Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [243]
She was also taking her halo to Hollywood, where she would reign supreme among the celebrities she adored. The town had first fired her fantasies as a young girl when she toured the Walk of Fame in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. After that trip she returned to her father’s house in Nashville and told him she was going to be a star.
“Daddy, I got down on my knees there and ran my hand along all those stars on the street, and I said to myself, ‘One day I’m going to put my own star among those stars,’ ” recalled Vernon Winfrey. He knew then there was no stopping his daughter.
After the Hollywood Walk of Fame had been expanded to include stars of the small screen, as filmdom once dismissed television, Oprah got her star. On June 17, 2010, her name was included with other TV personalities: Neil Patrick Harris, Tina Fey, Danny DeVito, Ed O’Neill, and John Langley, plus movie stars Penelope Cruz, Bruce Dern, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Ed Harris, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sissy Spacek, Donald Sutherland, and Reese Witherspoon.
Now, as Oprah retires from broadcast television, the pilot light that fired her ambitions since childhood still flames, and her work and the applause that come from it continue to fill her soul, giving her her greatest pleasure in life. Consequently, she will never retire. Without children and grandchildren, it seems as if she will fill her later years with the rewards of work. Yes, she has slowed down a bit and often seems fatigued, occasionally appearing listless on her show, the one hour a day when she had sparkled in the past. During the last year her producers began booking more segments to move it along at a faster pace so everyone, including the host, would stay engaged.
As Oprah embarked on her final year in broadcast television her friends showered her with honors. Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, asked her to cochair the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Costume Institute Gala Benefit in New York City, the fashion event of the year at which the top table costs $250,000. The evening in May 2010 celebrated American fashion, which is why Wintour said she chose Oprah to be her cochair: “[S]he is the American woman.” Escorted by Oscar de la Renta, Oprah wore a gown he designed for her, which took four people working 150 hours to make.
A few months later, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates chaired the jury that selected Oprah to receive Cleveland’s Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award, usually given to literary figures like Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, and Martin Luther King Jr. Then Maria Shriver announced she would present Oprah with the Minerva Medal, which she created as First Lady of California to honor women “who serve on the front lines of humanity.”
As Oprah gets older, she no longer expends the energy necessary to stay in shape, and she remains seventy-five pounds overweight, sagging into her mother’s genes after years of swearing to fight heredity. In January 2005, Oprah posed for the cover of her magazine looking toned, glowing, and glamorous. Five years later, she had gained forty pounds. This time she posed for the cover looking like a blown-up version of her formerly trim self. “How did I let this happen again?” she asked. “I’m mad at myself. I’m embarrassed. I can’t believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I’m still talking about my weight.” She blamed a faulty thyroid.
The responsibility of her $40 million school in South Africa has also weighed on her, especially as the sex scandals involving a dorm matron and several students dragged through the courts. The publicity surrounding the sordid case was demoralizing, and prompted some to question how anyone, even with Oprah’s vast resources, could take care of three hundred children eighty-seven hundred miles away. Still, she