Winfrey, Oprah

Source:

 African American National Biography

Winfrey, Oprah

(29 Jan. 1954– ),

talk show host, actor, and entrepreneur, was born Oprah Gail Winfrey in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to eighteen-year- old Vernita Lee, and Vernon Winfrey, a twenty-year-old soldier. Vernita intended to call the baby “Orpah,” after the biblical figure, but accepted “Oprah” when the name was misspelled by a clerk. Shortly after her daughter's birth, Vernita left Mississippi for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, leaving her newborn under the watchful eye of Oprah's paternal grandparents, Hattie Mae Bullock and Earless Lee, who were pig farmers. In 1960 Oprah went to Milwaukee to join her mother, who was working as a maid and who had given birth to a second daughter, Patricia. Another child, Jeffrey, followed a few years later, and Vernita struggled to support herself and her three young children. Bright and precocious, Oprah skipped several grades in elementary school but, despite her siblings and her early academic achievements, she felt the same loneliness and isolation she had experienced in Mississippi. Her outlet became performing and public speaking. Oprah spent fourth grade with her father and his wife, Zelma, in Nashville, Tennessee, but returned to Milwaukee after the school year ended.

The traumatic events of the next several years had lifelong consequences. Vernita's Milwaukee apartment was increasingly crowded with visitors and, at one point, Oprah shared her bed with a fourteen-year-old cousin who sexually molested her. Shortly after, she was sexually abused by her father's brother. Behavioral problems soon surfaced, and while she was performing well academically—she won a scholarship to an all-white high school in suburban Milwaukee—Oprah's behavior became increasingly rebellious. By age fourteen, she was running away and stealing from her mother, and she had become sexually promiscuous. Failing to get her daughter admitted to a home for wayward teens, Vernita sent Oprah to live with Vernon and Zelma Winfrey in Nashville. A few months after her arrival, Oprah gave birth to a son, who died several weeks after delivery. She has never revealed the name of the father.

Vernon and Zelma, who had no children of their own, insisted on Oprah's obedience. Oprah, or Gail as she was known in high school, thrived under her father's strict discipline and high expectations. She excelled in school, made friends, was elected senior class president, and got a part-time job reading the news at WVOL, a predominantly black local radio station. In 1971 Oprah graduated from Nashville High School and won a local beauty pageant, Miss Fire Prevention, after which she enrolled at Tennessee State University. While in college she worked evenings at WTVF-TV in Nashville.

In 1976, several credits shy of graduation, Winfrey left Tennessee State for a job anchoring the evening news at WJZ-TV, Baltimore's ABC affiliate. Promoting their new hire, the station peppered billboards with the question, “What's an Oprah?” WJZ management itself wasn't quite sure, and attempted a makeover, sending Winfrey to a voice coach and to a salon, where she lost her hair to a botched permanent. Having arrived with little technical training and virtually no journalistic background or education, Winfrey was ill prepared for the constraints of objective news reporting. Within a year, she was moved off the news desk to People Are Talking, a morning talk show where she could practice her more emotional and subjective journalistic style. In this format, Winfrey found her niche. She remained as co-host of the show until 1983, when she was hired as host of A. M. Chicago at WLS-TV, Chicago's ABC affiliate. Within months A. M. Chicago's ratings surpassed those of the popular The Phil Donahue Show. Winfrey had turned a faltering show into a hit.

In 1985 A. M. Chicago was expanded from a half-hour to a one-hour format and re-launched as The Oprah Winfrey Show. That same year Winfrey starred with Danny Glover and Whoopi Goldberg in Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple, earning both Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. Winfrey's meteoric rise began in 1986 when The Oprah Winfrey Show went into national syndication. Within six months the show was the highest-rated talk show and the third-highest-rated program in syndication. Within a decade, twenty-four talk shows had followed The Oprah Winfrey Show into national syndication.

Winfrey's syndication deal placed her in charge of her own public relations, an indication of her savvy approach. Indeed, news stories from the mid-1980s set the tone for much of Winfrey's future press coverage, highlighting her ease on camera and her open, hands-on approach with guests and audiences. Reports also focused on the biographical details of her life, including revelations of sexual abuse, issues with regard to her weight, and the influence of such role models as Sojourner Truth and Madame C. J. Walker. Proof that Winfrey's celebrity was solidifying came in December 1986 when she was interviewed by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes. Her cameo appearance in Throw Momma from the Train in 1987 was the first of several films in which she played herself.

Winfrey formed Harpo Productions (Oprah spelled backwards) in 1986 and acquired ownership of The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1988, the same year she was named broadcaster of the year by the International Television and Radio Society. Harpo Entertainment Group, chaired by Winfrey and headquartered in an 88,000-square-foot production facility, now includes production, film, video, and print divisions. In 1989 Winfrey combined her talents by producing and starring in The Women of Brewster Place, a television movie based on the book by Gloria Naylor, and about which the New York Times commented, “There hadn't been this kind of assembly of black actors for any TV productions since Roots” (12 Mar. 1989). Under the umbrella “Oprah Winfrey Presents,” Winfrey has produced, and occasionally starred in, the television movies There Are No Children Here (1993); Before Women Had Wings (1997); David and Lisa (1998), starring Sidney Poitier; The Wedding (1998), based on the novel by Dorothy West; Tuesdays with Morrie (1999); and Amy and Isabelle (2001).

In 1998 Winfrey returned to the silver screen in Jonathan Demme's film adaptation of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize–winning 1987 book Beloved. Winfrey, who produced the film, starred as Sethe, opposite Beah Richards and Danny Glover. “What I love about the story of Beloved,” Winfrey wrote in her 1998 book Journey to Beloved, “is that it allows you to feel what slavery was like; it doesn't just intellectually show you the picture” (19).

Despite her various projects, The Oprah Winfrey Show remains the heart of Winfrey's empire. The highest-rated talk show for eighteen consecutive seasons, it has earned thirty-five Emmy Awards. Each week 21 million American viewers watch the show, which is broadcast in 109 countries. Twenty-five thousand letters arrive at the Harpo offices each week, and the show earns $260 million a year in advertising sales.

Statistics only hint at the range and depth of Winfrey's influence on American culture. Through programs showcasing “real people” discussing heretofore “private” issues before a live audience, Winfrey and her many imitators changed both popular debates and private attitudes by introducing such new or previously ignored topics as women's empowerment, talk therapy, and new age self-help into the mainstream. Because of Winfrey, these revolutions were televised and, certainly, altered as a result. It seemed that the personal stories and voices of everyday Americans, especially women, were being heard for the first time. The show also engendered a revolution in television itself, changing syndication and advertising patterns, expanding the role of women in the medium, and bringing about the explosion of talk-television, which paved the way for “women's programming,” celebrity brand-naming, and reality, home, and how-to TV. From the beginning, Winfrey's unique approach to broadcasting, drawing on forerunners such as Donahue and Barbara Walters, rested on her success with on-air guests and audience members. Winfrey's wit and easy, conversational style, along with her empathetic manner, endeared her to audiences. “She's like the one friend you trust,” explained a woman waiting in line at The Oprah Winfrey Show, “the one you know has good taste” (Los Angeles Times, 9 Mar. 1997).

Oprah Winfrey relaxes in her studio office following a morning broadcast in Chicago, Illinois, 18 December 1985. (AP Images.)

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Winfrey has both fomented and served Americans' growing interest in celebrity and good taste, consistently booking top musicians, Hollywood stars, politicians, television personalities, and cultural figures on her show. Notable black figures, such as Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Bill Cosby, and Maya Angelou were celebrated and placed on equal footing with white stars. Such was the power of Winfrey's show that an on-air appearance often catapulted ordinary guests into the realm of minor celebrity.

Over the years, Winfrey transformed herself from a poor, female, and overweight outsider to the ultimate insider—rich, powerful, popular, and connected. Worldwide audiences are kept abreast of her lavish lifestyle (she owns several homes, including a $50 million estate in Montecito, California) and the machinations of her private life, especially her long-time romantic relationship with businessman Stedman Graham Jr. Tabloid reports also chronicled her often tumultuous family relationships, stemming in part from her sister's revelations of Oprah's past, and Oprah's rift with her brother, who died of AIDS in 1989.

Winfrey features two Oprah personas on her show. “Celebrity Oprah” gives audiences behind-the-scenes access to her life and celebrity friends, albeit in a carefully selected way. In 2002 she began airing a daily half-hour show, Oprah after the Show. “Everyday Oprah,” however, struggles with the same problems as her audience. Issues of importance to Winfrey off-air, chiefly topics relating to weight, body image, and self-esteem, are consistent themes on-air. Winfrey's 15 November 1988 show, during which she revealed how she lost sixty-seven pounds on a liquid diet, won a 16.4 rating. Winfrey soon regained weight, and she shared that fact with audiences. In the early 1990s she hired a chef and a trainer and lost seventy pounds. Winfrey parlayed her weight-loss success into a minor industry, beginning with the 1996 publication of Make the Connection: Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life.

Most pointedly with her popular—and legally trademarked—segments “Get with the Program,” “Remembering Your Spirit,” and “Change Your Life TV,” Winfrey uses her show as a forum for group therapy, but also as a bully pulpit. Most significantly, she took on the issues of child and sexual abuse, revealing on-air in 1990 that she had been molested as a child. The following year, she testified before Congress in support of the National Child Protection Act, which established a national database of convicted child abusers. “Oprah's Bill,” as the legislation came to be known, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

Winfrey, who chairs the Oprah Winfrey Foundation and the Oprah Winfrey Scholars Program, brought her philanthropic endeavors to the air with the establishment of Oprah's Angel Network in 1997. When she asked viewers to send in their spare change, the show raised $3.5 million. The Angel Network went on to raise a total of $12 million and established the “Use Your Life Award,” which provides $100,000 to individuals whose work benefits the broader community. Recently, Winfrey has shown a new interest in Africa, establishing Christmas Kindness South Africa 2002, and donating $10 million to build the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls South Africa, about which she told TV Guide, “I'm going to teach classes in leadership and life lessons from Chicago via satellite. I am all about girl power!” (4 Oct. 2003).

One measure of her influence was seen in 1996 when Winfrey remarked off-the-cuff during a show on mad cow disease, “It has just stopped me cold from eating another hamburger.” After what the plaintiffs dubbed the “Oprah crash of 1996,” which saw cattle prices plummet, a group of Texas cattle ranchers sued her. In 1998, following a jury's ruling in her favor, Time magazine wrote, “The winner's Oprah. She's the most powerful woman in the United States. Laws be damned” (12 Jan. 1998).

If her criticism could send a market into decline, Winfrey's recommendation could also send a stock soaring. Such was the case with Oprah's Book Club, launched in 1996. Each of the book selections became instant best-sellers. In recognition of her unprecedented influence on the publishing industry, Winfrey was presented with the National Book Foundation's Fiftieth Anniversary Gold Medal.

Winfey has evolved from television personality to celebrity to media mogul to synergistic pioneer. In addition to the relationship between Oprah's Book Club and Harpo Productions, which owns the rights to many of the books selected, Winfrey has introduced a host of projects with the “Oprah” brand name. In 1995 “Oprah Online,” a collaboration with AOL, debuted. Three years later she cofounded Oxygen Media Inc., a cable network offering shows inspired by The Oprah Winfrey Show material. Another outgrowth of the show, the syndicated series The Dr. Phil Show, was launched in 2002. In 2000 Winfrey expanded into a new medium with the wildly successful O, The Oprah Magazine, copublished with Hearst Magazines. Winfrey owns a stake in Granite Broadcasting, a media company that owns eleven television stations. In 1999 Winfrey brought her entrepreneurial lessons into the classroom, coteaching “Dynamics of Leadership” with Stedman Graham at the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Winfrey's major honors include a George Foster Peabody Individual Achievement Award, Lifetime Achievement and Bob Hope Humanitarian Award Emmys from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and an International Radio and Television Society Foundation Gold Medal award. In 2003 Forbes magazine disclosed that Winfrey, the world's richest entertainer after Steven Spielberg, had become the first African American woman billionaire. Winfrey constantly tops lists of the most influential, popular, or powerful people in America. As Fran Lebowitz told Time magazine in 1996, “Oprah is probably the greatest media influence on the adult population. She is almost a religion” (17 June 1996).

For years on her talk show Winfrey had given audience members generous gifts, often distributed in gift bags and hidden under their seats. An extravagant September 2004 giveaway turned into a public relations disaster when Winfrey gave each of the 276 members of her studio audience a new car. Because the cars were technically prizes and not gifts, the audience members, who had all been selected for that episode because of difficult circumstances in their lives, were responsible for paying as much as $7,000 in taxes on the cars.

In 2004, 2005, and 2006 Time magazine included Winfrey on its 100 Most Influential People in the World list. She was also named to the NAACP Hall of Fame in 2005.

Oprah's Book Club, having focused solely on fiction since it began in 1996, introduced its first work of contemporary nonfiction in 2005: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. After a Web site called The Smoking Gun revealed parts of the memoir about the author's struggle with drug addiction to be fabricated, Winfrey publicly chastised Frey in a face-to-face interview on her show, telling him that he had “duped” her and millions of readers. As a result of the controversy, the book's publishers, including Random House, which had initially rejected Frey's book when he had shopped it as a work of fiction, publicly stated that future editions of the book would be issued with a disclaimer acknowledging that portions of the book were not factual.

Winfrey was profiled on PBS's February 2006 special African American Lives, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s exploration of the ancestry of nine prominent African Americans, including musician Quincy Jones, comedian Whoopi Goldberg, and Gates himself. The interest generated in Winfrey's background by African American Lives led to the follow-up special Oprah's Roots in January 2007, in which genealogical and scientific research turned up Winfrey's descent from the Kpelle people of Liberia.

That same month the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls opened in Henley-on-Klip, South Africa. Over five years, Winfrey used $40 million of her own fortune to fund the school, located near Johannesburg. The 152 seventh- and eighth-grade girls of the inaugural class, all from impoverished backgrounds across South Africa, were personally selected by Winfrey to attend the school based on what she determined was their future leadership potential.

In May 2007, during an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live, Winfrey endorsed Democratic senator Barack Obama in his run for president. Winfrey, who for many years had denied any political aspirations of her own, had never before publicly endorsed a candidate in any election.

More than a household name, or even a brand name, Oprah has become part of American language itself, as critics write about the “Oprahization” or “Oprahfication” of American culture. Although she will continue to appear each day on television, at least through the 2007–2008 season, she can rarely be found in front of a small screen; Winfrey rarely watches television, complaining, “It promotes false values” (Life, Sept. 1997).

In May 2011, after 25 years, the final episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show aired.

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