Oprah

by Kitty Kelley

  The list of “Oprah’s Favorite Things” seemed to get longer and more expensive over the years, making her, as one writer noted, “The countess of ka-ching, the monarch of materialism.” When she was criticized for crass commercialism, Oprah announced that, going forward, the audiences for her “Favorite Things” shows would be deserving recipients such as underpaid teachers or Katrina volunteers.

  Her most ballyhooed giveaway occurred on September 13, 2004. “That was the best year I’ve ever experienced in television with the exception of the first year,” she told the writer P. J. Bednarski. She opened the season by giving away 276 brand-new Pontiac G6s, worth more than $28,000 apiece, for a collective total of $7.8 million.

  “It was not a stunt and I resent the word stunt,” she said, explaining that when a General Motors executive offered to give the cars as part of her “Favorite Things” show, she said no. “I can’t do that because that’s not my favorite car and I’m not going to say it is.” Then she remembered Jane Pauley’s new talk show was launching in September as a strong alternative to her own. Oprah’s producers pushed, saying she could not turn down the opportunity to give away cars, so they set about finding worthy souls who needed wheels. Jane Pauley’s launch show was buried under Oprah’s free cars show, which became one of the most talked-about giveaways in television history.

  “My heart was palpitating [that day],” she recalled. “We had real emergency medical personnel standing by because sometimes people really do pass out in the audience.”

  Revving herself and her audience into a paroxysm of ecstasy, she passed out small boxes to everyone and said that one box contained the keys to a free car. The audience opened their boxes and each found a set of keys. Oprah started yelling and jumping and pumping her arms: “You win a car! You win a car! Everybody gets the car. Everybody gets the car! Everybody gets the car!” She led her delirious audience out to the Harpo parking lot, where 276 gleaming blue Pontiac G6s had been wrapped in huge red bows. “This car is so cool,” said Oprah. “It has one of the most powerful engines on the road.”

  Teachers and ministers and nurses and caregivers who had been walking to work for years or taking buses and having to transfer three times were thrilled by their life-changing gifts. However, almost immediately they learned they would have to pay taxes (approximately $7,000) on the cars, because they were considered prizes rather than gifts. Many turned to Oprah for help, and her publicist said they had three options: They could keep the car and pay the tax, sell the car and pay the tax with the profit, or forfeit the car. There was no other option from Oprah, and Pontiac already had donated the cars and paid the sales tax and licensing fees.

  “Was this really a do-good event Winfrey pulled off,” asked Lewis Lazare in the Chicago Sun-Times, “or a cold-blooded publicity stunt carefully designed to make the talk show diva really look good at the expense of Pontiac, which gladly provided cars in exchange for some of Winfrey’s promotional plugging?” He added: “It’s increasingly apparent she’s…become an unabashed shill for a slew of marketing-savvy companies salivating at the prospect of getting her to back their products in the hope big sales will ensue.”

  Oprah was incensed. “For all the people who say, ‘Oh, you didn’t personally pay for the cars yourself,’ which I heard, I say, ‘Well, I could have, and what difference does it make, if they get the cars? And why should I have paid for them if Pontiac was willing to do so?’ ”

  By then she was surfing on high waves of spending, and sounding a trifle cavalier as she discussed her $500 mink eyelashes, her one-thousand-thread-count sheets, and FedEx-ing her horses from her farm in Indiana to her house in Hawaii. She frequently name-dropped when talking of the celebrity gifts she had received, such as the twenty-one pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes ($1,600 a pair) from Jessica Seinfeld; the Rolls-Royce Corniche II convertible ($100,000) from John Travolta; the roomful of Casa Blanca lilies from American Idol judge Simon Cowell, which she said “looked like a Mafia funeral”; and the white Bentleys ($250,000 each) that she and Gayle received from Tyler Perry. “I call him my rich Negro man,” Oprah told viewers.

  Speaking at a fund-raiser for a community school in Baltimore, she said, “I have lots of things like all these Manolo Blahniks. I have all that and I think it’s great. I’m not one of these people, like, ‘Well, we must renounce ourselves.’ No. I have a closet full of shoes, and it’s a good thing.” She told the well-heeled crowd she enjoyed her money without guilt or apology. “I was coming back from Africa on one of my trips. I had taken one of my wealthy friends with me. She said, ‘Don’t you just feel guilty? Don’t you feel terrible?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t. I do not know how my being destitute is going to help them.’ Then I said when we got home, ‘I’m going home to sleep on my Pratesi sheets right now and I’ll feel good about it.’ ”

  She recalled for her magazine readers that on her forty-second birthday she and Gayle were in Miami, where she decided to buy herself a big Cartier watch as a present. En route, she spotted a black Bentley Azure in a dealership window. “Oh, my God,” she said. “That is the most beautiful car.” She bought the Bentley on the spot. “It’s a convertible. The top is down and guess what? It starts to rain. It’s pouring.” Oprah did not put the top up on her $365,000 car. “Because I want[ed] to ride in a convertible on my birthday.” Next stop: the Cartier boutique for the Diabolo small model watch in yellow gold with all-diamond bezel, case, dial, and bracelet for $117,000.

  She told viewers after attending her first couture show in Paris, “I could have bought a home for what I bought the Chanel outfits for.” She entertained at the same apex of luxury, spending millions to host parties. “Eyes have not seen, nor ears heard,” said Vernon Winfrey as he tried to describe the sumptuous events his daughter staged for Maya Angelou’s birthday every five years. Many guests recalled Maya’s seventieth, in April 1998, as Oprah’s most opulent. She rented the Seabourn Pride for a week’s cruise in the Caribbean, invited two hundred people, and gave each a suite with a balcony on the luxury ship. “She even had two thousand yellow rubber duckies dropped into the ship’s pool so we could play like children in a bathtub,” recalled one guest. Their invitations arrived four months before the Easter event asking everyone for shirt size; pant size; shoe size; champagne preference; favorite liquors, foods, cosmetics, fragrances, and body lotions—all of which were stocked in their suites, along with terry-cloth robes stitched with their names. “I think she spent four million dollars on that party,” said Vernon, shaking his head as he recalled the many stops the ship made for lavish lunches on white beaches, the silk-lined tents for dinners, and the moonlit concerts with Nancy Wilson singing under the stars. Oprah threw a similar bash for Maya when she turned seventy-five; on Angelou’s eightieth birthday, Oprah rented Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach for a weekend and arranged special performances by Michael Feinstein, Natalie Cole, Jessye Norman, and Tony Bennett.

  In 2005, at her Montecito mansion, Oprah hosted her most lavish event, which she billed as “A Bridge to Now—A Celebration for Remarkable Women During Remarkable Times,” with cameras filming every moment for a special on ABC titled Oprah Winfrey’s Legends Ball. A year and a half in the planning, the event honoring black women gave the network its biggest non-sports ratings in three years. The year before, 2004, Oprah had devoted two shows to celebrating her fiftieth birthday, the first of which was said to be a “surprise” hosted by “my best friend” (Gayle King) and “my favorite white man” (John Travolta). That show, called a “modest little Super Bowl of Love” by the Chicago Sun-Times, was followed by an after-party at Harpo for 500 employees and then 5 days of celebration, beginning with a dinner, hosted by Stedman at Chicago’s Metropolitan Club for 75 people, including Oprah’s father and mother.

  The next day they boarded Oprah’s jet and flew to California, where she was guest of honor at a ladies luncheon for 50 at the Bel-Air Hotel, her favorite LA retreat. The guests there included Salma Hayek, Diane Saw
yer, Maria Shriver, Toni Morrison, Ellen DeGeneres, and Céline Dion. The following night there was a dinner dance for 200 at a neighbor’s estate in Montecito, and the next morning a Sunday brunch for 175 people at the San Ysidro Ranch, all of which was filmed for a second Oprah show. In addition, Oprah invited People to cover the dinner dance staged by her party planner, Colin Cowie, full of what he called JDMs (jaw-dropping moments): 50 violinists, 200 waiters (one per guest), a chocolate-and-raspberry pound cake gilded with twenty-three-karat gold, music by Stevie Wonder, and wall-to-wall celebrities, including the Bel-Air luncheon ladies and their husbands and partners, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, John Travolta and Kelly Preston, Robin and Dr. Phil McGraw, Tina Turner, and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.

  For “The Legends Weekend,” Oprah selected twenty-five black women she considered to be legends:

  Maya Angelou (author/poet/actor/producer/director)

  Shirley Caesar (singer)

  Diahann Carroll (actor/singer)

  Elizabeth Catlett (sculptor)

  Ruby Dee (actor/playwright)

  Katherine Dunham (dancer/choreographer)

  Roberta Flack (singer)

  Aretha Franklin (singer)

  Nikki Giovanni (poet)

  Dorothy Height (activist)

  Lena Horne (singer/actor)

  Coretta Scott King (activist)

  Gladys Knight (singer)

  Patti LaBelle (singer)

  Toni Morrison (author)

  Rosa Parks (activist)

  Leontyne Price (opera singer)

  Della Reese (singer/actor)

  Diana Ross (singer/actor)

  Naomi Sims (model)

  Tina Turner (singer)

  Cicely Tyson (actor)

  Alice Walker (author/poet)

  Dionne Warwick (singer)

  Nancy Wilson (singer)

  Inexplicably missing from Oprah’s list were her onetime friend Whoopi Goldberg, the singer Eartha Kitt, acclaimed opera star Jessye Norman, respected broadcaster Gwen Ifill, and Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice. Of the twenty-five women Oprah selected as legends, seven did not attend: Katherine Dunham, Aretha Franklin, Nikki Giovanni, Lena Horne, Toni Morrison, Rosa Parks, and Alice Walker. “Just too many television cameras,” said one who did not participate. “Too much Oprah.”

  The “young ’uns,” as Oprah called those following in the footsteps of the “legends,” included:

  Yolanda Adams (singer)

  Debbie Allen (actor/dancer)

  Ashanti (singer)

  Tyra Banks (model/talk show host)

  Angela Bassett (actor)

  Kathleen Battle (opera singer)

  Halle Berry (actor)

  Mary J. Blige (singer)

  Naomi Campbell (model)

  Mariah Carey (singer)

  Pearl Cleage (poet/playwright)

  Natalie Cole (singer)

  Suzanne De Passe (producer/writer)

  Kimberly Elise (actor)

  Missy Elliot (rap artist)

  Pam Grier (actor)

  Iman (model)

  Janet Jackson (singer)

  Judith Jamison (dancer/choreographer)

  Beverly Johnson (model)

  Chaka Khan (singer)

  Gayle King (editor, O magazine)

  Alicia Keys (singer)

  Audra McDonald (actor/singer)

  Terry McMillan (author)

  Darnell Martin (director/screenwriter)

  Melba Moore (actor/singer)

  Brandy Norwood (singer)

  Michelle Obama (community affairs executive)

  Suzan-Lori Parks (playwright)

  Phylicia Rashad (actor)

  Valerie Simpson (singer/composer)

  Anna Deavere Smith (actor/playwright)

  Susan L. Taylor (editorial director of Essence)

  Alfre Woodard (actor)

  Oprah began the weekend with a luncheon at her estate on Friday (May 13, 2005), during which she gave six-carat diamond teardrop earrings to “the legends” and ten-carat black-and-white diamond hoop earrings to “the young ’uns,” all presented in red alligator boxes inside of which were engraved silver cases. “I’m a girl who loves a good diamond earring, you know?” Oprah told her astounded guests.

  “Are they real?” asked author Terry McMillan.

  “They are black diamonds, crazy love! Of course they’re real!”

  During the “Legends” weekend, even the wealthiest stars were dumbfounded, especially when they saw the trolley Oprah had installed on the grounds for guests to tour “The Promised Land,” as Oprah called her rolling estate with its various promenades, pools, ponds, rose arbors, romantic bridges, and winding trails, all bordered by five thousand white hydrangeas and two thousand white flowering trees. She called her equally luxurious home in Hawaii “Kingdom Come.” As she told reporters, “I’m very biblical, you know. I got two roads to my [Hawaii] house…Glory and Hallelujah.”

  But it was her home in Montecito that left guests breathless. “The driveway is five miles long, and every stone was cut by hand,” said one. “Her bathtub is a solid piece of jade, and her bathroom overlooks the entire forty-two-acre estate and gives her an eighty-degree view of the ocean. Her closet is three thousand square feet and she has a thousand drawers for everything—yes, one thousand—sweaters and T-shirts and one hundred hats. Each drawer has a glass front so nothing gets dusty and she can see what’s inside….Gayle has her own room in the main house with rose wallpaper, and Stedman’s study overlooks the Montecito Mountains….The views throughout are magnificent….I think it’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen.”

  The following night (Saturday, May 14, 2005), Oprah invited 362 people to a white-tie dinner dance at the Bacara Resort and Spa in Santa Barbara. She ordered 80 cases of champagne flown in from France, 120 pounds of tuna flown in from Japan, and 20,000 white peonies flown in from Ecuador. Entertainment was provided by Michael McDonald and a twenty-six-piece orchestra. Her party planner had sent his two hundred servers to waiter boot camp for three days to properly serve Oprah’s A-list celebrity guests. As everyone sat for dinner, a drum rolled and the black-tied waiters laid down 362 plates at the same moment. It was another JDM. Oprah expected no less.

  That night, after a sumptuous meal and dancing, guests returned to their hotel rooms to find on their pillows a gift-wrapped souvenir photograph of the evening in a sterling-silver frame from Asprey, the jeweler who carries royal warrants from Queen Elizabeth II and the Prince of Wales. Oprah had instructed the women to wear black or white gowns for the ball, while she appeared in flaming red, just like Norma Shearer did at a black-and-white ball she threw—so everyone would look only at her. The following morning (Sunday, May 15, 2005), Oprah wore a tall feathered hat to host a gospel brunch at “The Promised Land,” where Senator Barack Obama, wearing sunglasses, stood under a tree a few feet away from Oprah, who had her arm draped around Barbra Streisand, swaying to the music.

  Later Oprah approached Obama, who had been sworn in as a U.S. senator four months earlier. “If someone were to announce one of these days that he was going to run for president,” she said, “don’t you think this would be a sweet place to hold a fund-raiser?”

  Senator Obama grinned.

  Twenty

  BY THE twenty-first century, Oprah was omnipresent, if not omnipotent. She appeared on television five days a week, claimed 44 million viewers in the United States, and was broadcast in 145 countries, from Saudi Arabia to South Africa. She was a daily presence on satellite radio (Sirius XM) with her own twenty-four-hour channel Oprah and Friends. Her monthly magazine, with her picture on every cover, had a paid circulation of 2.4 million in the United States and was published also in South Africa. Through her investment in Oxygen she was seen on cable television with segments entitled Oprah After the Show. When Oxygen was sold to NBC Universal, she recouped her $20 million investment and announced plans to start her own television network in 2011, to be called OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network). She p
roduced made-for-television movies under the banner “Oprah Winfrey Presents,” and prime-time network specials. Her website, Oprah.com, attracted 6.7 million visitors a month, and her Twitter following numbered more than 2 million. A Google search of her name generated more than 8 million results, and there were 529 websites devoted solely to her.

  By the millennium she was known and recognized throughout the country, even by those who never watched daytime television. She entered the vocabulary as a noun, a verb, and an adjective. Even disgruntled media critics acknowledged they had entered the Oprahsphere. “She puts the cult in pop culture,” Mark Jurkowitz sniped in The Boston Phoenix, prompting Oprahettes to howl about the jerk in “Jurkowitz.” Opraholics worshipped her, and Oprahphiles studied her, making her the subject of more than three dozen PhD dissertations listed in the Library of Congress. The object of a case study on corporate success by the Harvard Business School, she was also studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in a course titled History 298: Oprah Winfrey, the Tycoon: Contextualizing the Economics of Race, Gender, Class in Black Business in Post–Civil Rights America. Newsweek declared the new century’s touchy-feely era to be the “Age of Oprah,” and The Wall Street Journal defined “Oprahfication” to mean “public confession as a form of therapy.” Jet magazine used Oprah as a verb: “I didn’t want to tell her…but she Oprah’d it out of me.” Politicians everywhere began “to go Oprah,” holding town meetings to let constituents vent their feelings. Companies lucky enough to have their products featured on “Oprah’s Favorite Things” experienced an avalanche of orders known as the “Oprah Effect.” By 2001, the nation had become so Oprahfied that New York’s mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, chose Oprah along with James Earl Jones to lead the memorial service at Yankee Stadium in honor of the victims of 9/11.

  With the country in her thrall, Oprah finally felt secure enough to break her “no politicians” rule and wade into their divisive waters. For years she had avoided politics because she did not want to alienate her audience. “If I support one person or another, I will piss a lot of people off,” she said. “And I have not met the politician that was worth going to the mat for. When I do, I certainly will.” By staying above the political fray, she felt she retained more affection from her viewers than her highly partisan predecessor, Phil Donahue. “Oprah would not even attend a Gridiron dinner,” said former Hearst columnist Marianne Means, a past president of The Gridiron Club, whose annual dinner in Washington, D.C., is attended by the president, the vice president, and members of Congress, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. Members of the media perform skits and songs poking fun at both political parties. “We invited her many times, but she always turned us down, saying she did not get involved with politics.”