Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [4]
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 compass and penetrate the myth in order to answer the eternal question: What’s she 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.
KITTY KELLEY
March 2010
www.KittyKelleyWriter.com
FREE SPEECH NOT ONLY LIVES, IT ROCKS. (photo credit 1)
—OPRAH WINFREY
February 26, 1998
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.… 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. “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 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