Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [75]
What looked arrogant in print sounded only slightly less so in person, as Oprah’s rich voice and commanding size transfixed listeners while she communicated the kind of self-assuredness only a fool would question. Yet when she leavened self-importance with self-deprecation, she was winning and wonderful.
In the days leading up to Oscar night, she joked with her audiences about having to lose weight and find a gown to camouflage “a behind as big as a boat.” At a public appearance in Baltimore she showed up in a $10,000 full-length fox coat dyed purple and a purple sequined gown showing massive cleavage. “I’m dieting now. Can’t you tell?” she joked. “Thinner thighs by Oscar night. Thinner thighs by Oscar night. That’s what I keep telling myself.”
Despite mixed reviews, The Color Purple received eleven Academy Award nominations, including one for Whoopi Goldberg as Best Actress, and two for Oprah and Margaret Avery as Best Supporting Actress, but nothing for Spielberg as Best Director. This caused considerable comment because no director of a movie with that many nominations had ever been ignored. On top of that insult was an angry backlash from the black community, which threatened to doom the film’s commercial success. The Coalition Against Black Exploitation boycotted The Color Purple because of its depiction of black men, and the uproar of rancorous debate prompted picket lines at the premieres in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Steven Spielberg was denounced for turning a complex novel into patty-cake and purple flowers. Quincy Jones was slammed for selecting a white director to tell a black story, and Alice Walker was blasted for portraying black men as beasts to white audiences.
Few movies up to that time had caused such rabid racial reactions. Columnists and radio talk shows focused on the controversy, historical black colleges sponsored forums and seminars, and black churches across the country filled with passionate debate. The biggest outcry came from African American men who felt defiled by the film.
“It is very dangerous,” said Leroy Clark, a law professor at Catholic University. “The men [in the film] are raping, committing incest, speaking harshly, separating people from their families.… It reinforces the notion of black men as beasts.”
The cast rushed to the film’s defense, including Oprah, whose excellent performance was untouched by the public vitriol. “This movie is not trying to represent the history of black people in this country any more than The Godfather was trying to represent the history of Italian Americans,” she said.
“The Color Purple in no way identifies itself as the story of all black men,” said Danny Glover, one of its male stars. “This is just this woman’s story.”
After receiving the Golden Globe for Best Actress, Whoopi Goldberg dismissed the protesters as “pissy.”
The respected film critic Roger Ebert declared The Color Purple the best film of 1985, but when he viewed it again twenty years later, even he admitted “that the movie is single-minded in its conviction that African-American women are strong, brave, true and will endure, but African-American men are weak, cruel or comic caricatures.” Still, he found humanity in the story of how Celie endures and finally finds hope.
Oscar night arrived, but without thinner thighs for Oprah. In fact, she said it took four people laying her on the floor to pull her dress on her, and at the end of the evening they had to scissor it off. “It was the worst night of my life.… I sat in that gown all night and I couldn’t breathe. I was afraid the seams were gonna bust.” When Lionel Richie appeared on her talk show later, he said she had looked nervous at the Oscars. “I’m telling you, there aren’t many black faces at the Oscars,” she said. “So when you walk through the door,