography so interesting is the struggle to answer the question: 'What's he like?' " In writing about contemporary figures, I've found the unauthorized biography avoids the pureed truths of revisionist history--the pitfall of authorized biography. Without having to follow the dictates of the subject, the unauthorized biographer has a much better chance to penetrate the manufactured public image, which is crucial. For, to quote President Kennedy again, "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth-persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."

Yet I've never felt completely comfortable with the term unauthorized, unauthorized, probably probably because it sounds slightly nefarious, almost as if it involves breaking and entering.

Admittedly, biography is, by its very nature, an invasion of a life--an intimate examination by the biographer, who tries to burrow into the marrow of the bone to probe the unknown and reveal the unseen. Despite my discomfort with the term, I understand why the unauthorized biography raises the hackles of its subjects, for it means an independent presentation of their lives, irrespective of their demands and decrees. It is not bended-knee biography. It does not genuflect to fame or curtsy to celebrity, and powerful public figures, accustomed to deference, quite naturally resist the scrutiny that such a biography requires. Oprah Winfrey was no exception.

At first she seemed sanguine when Crown Publishers announced in December 2006 that I would be writing her biography. She was asked her reaction, and her publicist responded, "She is aware of the book but has no plans to contribute." Six months later Oprah told the New York Daily News, Daily News, "I'm not cooperating with it, but if she wants to "I'm not cooperating with it, but if she wants to write a book, fine. This is America. I'm not discouraging it or encouraging it." Then, with a wink, she added, "And you know I can encourage."

By April 2008 she had changed her att.i.tude. In a webcast with Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth, A New Earth, she said, "I live in a world where people write things that are not she said, "I live in a world where people write things that are not true all the time. Somebody's working on a biography of me now, unauthorized. So I know it's going to be lots of things in there that are not true."

I immediately wrote to Oprah, saying the truth was as important to me as it was to her. I repeated my intention to be fair, honest, and accurate, and again asked for an interview. I had written to her before--first as a matter of courtesy, to say that I was working on the book and hoped to present her life with empathy and insight. I wrote several times later, asking for an interview, but did not receive a response. I should not have been surprised, considering Oprah had written her own autobiography years earlier but withdrew it before publication because she felt it had revealed too much. Still, I kept trying, but after several more unanswered letters, I remembered what John Updike said when he was stonewalled by baseball great Ted Williams: "G.o.ds do not answer letters."

Midway into my research, I finally received a call from Oprah's publicist, Lisa Halliday, who said, "Ms. Winfrey has asked me to tell you she declines to be interviewed." By then I had learned from Chicago reporters that Oprah had stopped giving interviews and responded to the press mostly through publicists rather than directly. If reporters persisted, as Cheryl Reed did when she was editor of the editorial page of the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Oprah's publicists provided a list of prepared questions Oprah's publicists provided a list of prepared questions and canned answers. "[Oprah is] always asked the same questions," the publicist told Ms.

Reed. "[This is] how Miss Winfrey prefers to respond."

I told Ms. Halliday that I needed to be accurate in what I wrote and asked if Ms.

Winfrey would be willing to check facts. Ms. Halliday said, "If you have questions of fact, you can reach out to me." So I tried, but each time I called Harpo, Ms. Halliday was unavailable. In the end it was Oprah herself who turned out to be a major source of information.

In lieu of speaking to her directly and having to rely on fragmented memories, I decided to gather every interview she had given in the last twenty-five years to newspapers and magazines and on radio and television in the United States and the United Kingdom, including Canada and Australia. I filed each--and there were hundreds-by names, dates, and topics, for a total of 2,732 files. From this resource I was able to use Oprah's own words with surety. Laid out on a grid, the information from these interviews, plus the hundreds of interviews I did with her family, friends, cla.s.smates, and coworkers, provided a psychological profile that I could never have acquired in any other way. Gathering these interviews given over more than two decades took considerable time, but once a.s.sembled and catalogued, they were invaluable in providing her voice.

Throughout this book I have been able to cite Oprah in her own words, expressing her thoughts and emotions in response to events in her life as they occurred. Sometimes her public reflections did not jibe with the private recollections of others, but even the truths she shaved, as well as those she shared, added dimension to her fascinating persona.

Being one of the most admired women in the world, Oprah Winfrey is adored by millions for her many good works. She is an exemplar of black achievement in a white society, an African American icon who broke the barriers of discrimination to achieve unparalleled success. In a world that wors.h.i.+ps wealth, she is idolized not simply because of her net worth (approximately $2.4 billion), but because she made her fortune herself, without benefit of marriage or inheritance. Within publis.h.i.+ng she is heralded as a heroine for bringing the joys of reading to millions, enriching the lives of writers as well as readers.

Yet as much as Oprah is loved, she is also feared, which is not unusual among society's giants. In writing about Frank Sinatra years ago, I found many people afraid to talk about a man connected to organized crime for fear of losing their limbs, or even their lives. With Nancy Reagan and the Bush family dynasty, the fears were of losing presidential access or a federal job, plus getting clobbered with an IRS audit. With the British monarchy, it was the fear of losing royal approbation or a possible knighthood.

Writing about Oprah exposed a different kind of fear.

Since 1995 she has required all her employees at Harpo and later at O, The Oprah O, The Oprah Magazine, to sign confidentiality agreements, swearing never to reveal anything about to sign confidentiality agreements, swearing never to reveal anything about her, her business, her personal life, her friends, or her a.s.sociates to anyone at any time.

Almost everyone who enters her realm must sign these nondisclosure contracts, and the prospect of being sued for breaking them keeps many--but not all--people silent.

Surprisingly, I discovered that Oprah is as frightened of the unvarnished truths from the lips of her former employees as they are of her potential lawsuits.

Aside from those chained to confidentiality agreements, there were others afraid to talk simply for fear of offending someone famous, much like those who admired the fabled emperor's new clothes. This, too, was not unusual, except among journalists, normally as brave as marines and supposedly immune to celebrity wors.h.i.+p. Considering that Oprah is the gold standard for marketing, a certain amount of hesitancy is understandable on the part of anyone who wants to sell products on her show, including journalists who long to write books that she will bless. When I called Jonathan Van Meter to ask about the effusive cover story he had written on Oprah for Vogue, Vogue, he said, "I just he said, "I just can't talk to you...yeah, maybe I am scared...it just wouldn't help me to help you." He admitted--reluctantly--that he had put "all the negative bits" from his Vogue Vogue research into research into a profile of Oprah he later published in The Oxford American. The Oxford American. "Not much circulation "Not much circulation there," he said nervously.

When I called Jura Koncius of The Was.h.i.+ngton Post, The Was.h.i.+ngton Post, she said, "I knew Oprah she said, "I knew Oprah before she was Oprah, when she wore an Afro....Every year at Christmas she would send a limo to get me to come on her Baltimore show to talk about holiday gifts...but I don't want to discuss my experiences, and I certainly don't want to be included in your long list of acknowledgments." Duly noted, Ms. Koncius.

My researcher received an even more heated response from Erin Moriarty of CBS-TV, who had roomed with Oprah for a couple of months in Baltimore. Since then Ms. Moriarty has regaled friends with her tales of Oprah during that time, and after hearing all those stories from others, I requested an interview. Unwilling to go on the record, Ms. Moriarty was less than cordial when she learned that her Oprah stories had traveled so far and wide.

Biographies, whether authorized or unauthorized, could never be written without the help of journalists, which is why I reached out to so many. Their work provides the first draft of history and lays the foundation for future scholars and historians. So I am grateful for the generosity I received, especially in Chicago, where journalists have been covering Oprah for twenty-five years and know her well. I also appreciate those too frightened to help, because their fears underscored the effect that Oprah has had on much of the media.

Over the years the woman who appears so warm and embracing on television has become increasingly wary and mistrustful of those around her, and from the research I've done for this book, I can certainly understand why she says she sometimes feels like an ATM. When her former lover from Baltimore was called for an interview, he said, "I need a cut of the take to talk." I wrote to him saying that I do not pay for interviews because it casts a cloud on the information being imparted, making it potentially unreliable and suspect. Such a transaction destroys the trust the reader must have in the writer that the information being disclosed is fair, honest, and accurate, and not coerced in any way or influenced by money. The man responded by email saying he really had not asked to be paid to talk about Oprah, and had never been paid to talk about her in the past, a claim later disputed by a tabloid editor.

During the course of writing I also received a call from a Chicago attorney representing a client who claimed "to have the goods on Oprah" and wanted to sell me his information. I was curious enough to ask if his client, who had worked with her, had signed one of Oprah's binding confidentiality agreements. "No," said the lawyer. "He's free and clear." His client's asking price: $1 million. Again, I said I do not pay for information.

I ended this book feeling much the way I did when I started: full of admiration and respect for my subject, and with the hope that this unauthorized biography will be received in the same spirit, if not by Ms. Winfrey herself, then by those who have been inspired by her, particularly women. For I've tried to follow President Kennedy's true compa.s.s and penetrate the myth in order to answer the eternal question: What's she really really like? In the process I found a remarkable woman, hugely complicated and contradictory.

Sometimes generous, magnanimous, and deeply caring. Sometimes petty, small-minded, and self-centered. She has done an extraordinary amount of good and also backed products and ideas that are not only controversial but considered by many to be harmful.

There is a warm side to Oprah and a side that can only be called as cold as ice. She is not a First Lady, an elected official, or even a movie star, but she is a unique American personage who has left an indelible mark on society, even as she has sought to change it.

She has made the American dream come true--for herself and for many.

KITTYKELLEY.

March 2010 [image]

FREE SPEECH NOT ONLY LIVES, IT ROCKS.

--Oprah Winfrey (February 26, 1998)

One.

OPRAH WINFREY blew into Chicago from Baltimore in December 1983 when a dangerous cold wave plunged the Windy City temperatures to twenty-three degrees below zero.

She had arrived to host a local daytime talk show and, on January 2, 1984, introduced all 233 pounds of herself to the city by marching in her very own parade, arranged by WLS-TV. She wore one of her five fur coats, a Jheri curl, and what she called her "big mama earrings." Waving to people along State Street, she yelled, "Hi, I'm Oprah Winfrey. I'm the new host of A.M. Chicago. A.M. Chicago. ...Miss Negro on the air." ...Miss Negro on the air."

She was a big one-woman carnival full of yeow, whoopee, and hallelujah. "I thought WLS was crazy when I heard they had hired an African American woman to host the morning show in the most racially divided city in America for their audience of suburban, white stay-at-home moms," said Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago Sun-Times.

"Happily, I was wrong."

Chicago was in for a lollapalooza of a ride. During Oprah's first week, her local morning show trounced the nationally syndicated Donahue Donahue show in the ratings, and show in the ratings, and within a year Phil Donahue, the master of talk show television, was packing his bags for New York City. Oprah continued her ratings rout and, having forced him to change his locale, she now compelled him to change his time slot, so as not to compete with her. By then she was on the verge of becoming nationally syndicated herself, having received a $1 million signing bonus when The Oprah Winfrey Show The Oprah Winfrey Show was sold in 138 markets. was sold in 138 markets.

During that first year she became such an immediate sensation that she appeared on The The Tonight Show, won two local Emmys, and was poised to make her movie debut in won two local Emmys, and was poised to make her movie debut in The The Color Purple. Her "discovery" for the role of Sofia in that film had brought her a Her "discovery" for the role of Sofia in that film had brought her a Cinderella following, and would later reward her with Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress.

"I was just like Lana Turner at the soda fountain, only a different color," Oprah joked, telling the story of how Quincy Jones, in Chicago on business, had seen her on television one morning and called Steven Spielberg to say he had found the perfect person to play Sofia. "She is so fine," said Jones. "Fat and feisty. Very feisty."

Oprah spent the summer of 1985 filming the movie, which she later recalled as the happiest time of her life. " The Color Purple The Color Purple was the first time I ever remember being was the first time I ever remember being in a family of people where I truly felt loved...when people genuinely see your soul and love your soul, when they love you for who you are and what you have to give."

By that time she felt she was on the cusp of the kind of success she had always dreamed of for herself. "I was destined for great things," she said. "I'm Diana Ross, and Tina Turner, and Maya Angelou." Br.i.m.m.i.n.g with confidence, she told Steven Spielberg he should put her name on theater marquees and her face on the film's posters. "I am probably the most popular person in Chicago," she said. When Spielberg demurred, saying it was not in her contract, she chided him for making a big mistake. "You wait.

You'll see. I'm going national. I'm going to be huge."

Spielberg did not change his mind, and Oprah did not forget. When she became as "huge" as she had predicted, he became a weed in her garden of grudges. She recounted their conversation thirteen years later in a 1998 interview with Vogue: Vogue: "I'm gonna be on "I'm gonna be on TV and people are gonna, like, know me. And Steven said, 'Really?' And I said, 'You might want to put my name on the poster for the movie.' He said, 'No, can't do that....'

And I say: 'But I think I'm really gonna be kinda famous.' Which is my favorite I-toldyou-so, Steven, you should've put my name on that poster!"

A week before the movie's premiere Oprah decided to do a show on rape, incest, and s.e.xual molestation. When management balked, she said she was going to be seen on the big screen in a few days in a film about the subject, so why not explore it first for her local audience. The station agreed, reluctantly at first, and then ran announcements asking for volunteers to talk about their s.e.xual abuse on the air.

This particular show became Oprah's signature program--a victim who triumphs over adversity--and the start of the Oprah Winfrey phenomenon. No one realized it at the time, but that show would elevate her to national prominence and eventually make her a champion for victims of s.e.xual abuse. During that program, she introduced a new kind of television that plunged her viewers into two decades of muddy lows and starry highs. In the process, she became the world's first black female billionaire and a cultural icon of near-saintly status.

"I am the instrument of G.o.d," she said at various times along the way. "I am his messenger....My show is my ministry."

Oprah's show on s.e.xual abuse was promoted for days in advance to draw an audience interested in "Incest Victims." Except for her small staff, no one knew what she intended to do, other than present a t.i.tillating subject, which she had been doing since she started on WLS. No one had any idea that she was about to blur the long-standing line in television between discussion and confession, between interviewing and self-revelation.

Between objectivity and a fuzzy area of fantasy and factual manipulation.

On Thursday, December 5, 1985, Oprah began her 9:00 A.M. show by introducing a young white woman she identified only as Laurie.

"One out of three women in this country have been s.e.xually abused or molested,"

she told her audience before turning to her guest.

"Your father started out fondling you. When did it lead to something other than fondling?"

"I think around between nine and ten," said Laurie.

"What happened? Do you remember the first time your father had s.e.xual intercourse with you? What did he say to you, how did he tell you, what did he tell you?"

There was not a sound from the audience of mostly white women.

"He just told me that he wanted to make me feel good," said Laurie.

"Where was your mother?"

"She had gone on a trip somewhere--she was out of town. She was gone for three weeks and I stayed with my father for those three weeks."

"So he came into your room...and he started fondling you. That has to be a pretty frightening thing when you're nine years old and your father has s.e.xual intercourse with you."

Laurie nodded but said nothing.

"I know it's hard to tell--I really do. I know how hard it is. When he was finished, what did he--or during this act--well, first of all, wasn't it painful for you?"

Laurie squirmed a bit. "Um. He used to tell me that he was sorry and that he would never do it again. A lot of times after he would do something, he would kneel down and make me pray to the Lord that he wouldn't do it anymore."

Moments later Oprah waded into the audience and planted her microphone in front of a middle-aged white woman in gla.s.ses.

"I was s.e.xually abused, too," the woman said. "Well, my life kind of started like Laurie's with the fondling and...It resulted in a child who's now--he's thirty years old right now, but sixteen years of his life he's been in a state inst.i.tution [for autism]."

"Were you s.e.xually abused by a member of your family?"

The woman choked up as she admitted being impregnated by her father.

"So this is your father's child?" said Oprah.

"Yes. It happened very frequently--as with Laurie also--practically every day when my mother would go to work. One of the most horrible experiences that I can remember."

As the woman broke down and struggled to regain control, Oprah flung her arm around her and then burst into tears herself, covering her eyes with her left hand. With the mic in her right hand, she signaled to the control room. She said later it was to stop the cameras, but they kept rolling as she sobbed into the woman's shoulder. "The same thing happened to me," she said. "The fact that I had all these unfortunate experiences permeates my life."

For the next few seconds Oprah appeared to be discovering for the first time that what she had experienced as a nine-year-old child was indeed rape, a defilement so unspeakable that she had never been able to put it into words until that very moment. Her audience felt as if they were watching the fissures of a soul split open as she admitted her shameful secret. Oprah revealed that she had been raped by her nineteen-year-old cousin when she was forced to share a bed with him in her mother's apartment. "He told me not to tell. Then he took me to the zoo and bought me an ice-cream cone." Later she said she was also s.e.xually molested by her cousin's boyfriend and then her favorite uncle. "I was continually molested from the age of nine until I was fourteen."

Oprah's staggering personal confession made national news, and she was applauded by many for her honesty and forthrightness. But her family vehemently denied her accusations, and some people suggested that she was trying to get publicity for her movie role, since she had never discussed her abuse with anyone anyone before her public before her public revelation. "I was so offended [by that]," she said later. "There was something in Parade Parade magazine, a question published not too long ago: 'Was Oprah Winfrey really s.e.xually abused, or was that just hype for the Oscars?' Well, I thought, it amazes me that somebody would think that I'd do that as hype. But I suppose it has been done. I suppose."

She said the management of her station was upset by her "shocking" revelations, and even twenty-three years later, Dennis Swanson, former vice president and general manager of WLS-TV, would not discuss the matter. Long credited with hiring Oprah and bringing her to Chicago, he would not comment on his reactions to her first show about s.e.xual abuse.

At the time, Swanson and his promotion manager, Tim Bennett, were elated by Oprah's spectacular ratings but stung by press criticism of her emphasis on s.e.x shows, particularly the show she had done on p.o.r.nography. The TV critic of the Chicago Sun- Chicago Sun- Times, P. J. Bednarski, had castigated them and the "corporate morality" of WLS for P. J. Bednarski, had castigated them and the "corporate morality" of WLS for allowing Oprah to devote an hour-long show to hard-core s.e.x. "Shame on them," he wrote, and then blasted Oprah for inviting three female p.o.r.n stars to talk about male organs, male endurance, and male e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.

In the saddest portion [of the show] there was a discussion of what they called on the air--the graphic lovemaking "money shot." That got a lot of laughs....The Ask-thep.o.r.n Stars program, amazingly, carried not a minute of discussion in which Winfrey stated, asked, or even worried that these X-rated stars were, in fact, cheap hucksters, talentless, sleazy skin traders. She barely wondered if these films demeaned women.

Instead, she asked, "Don't you get sore?"

"For someone with the natural talent of Winfrey, it was telling evidence she's got some growing up to do," Bednarski wrote, before adding that Oprah's p.o.r.n show got a 30 percent share of the 9:00 A.M. Chicago audience, much larger than usual. "It also got mentioned all around town and got its own column right here." The column's headline: "When Nothing's Off Limits: Oprah Winfrey Profits from p.o.r.n Stars' Appeal."

Oprah understood the axiom of television: She who gets ratings rules. "My mandate is to win," she told reporters. During crucial "sweeps" weeks she insisted on "bang-bang, shoot-'em-up" shows, for which her producer, Debra DiMaio, led the eureka hunt, with Oprah weighing in with her own ideas. "I'd love to get a priest to talk about s.e.x," she said. "I'd love to get one to say, 'Yes, I have a lover. I wors.h.i.+p Jesus and her.

Yes, I love her and her name is Carolyn.' "

In her race for ratings during Black History Month, Oprah booked members of the Ku Klux Klan in their white sheets and cone hoods. She also did a show featuring members of a nudist colony who sat onstage naked. Only their faces were shown on television, but the studio audience got a full frontal view, so management insisted the show be taped. "That will allow us to make sure nothing that's not supposed to be seen on TV will get on," said Debra DiMaio. Management also said that each member of the audience who arranged to attend had to be called and reminded that the guests would be nude. "No one was turned off," said DiMaio. "On the contrary, they were excited. I mean, what fun."

Oprah admitted to being nervous during the nudist show. "I pride myself in being real honest, but on that show I was really faking it. I had to act like it was a perfectly normal thing to be interviewing a bunch of naked people and not look. I wanted to look into the camera and say, 'My G.o.d! There are p.e.n.i.ses here!' But I couldn't. And that made me real nervous."

When she told her bosses she wanted to do "Women with s.e.xual Disorders" and interview a woman who had not had an o.r.g.a.s.m once during her eighteen-year marriage, and then interview the male s.e.x surrogate who gave her o.r.g.a.s.m lessons, and then a young woman so s.e.xually addicted that one night she had twenty-five men in her bed, the program director blanched.

"Management doesn't want problems, but they want ratings," Oprah said. "I told them I'll be decent and I was. They don't understand what women feel, and I do. Men think, for instance, that if you do a show about mastectomy, you can't show a breast. I say you have to show the breast."

The day after her s.e.xual disorders show, the WLS switchboard lit up with irate callers, so Oprah asked her producer to come onstage and invited comments from her studio audience.

"Yesterday's show was gross," said one woman. "I don't know how else to describe it. Absolutely degrading."