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On or off the screen, Oprah is a storyteller. A dialogue with her is mesmerizing,
energizing and edifying.
Oprah was born in the year of Brown vs. the
Board of Education. 1954 was a significant year -- it meant the desegregation
of schools and the opportunity for learning. Oprah says it was a lucky year. For
her it meant access to the kind of books that other children, white children,
had been exposed to. Reading let her know that there was a world beyond the front
porch in Mississippi where she was born. During her years of growing up with her
father in Nashville, one of her greatest moments, she recalls, was the day |
she got her library card. Reading, which to some is a matter
of fact, to a black girl born in 1954, was a moment of freedom which she has honored
with the logo for her company, Harpo. It is a young girl with pigtails sitting
on a porch on a rocking chair reading a book.
The magic of reading also
manifested itself in promoting books on her show, which was encouraged by her
producer. She thought it would be suicide, but she did it. The response was overwhelming
and that was another great moment. It was a moment of coming to grips with herself
and practicing what she preaches. On her shows Oprah encourages women to liberate
themselves, as she liberated herself from the dictates of television. She discovered
that when she threw caution to the wind she inspired thousands of men and women
to rediscover the lost art of reading, a privilege she never took for granted.
That was not the only time Oprah defied the odds and maintained her
integrity. She decided years ago and told her producers that she had had it with
mascara tips, the best in toll house cookies and flying in men from Alaska and
matching them with women from New York for New Year's Eve.
Now she is
liberated, not caught up in the trappings of wealth or ratings. She wants to be
genuine and is very critical of program managers who claim to care about people
yet allow shows in the middle of the afternoon (when children can view) that are
“vulgar, vile and disgusting.” She wants to hold fast to her role
in life under the sun.
She sees herself as a black woman who started
out trying to do her best. One day, when she was 16, she heard Jesse Jackson speak
at her school auditorium. He was saying excellence is the best deterrent to racism
and the best deterrent to sexism. She took that to heart.
Indeed she
excelled in whatever she did in her talk show and acting career. She reminisces
about her first role in The Color Purple in 1985 for which she was nominated for
an Academy Award. She recounts “I didn’t have a clue. I just did not
have a clue. My very first day on the set I thought I was going to get thrown
out of the movie. That was because I had come from television where you walk out
and you look in the camera. I was going now he hates me, now he knows I don’t
know what I’m doing.”
She explains further, “I had
always wanted to be an actress but I was hung up on the word ‘act.’
I thought how do you act. Instinctively I knew you had to find a way to tell the
truth, so I was saying ‘but acting, that means pretending’, so how
do you act and pretend and tell the truth at the same time.”
Although
she considered herself a failure as an actress, this first time role for the determined
Oprah provided a challenge for her to overcome. She elaborates, “One night
I was crying in my hotel room because I wasn’t able to execute crying on
cue when Steven Spielberg had asked me to. I’m always crying over everybody
else’s scenes so he’d asked me when we turn the camera around, can
you do it? And I was sure, I’ll do it, but didn’t have the skill at
the time to do it so I was crying in my hotel room that night. The late Adolph
Caesar heard me crying and came over and said what you making all this damn noise
for and I was explaining to him that I felt like such a failure; that Steven Spielberg
was going to throw me out of this movie because I couldn’t do what he asked
me to do... this was my greatest acting lesson.”
Distraught over
her acting difficulty, she remembers the words of Caesar. “He said, ‘you’re
trying to force the character. You need to learn to give yourself over to the
character. Let the character take control and if she wants to cry, she will and
if she doesn’t, not even Steven Spielberg can make her cry,’ and that
changed me. The whole movie changed for me after that.”
She acted
on his words and played the role. “I learned to become the vessel, allowed
myself to be the vehicle so Steven never really gave me any direction and I was
terrified. Not until the premiere, did he compliment me and I said I was terrified
every day and you never said anything to me. He said, ‘I saw your terror
and I thought it was working for you so I decided not to do anything about it.’
I said, You tell me that when the movie’s over?”
Oprah, the
independent producer, is continuing the tradition started by Oscar Micheaux with
her Oprah Winfrey Presents for ABC. She can continue enriching us with her allure
and charisma. That she was born in 1954 is one of history’s gifts. Otherwise
she may have been relegated to the roles of Hattie MacDaniel and Louise Beaver
or the tragic careers of Nina Mae McKinny and Dorothy Dandridge. Her predecessors
never had a chance but they opened the doors for the likes of Oprah Winfrey who
live to exonerate their memories and showcase their talents. What might have been
if her predecessors had the chance? Talents forever gone. | |
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