*On July 30, 2007, Mrs. Esters told the author the name and family background of Oprah's real father on the condition that the information not be published until Vernita Lee tells her daughter the entire story. "And you'll know when that happens because Oprah will probably have a show on Finding Your Real Father. As I said, the girl wastes nothing."

[image]

Oprah's father, Vernon Winfrey, whispering to the author, Kitty Kelley, during their interview in Vernon's barbershop in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 22, 2008.

( Photo Credit: Peter Johnston. Photo Credit: Peter Johnston. ) ) [image]

Katharine Carr Esters, Oprah's cousin, whom she calls "Aunt Katharine," stands with the author outside Seasonings Eatery in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on July 30, 2007.

( Photo Credit: Jewette Battles. Photo Credit: Jewette Battles. ) ) [image]

Hattie Mae Presley Lee (4/15/1900-2/27/63), Oprah's maternal grandmother, who raised her in Kosciusko until she was six years old when she moved to Milwaukee to live with her mother, Vernita Lee.

( Photo Credit: Courtesy of Katharine Carr Esters. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Katharine Carr Esters. ) ) [image]

Oprah at the age of twelve, standing next to her sister, Patricia (6/3/59-2/19/03), seven years old, and her brother, Jeffrey (12/14/60-12/22/89), six years old, outside her Aunt Katharine's house on West Center Street in Milwaukee.

( Photo Credit: Courtesy of Katharine Carr Esters. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Katharine Carr Esters. ) ) [image]

Oprah as a junior at East Nashville High School, April 1970, after winning first place in the State Forensic Tournament. "It's like winning an Academy Award," she told the student newspaper. Oprah represented Tennessee in dramatic compet.i.tion in the National Tournament with a reading from G.o.d's Trombones G.o.d's Trombones by James Weldon Johnson. by James Weldon Johnson.

( Photo Credit: Courtesy of Larry Carpenter. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Larry Carpenter. ) ) [image]

Oprah as Student Body Vice President, East High School, Nashville, Tennessee.

Left to right: Gary Holt, Student Body President; Oprah. Gary Holt, Student Body President; Oprah.

( Photo Credit: Courtesy of Larry Carpenter. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Larry Carpenter. ) ) [image]

Oprah wearing peace symbol earrings in her graduation picture for the yearbook, Cla.s.s of 1971, East Nashville High School.

( Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gary Holt. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Gary Holt. ) ) [image]

The contestants for Miss Black Nashville in June 1972. Left to right: Left to right: Maude Maude Mobley; unknown; Patrice Patton-Price; and the winner Oprah Winfrey, who became Miss Black Tennessee and competed for Miss Black America. "The girl from California won because she stripped," said Oprah, although The New York Times The New York Times made no mention made no mention of the beautiful California singer who won as having performed a striptease.

( Photo Credit: Courtesy of Patrice Patton-Price. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Patrice Patton-Price. ) ) [image]

On Oprah's application for Miss Black Nashville, she signed herself as Oprah Gail Winfrey and stated that she had "never conceived a child," although she had given birth to a little boy she named Vincent Miquelle Lee on February 8, 1969. The baby died March 16, 1969.

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Oprah's father, Vernon Winfrey, seventy-five, standing in front of his barbershop, in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 22, 2008.

( Photo Credit: Peter Johnston. Photo Credit: Peter Johnston. ) ) [image]

Oprah returns to Kosciusko on June 4, 1988, for Oprah Winfrey Day. "This is a real homecoming," she told the 300 people standing on a small portion of dirt road that had been named in her honor. "It is a deeply humbling experience to come back to the place where it all started."

( Photo Credit: Courtesy of Katharine Carr Esters. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Katharine Carr Esters. ) ) [image]

Oprah's mother, Vernita Lee, fifty-three, as she appeared on Oprah Winfrey Day in Kosciusko, Mississippi, where she and Oprah were born in Vernita's parents' home outside the county line. Vernita, who moved to Milwaukee in 1958 during the Great Black Migration, had three children but never married.

( Photo Credit: Courtesy of Katharine Carr Esters. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Katharine Carr Esters. ) ) [image]

Following a bet made with Joan Rivers on The Tonight Show The Tonight Show on January 29, on January 29, 1985, to lose fifteen pounds in six weeks, Oprah has her "last food fling" with her lover at the time, Randolph Cook.

( Photo Credit: Copyright Chicago Tribune (c) [February 6, 1985]. Reprinted Photo Credit: Copyright Chicago Tribune (c) [February 6, 1985]. Reprinted with Permission. All rights reserved. ) ) [image]

Oprah standing at the top of Mt. Cuchama in 1980 at Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico. She began visiting spas at crucial points in her life to get her weight under control. She was at the Heartland Health and Fitness retreat in Gilman, Illinois, in 1985 when she got the call that she had been chosen for the role of Sophia in The Color The Color Purple. "If you lose a pound, you'll lose the role," said the casting director. Oprah left "If you lose a pound, you'll lose the role," said the casting director. Oprah left immediately.

( Photo Credit: (c) Sandy Gibson Photographer. Photo Credit: (c) Sandy Gibson Photographer. ) ) [image]

Roger King (left), chairman of the board of King World, and Joseph Ahern (right), former general manager of WLS-TV, join Oprah at a news conference in Chicago on July 24, 1985, to announce the nationwide syndication of The Oprah Winfrey Show. The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Oprah received a $1 million signing bonus and immediately called her father to announce, "Daddy, I'm a millionaire."

( Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Bennet. Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Bennet. ) ) THE GREAT LOVES OF OPRAH'S LIFE.

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Radio disc jockey Tim Watts and Oprah in Baltimore in 2007, thirty years after their tumultuous love affair. "He was her first real love," said Oprah's sister, Patricia, in 1990.

( Photo Credit: WJZ Channel 13, Baltimore, Maryland. Photo Credit: WJZ Channel 13, Baltimore, Maryland. ) ) [image]

Photocopy of Stedman S. Graham, Jr., from the Fort Worth, Texas, police department. He started as a police academy trainee on January 6, 1975, and graduated three months later as a police officer. He later worked in the Bureau of Prisons.

( Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fort Worth Police Department. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fort Worth Police Department. ) ) [image]

Stedman S. Graham with President George H. W. Bush at a GOP fundraiser in Chicago, on September 26, 1990. Bush is holding a football he signed for the charitable organization Graham founded, Athletes Against Drugs: "A.A.D. Thanks and Best Wishes."

( Photo Credit: Presidential Library of George H.W. Bush. Photo Credit: Presidential Library of George H.W. Bush. ) ) [image]

Oprah with her best friend, Gayle King. The two met in Baltimore at WJZ-TV during the 1970s. Oprah is G.o.dmother to both of King's children.

( Photo Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images. Photo Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images. ) )

Eleven.

OPRAH'S REIGN as America's number one talk show host for more than two decades divides into the early years of 1984 - 1994 and the years that followed. For viewers, the first ten years marked Oprah sleaze, the second ten years, Oprah spirituality, or what Ann Landers told Oprah was her "touchy-feely c.r.a.p." Within the television industry the demarcation is defined by the rise and fall of Oprah's former executive producer Debra DiMaio.

"She is the mother of us all," Oprah said in 1986 when she introduced the hardcharging executive producer to her national audience. "I owe everything to her."

DiMaio smiled and nodded in agreement. "Everything," she said, knowing that DiMaio's audition tape had landed Oprah the job in Chicago that led to her national syndication. "I feel very destined to have met her," DiMaio said later. "I have pretty much unconditional love for her."

DiMaio was the one to whom Oprah confided her fears of being a.s.sa.s.sinated. It was also DiMaio who received her late-night calls to go to Wendy's for sour cream potatoes, and even if she got the call at midnight, DiMaio would throw on a coat, hail a cab waving a twenty-dollar bill, and rush to get to her boss for a late-night binge. The two young women developed a symbiotic relationship that enabled each to complement the other. DiMaio, tough and controlled, was unafraid of confrontation. Oprah, more emotionally needy, wanted to please everyone and be liked. Together they made a perfect pair. In later years the staff would accuse Oprah of playing good cop to Debra's bad cop, a characterization Oprah did not like. But she could not deny that she allowed DiMaio to do all her dirty work (hiring, firing, correcting, criticizing) so she could reign as the beloved monarch. From the recollections of former employees, most of whom were terrified of DiMaio, Debra flew like an F22 fighter jet and treated everyone else as if they were Sopwith Camels. The daughter of a Marine colonel, DiMaio took charge and tolerated little nonsense from anyone, including, on occasion, Oprah. If the talk show host acted less than engaged on the air, Debra would break for a commercial and kick her into shape. During one show she told Oprah to stop showing her boredom. "You're an Oscar-nominated actress," she said. "Go out there and act like a talk show host." They never really clashed because they were both driven by ratings and the desire to dethrone Phil Donahue.

In the early days Oprah referred to her small staff--six women and one man--as "my girls." She sounded like the actress Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, who described her starry-eyed pupils as "my gels." Oprah said of her staff: "These are my closest personal friends."

"We're each other's family," said a.s.sociate producer Bill Rizzo, who frequently urged reporters to be kind to Oprah in their stories.

"We'll be out to dinner and will vow that by this time next month we'll be back with men," said Christine Tardio. "Then the next month rolls around and we're still together."

"We all band together like a family since we don't have anyone else," said Ellen Rakieten. "I talk to Oprah every night on the phone. She says I'm her soul mate."

All single and in their twenties, the "girls" worked fourteen-hour days, ate all their meals together, shopped together, and spent weekends together. They all worshipped Oprah. "I'd take a bullet for her," said Mary Kay Clinton.

"The hardest part of my job, in addition to the terribly long hours, is the reading I have to be continually doing," said Dianne Hudson, the only African American on staff then. "We all read the tabs, like The Star, The Star, the the Globe, Globe, and the and the Enquirer. Enquirer. " "

Alice McGee, who started as an intern at WLS and became a publicist for Harpo and later a producer, worried about people kissing Oprah instead of just hugging her.

"We gotta watch that," she said.

The "girls" were so devoted to Oprah in those days that they were afraid they sounded like Moonies when they talked about her. Some people referred to them as "the Oprah-ettes."

When Oprah took over ownership and production of her nationally syndicated show in 1988, she became CEO of Harpo Productions and started signing their checks.

"Everybody tells me that you cannot have true friendships with people whose salaries you control," she said. "But I just don't think that's true in my case. Because they were my friends before I signed their paychecks. We sort of all grew up together with this show."

Within six years that loving family of best friends was split by discord and death.

They buried Bill Rizzo, who died of AIDS in 1990, and four years later Debra DiMaio, "the mother of us all," was forced to resign following a staff coup in which she was branded as tyrannical. "Either she goes or we go," the producers told Oprah. So Oprah paid DiMaio $3.8 million [$5.5 million in 2009 dollars] to resign in exchange for signing a confidentiality agreement that she would "never speak or publish or in any way reveal"

details about her personal or professional relationship with Oprah. More staff resignations followed, including Oprah's cousin Jo Baldwin, who had been vice president of Harpo, Inc. One employee sued Oprah for $200,000 in severance pay, and another said that "working for her was like working in a snake pit." Oprah settled the lawsuit out of court-quickly and quietly. With the forced resignation of Debra DiMaio in 1994, Oprah decided to back away from the trough of trash television.

"That's when she started getting into celebrities and New Age gurus," said Andy Behrman, a publicist who had worked closely with the show. "Before that it was heaven for me, because I could book anyone on Oprah, absolutely anyone."

The publicist's claim seemed preposterous given the numerous books, articles, and websites (28,100 by 2009) dedicated to getting on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, but but even Oprah admitted having to do on-air promotions to get guests in the early days and to drag audiences off the street. "Now getting a ticket to the show is like winning the lottery," said a staffer in 2005. By then Oprah's production company was receiving thousands of phone calls each week requesting tickets to the show.

"In the early years her show was easy to book because she and her little girls' club didn't know what the h.e.l.l they were doing," said Behrman. "They were all young with hay behind their ears--unsophisticated small-town, small-time girls just trying to find husbands....Don't forget that Oprah's first national show [September 9, 1986] was ent.i.tled 'How to Marry the Man of Your Choice,' which should tell you something."

Reminded that the "girls" were producing a number one-rated television talk show in syndication, the publicist maintained that "Oprah's sorority" merely slapped together local shows for national consumption on a daily basis. "For the most part her early years were devoted to tabloid s.e.x trash that got huge ratings," he said, "and shows about getting a man and keeping a man, and, of course, losing weight, because that's all she and her little cult really cared about. Unlike Phil Donahue, they didn't know anything about current affairs, politics, or the larger world around them, and they didn't care."

A survey conducted by the Harvard Business School of topics covered in the first six years Oprah went national showed that she concentrated primarily on victims: rape victims, families of kidnapping victims, victims of physical and emotional abuse, teenage victims of alcoholism, female victims of workaholism, obsessive love, and childhood wounds. She also covered therapy for husbands, wives, and mistresses; infidelity among traveling businessmen; and the worlds of UFOs, tarot cards, channelers, and other psychic phenomena.

"Oprah's shows back then, and even now," said Andy Behrman in 2009, "are all about Oprah and her issues....Back then it was all victims all the time, plus boys, clothes, and diets. Now that Oprah is going through menopause her show has become a way station for middle-aged women with PMS. It's all about health and hormones. When I was in my Oprah Oprah-booking prime I worked with Ellen Rakieten, who I'd talk to almost every day. I became her go-to guy in New York City, which was another planet for those girls. And Los Angeles? Forget it. That was an alternative universe. Most of them had never even been to Europe. They thought they'd hit the big time when they moved to Chicago and started shopping at Marshall Field. They loved to shop, but they were dull gray dumplings with no sense of style. Their idea of chic was an Ann Taylor dress, a little Echo scarf, black patent leather heels, and some plastic b.u.t.ton earrings. Pathetic. They couldn't stay on diets, so they started going to spas....Oh, the stories of Oprah and the girls at the fat farm...That's how I got all my diet-book clients on the show. I threw them Suzy Prudden and Blair Sabol--G.o.d, Oprah loved Blair because she was so smart and funny. She must've booked her three or four times. I even got the late Dr. Stuart Berger on Oprah Oprah to talk about dieting and--G.o.d help us--he weighed 350 pounds at the time. No to talk about dieting and--G.o.d help us--he weighed 350 pounds at the time. No matter who my client was, I simply pegged my pitches to Oprah's obsessions with getting a man or buying clothes or losing weight. Sometimes I had to stretch, but it always worked....Most of my clients got on one, two, and three times, especially my plastic surgeons, diet doctors, and shrinks, some of whom were out-and-out frauds. Once I got them on Oprah, Oprah, I could always book them on I could always book them on Sally Jessy Raphael, Sally Jessy Raphael, who picked up all of who picked up all of Oprah's crumbs."

Tall, handsome, and devilishly clever, the publicist said he became a regular booker for Oprah's show for several years. "With the exception of Debbie DiMaio, who cracked a mean whip, those girls didn't know what was good and what was bad, which made it easy for me. I even booked my best female friend on the show, to talk about the pick-up lines guys use to get girls. I did that just to prove to her I could get anyone on Oprah. I was so close in those days that I was invited to Ellen Rakieten's wedding, where I was so close in those days that I was invited to Ellen Rakieten's wedding, where I stood with Oprah and Stedman and Rosie, the chef. Boy, was that a lifetime ago....

"Early on, Ellen told me the sorority was worried about some guy dating Oprah for her money, and so I immediately suggested doing a show on gold diggers.

" 'Oh, that's great,' Ellen said. 'But how do we do it?'

" 'You get a guy like my client, who has written a book on neuro-linguistic programming, and he'll be able to tell you who is after money and who isn't based on scientific research....I'll give you the questions Oprah can ask him and then she can take some prescreened questions from her audience, which I'll send to you. Then you get a panel and blah, blah, blah.' By the end of the conversation I had laid out the entire show for her.

"Now, of course, there's no science to determine whether or not someone is a gold digger, but I had to get my client on a national show, because I didn't want to drag him around on a fourteen-city book promotion tour. Who needs Good Morning Cincinnati Good Morning Cincinnati and h.e.l.lo Peoria h.e.l.lo Peoria when you can do when you can do The Oprah Winfrey Show The Oprah Winfrey Show?"

That gold-digging show was not an unqualified success for the author, who recalled the experience as "terrifying, not terrific." "I had written a book ent.i.tled Instant Instant Rapport on neuro-linguistic programming, which had to do with how you verbally on neuro-linguistic programming, which had to do with how you verbally influence people," recalled Michael Brooks. "I was given the whole show--one hour with just me and Oprah--to talk about 'Secret Admirers,' which is how they spun the subject to dumb it down for her audience. I wasn't in any position to object, as this was my first national show.

"The Oprah that I met back in the 1980s was vastly different from the Oprah you see on television today. Back then, she was very dark-skinned--Sidney Poitier dark--and now she's very light-skinned. I know that makeup and lighting can do a lot, but I think she might've had some kind of skin bleaching...like Michael Jackson.

"The audience was interested in my subject--to a point--but when I lost them, I lost Oprah. She'd jump over to their side and belittle me if I made a dumb point. If I made a good point and the audience clapped, she'd jump back to my side. It was unnerving."

Even after an hour on Oprah, Oprah, his book did not become a bestseller. "It did well, his book did not become a bestseller. "It did well, but it didn't make the list," he said.

"You had to get your book up to Oprah's b.r.e.a.s.t.s to become a bestseller," said the writer Blair Sabol. "Our publicist's rule was if she holds it in her lap, you'd make the list in two weeks. If she holds it at her waist, you'd be on in a week. If she clutches it to her bosom, you're headed for number one. So, naturally, we all aimed for Oprah's b.o.o.bs."

In the early days, guests were allowed to sit and talk to Oprah as she was being made up before the show. "I was mesmerized by her hair and makeup guys," said Sabol.

"They were nothing short of miracle workers, because Oprah without hair and makeup is a pretty scary sight. But once her prep people do their magic she becomes super glam....They narrow her nose and thin her lips with three different liners. They shade her large round cheeks, contour her chin with some kind of glowing stuff, and apply doubledecker eyelashes that cost five hundred dollars apiece...and her hair. Well, I can't even begin to describe the wonders they perform with her hair.

"Those guys--Reggie and Roosevelt and Andre--have been with her from the beginning, and she takes them everywhere she goes. I would, too. In fact, I'd ditch Stedman and Gayle before I ever let those prep guys go."

Perhaps because of Oprah's need for daily makeovers, she was susceptible to guests who were attractive and natural. With her arresting good looks and witty repartee, Blair Sabol was easy to book. "She was not like Marianne Williamson, who always wanted to take over the show from Oprah," said Behrman. "Blair was lively enough to keep it going and entertain Oprah....I booked her for a show on 'Being a b.i.t.c.h,' in which she appeared with Queen Latifah, and she was very funny. When I got Blair on with her book, The Body of America, The Body of America, in 1987, Richard Simmons got his panties in a knot because in 1987, Richard Simmons got his panties in a knot because Blair had written that Simmons found 'a way to reduce fitness to a Vegas stand-up comic routine.' She put down the national obsession with diet and exercise, and was way ahead of the curve on that one."

After several sit-downs with Oprah before, during, and after her shows, Blair Sabol came to see the difference between the on-camera persona and the off-air presence.

"Oprah gives it all to the camera, so there's very little left over. In person she's shut down, aloof, a bit standoffish. She likes to laugh, but she's not really funny. I liked her because she was a girl's girl. Seeing her on television, though, you think she's warm and affectionate, but that's the persona. There's a sheet of ice between the person and the persona." The author Paxton Quigley also found Oprah cold off-camera. "I went on her show with my pro-gun book, Not an Easy Target, Not an Easy Target, but her producers said I couldn't but her producers said I couldn't mention guns because Oprah is against guns. I was only allowed to talk about selfdefense for women, so that's what I did....I was surprised that I did not like Oprah at all.

She only came to life when the camera was on; otherwise, she ignored me. That kind of treatment makes you feel so diminished. You realize that she's using you, but then that's why you're there--it's a mutual using, but I think guests expect her to be like the warm and cozy Oprah they see on the air. She isn't--at all."

Oprah's executive producer from her People Are Talking People Are Talking years in Baltimore years in Baltimore explained the difference between Oprah on-and off-camera as an element of performance. "I'd say this about most on-air talent," said Eileen Solomon, now a professor of broadcast journalism at Webster University in St. Louis. "They save their best stuff for the camera, and that's how it was with Oprah. Off the air she was much quieter. Pleasant and perfectly collegial, but in no way effusive."

Occasionally the audience gets a glimpse of the two different Oprahs, which can be unsettling for those who expect a warm, huggy presence off-camera. "I attended a makeover show several years ago, and during the commercial break the charming Oprah became charmless," recalled Peggy Furth, a former Kellogg executive and now co-owner of the Chalk Hill Vineyards in California. "Oprah did not enjoy those of us in the audience in any way, until the camera went back on. Then she was terrific. Engaging and funny, but but only on-camera." only on-camera."

Most viewers found the chemistry between Oprah and her guests to favor women over men, especially those with an issue she shared. "Because she was obsessed with losing weight, I booked Suzy Prudden, with her book MetaFitness, MetaFitness, which was some kind which was some kind of mumbo jumbo about using your mind to change your body through guided imagery and hypnosis," said Behrman. "Oprah fell for that one hook, line, and sinker....Suzy had already done Oprah a few times in Baltimore, with People Are Talking, People Are Talking, and then and then A.M. A.M.

Chicago, so she wasn't such a tough sell for the national show." so she wasn't such a tough sell for the national show."

Suzy Prudden's appearance on Oprah Oprah was so successful that one of the tabloids was so successful that one of the tabloids offered her a weekly column, in which she was promoted as "Oprah's diet guru."

"I became persona non grata after that," Prudden said years later. "Oprah was furious at me, and rightfully so, although I wasn't responsible for advertising myself that way....I apologized and apologized, but it did no good. She never spoke to me again....It was a horrible experience....At first I was highly regarded by Oprah, and then I was dirt....It wasn't that she said anything or screamed and yelled....It was that the door once open to me was closed and it never opened again....It was one of the worst experiences in my life."

The publicist, too, fell out of favor, which he attributed to "my troubles with the law" (a felony conviction for defrauding an art dealer). After serving five months in prison and five months house arrest, Behrman went back into public relations but was no longer able to book clients on Oprah's show. "I can't even get through to a secretary of the secretary of the secretary," he said with a laugh. "But it was a good run while it lasted."

The closing of Oprah's door wounded others who found themselves suddenly banned without explanation. Mark Mathabane, who wrote Kaffir Boy in America, Kaffir Boy in America, appeared on her show in 1987 to discuss his memoir about growing up in South Africa under the barbaric system of apartheid. Oprah told reporters she had found the book in paperback. "It went from the sale table to Number 5 on The New York Times The New York Times best-seller best-seller list, and I know it was because of being on my show that the book made the list," she said. Moved by his story, she befriended the young man, flew his family from South Africa the following year for a reunion on her show, and even accompanied him to the airport to meet them with a film crew. As she said, her support made Mathabane's book a bestseller in paperback for thirteen weeks, reaching as high as number three. She invited the author and his wife to parties, optioned the film rights to his book, and announced that Kaffir Boy would be one of Harpo's first film productions. "She is the most would be one of Harpo's first film productions. "She is the most compa.s.sionate human being I've ever met," said Mathabane. Then the door suddenly closed without explanation or avenue for apology. Oprah did not renew her option for Kaffir Boy, and she never spoke to the writer again. and she never spoke to the writer again.

"I remember very strongly the sense of hurt and confusion his wife exuded," said a New York editor after meeting Mark Mathabane and his wife, Gail Ernsberger. "She understood that they had done something to offend Oprah, but it was relatively minor. I can't remember if it was asking for a book blurb or talking to a magazine. What Gail seemed so blindsided by was that someone who had been so helpful, so involved with her husband's life, could suddenly cut him off without a word of explanation."

Oprah does not slam her door in fury, but rather with chilling resolve. Even those who have tried to help her have been shut out. When Eppie Lederer, the renowned advice columnist known as Ann Landers, heard some distressing stories about Stedman's s.e.xual preferences that made Oprah look foolish, she called her in confidence. Eppie had befriended Oprah when she first arrived in Chicago and appeared on her show many times, occasionally at the last minute to fill in for no-show guests. Oprah lavished her with luxurious gifts, but once Eppie told her the stories about her boyfriend, Oprah closed the door. "That was the end of the cashmere bathrobes and Judith Leiber bags at Christmas," said Lederer's daughter Margo Howard. Decades later, when Lederer died, her daughter published a book of letters from her famous mother, but Oprah refused to have Margo on the show to promote it. "I couldn't understand it, because Mother was a beloved figure, especially in Chicago, and her audience was Oprah's audience, but Oprah just wasn't going to do it because she, apparently, was still mad. A grudge unto the next generation."

Orlando Patterson, the distinguished John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard, also ran afoul of Oprah after writing an op-ed in The New York Times The New York Times criticizing criticizing her production of There Are No Children Here There Are No Children Here for ABC television as a "tendentious, for ABC television as a "tendentious, dishonest dramatization of Alex Kotlowitz's book." Professor Patterson upbraided Oprah for distorting the real-life account of ghetto life in Chicago and perpetuating "the black establishment's dogma of victimization." Oprah stopped speaking to him.

The photographer Victor Skrebneski experienced a similar shutout and told friends he had no idea why. After seeing Oprah around town at various parties, he finally asked, "Why did our professional relationship end?" She shot him a look and hissed, "Black lipstick. You are the one who told me to wear black lipstick."