Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [107]
Oprah told Ladies’ Home Journal that she insisted on having total control over every aspect of her professional life. “It’s tough to have a relationship with someone like me,” she said. “And the older I get, the tougher I am.… Because I control so many things in my life, I have to work at not being controlling when I’m spending time with Stedman.” She said that whenever they drive somewhere, she always dictates the route, sure that she knows the best way. One time she was so insistent that Stedman take a certain shortcut that he finally gave in, even though he knew the street was blocked. “When I realized that I had been a real jerk and that he had allowed me to be a jerk, I said, ‘Why didn’t you just tell me that you knew the street was blocked?’ He said, ‘It’s easier for me to just drive down the street and turn around than to try to explain that to you, because you would be convinced that it wasn’t blocked.’ That’s when I realized, God, I’m really bad.”
Oprah’s need for control also extended to her father, who frequently chafed under her yoke. “Oprah is all about control,” said freelance writer Roger Hitts. “I used to talk to her step-mom, Zelma, a lot, but Oprah shut that down. She told all her relatives, ‘You are not important. They only want to talk to you to get to me.’ I went to Zelma’s funeral [November 7, 1996] and Oprah gave the eulogy and took over everything.… She did the same when Vernon remarried four years later [June 16, 2000]. At the wedding, which Oprah paid for, Vernon was talkative and approachable—until she arrived. Then she took charge, telling him what he could and couldn’t do. She wouldn’t let him talk to anyone. She completely controlled the situation. The wedding was run on her clock. She was late, but nothing could start until she got there. Then her minders took control of everything, including the relatives.…
“I caught up with Vernon afterward. He was still talkative but dour, which had to do with Oprah. He is a pretty prideful guy, but he has had to do a lot of giving with her. She tells him what he can and cannot do all the time. She dictates his life. That’s the relationship, and it grates on him.”
Oprah had no control over what happened when she agreed to host the winners of the Ladies’ Home Journal celebrity look-alike contest. “It never occurred to us to specify the sex of the applicants,” said Myrna Blyth, “and we didn’t expect to get an Oprah look-alike, but we got one who looked exactly like her. Only after we announced the winner [Jecquin Stitt], who beat out four thousand other contestants, did we find out that the Oprah look-alike was a man.… But we had to give him the award because of political correctness.”
At the time of the contest, Stitt, who later underwent sex reassignment surgery to become a woman, was known as a transvestite in Flint, Michigan, where he worked as an account clerk for the Water Department. “I was a flaming queen [then],” Stitt said, “but the torch was turned way down at work.”
The prize for the look-alike winners (Oprah, Madonna, Barbara Bush, Whoopi Goldberg, Carol Burnett, Janet Jackson, Cher, Liza Minnelli, and Joan Collins) was a trip to New York City, a makeover by John Frieda, makeup by Alfonso Noe, a photo shoot for the magazine by celebrity photographer Francesco Scavullo, and an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
“I have to say Oprah handled it very well, because she didn’t make a big deal of it,” said Blyth. “When he came out to meet her on the show, she said, ‘If I had a wig, I’d take it off to you.’ If she had reacted differently, it could have blown up into a big story, but she handled it so that it just went away quietly after the show. She and her people are very savvy, very smart. They protect her and do a great job.”
The transvestite Oprah felt that, in protecting the real Oprah, her staff had trampled on him. He said he was denied the promised makeover and his photo in Ladies’ Home Journal. While the other look-alikes were attended to in the Harpo prep room, he was ignored, although he had been promised that Oprah’s hairdresser,