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By Root 1228 0

advice columnist known as Ann Landers, heard some distressing stories about Stedman’s sexual preferences that made Oprah look foolish, she called her in confidence. Eppie had befriended Oprah when she first arrived in Chicago and appeared on her show many times, occasionally at the last minute to fill in for no-show guests. Oprah lavished her with luxurious gifts, but once Eppie told her the stories about her boyfriend, Oprah closed the door. “That was the end of the cashmere bathrobes and Judith Leiber bags at Christmas,” said Lederer’s daughter Margo Howard. Decades later, when Lederer died, her daughter published a book of letters from her famous mother, but Oprah refused to have Margo on the show to promote it. “I couldn’t understand it, because Mother was a beloved figure, especially in Chicago, and her audience was Oprah’s audience, but Oprah just wasn’t going to do it because she, apparently, was still mad. A grudge unto the next generation.”

Orlando Patterson, the distinguished John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard, also ran afoul of Oprah after writing an op-ed in The New York Times criticizing her production of There Are No Children Here for ABC television as a “tendentious, dishonest dramatization of Alex Kotlowitz’s book.” Professor Patterson upbraided Oprah for distorting the real-life account of ghetto life in Chicago and perpetuating “the black establishment’s dogma of victimization.” Oprah stopped speaking to him.

The photographer Victor Skrebneski experienced a similar shutout and told friends he had no idea why. After seeing Oprah around town at various parties, he finally asked, “Why did our professional relationship end?” She shot him a look and hissed, “Black lipstick. You are the one who told me to wear black lipstick.”

The photographer had been brought to Oprah by Sugar Rautbord, part of Chicago’s social set, who was doing a Q&A with her for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. “Andy kept asking me, ‘Why is she so big? Why isn’t she beautiful?’ So I decided she had to be photographed like a star, and that’s what Victor did.… Oprah posed for the picture but later told me she didn’t like it. ‘I am not a diva,’ she said. ‘I am everywoman. I should not look grander than other people.’ She always took umbrage with that photograph.…

“I’ve done Oprah’s show eleven times,” said Sugar Rautbord. “I knew her before she became Oprah and moved up in the world.… She has a great quality of moving on and moving up.… Even back when she was local in Chicago I saw her great ambition and I was in awe.… She figured out early that the only way to have a successful career and make money—big money—was to delete husbands and children and carpools from life’s agenda. None of those problems touch Oprah in the golden sphere in which she lives. Yet she still addresses our issues of husbands and children and carpools as if they were her issues, as if she really is Everywoman.… It’s quite amazing.”

Oprah preferred presenting herself to her audience as one of them, and adopted Whitney Houston’s hit “I’m Every Woman” as the theme song for her show. She understood the importance of maintaining an appealing public image, which is why she insisted on controlling her own public relations, including all photographs of herself. “Controlling is the operative word with Oprah,” said Myrna Blyth, the former editor of Ladies’ Home Journal. “I think we were the first traditional women’s magazine to put her on the cover, and we had her on many times. One time she insisted on choosing her own photographer, which is not unusual. A lot of celebrities do that, but after the shoot, Oprah did not like the picture. So she asked for another shoot by another photographer, whom she also chose. That is unusual, but we agreed, even though it was very expensive with the second photographer, but we wanted to please her.… She bought up all the first photographer’s negatives so he couldn’t publish them elsewhere. She does that with all her pictures, which is why you see so very few photos of Oprah that she doesn’t want you to see, except in the tabloids.