Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi) is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the United States, best known for her empire which spawned from a massively successful talk show.
An African American woman born to humble beginnings—her unmarried teenage parents were a housemaid, Vernita Lee , and a soldier, Vernon Winfrey . Her birth certificate has Orpah, after the Moabite woman in the Book of Ruth of the Bible, but family and neighbors transposed the R and the P when pronouncing and writing her name. Eventually, Oprah became the accepted name.
Winfrey began her career in broadcasting at age 19. She was both the youngest news anchor and the first African-American female news anchor at Nashville's WTVF-TV. She moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV to co-anchor the six o'clock news. She was then recruited to join Richard Sher as co-host of WJZ's local talk show, People Are Talking.
In 1985, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to take over as host of WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago. The show was so successful with Winfrey as host that less than one year later, it was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to an hour, and debuted nationally. Originally, the show followed traditional talk show formats. By the mid 1990s, however, the format became more serious, addressing issues that Winfrey thought were of direct importance and of crucial consequence to women. Winfrey began to do a lot of charity work, and her show featured people suffering from poverty or the victims of unfortunate accidents.
Winfrey has often discussed openly various aspects of her life, including those more unpleasant ones, with the media, including a sexually abusive childhood and a problem with drugs as an adult. In 1990, her half-sister, Patricia Lee-Lloyd, revealed that Winfrey had become pregnant at age 14 and delivered a stillborn boy. Winfrey's weight fluctuations have caused her to be considered a weight-loss guru. In the late 1990s, Winfrey introduced her book club on television. Whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book-club selection, the book instantly became a best-seller, a powerful demonstration of Winfrey's influence. For example, when she selected the John Steinbeck novel "East of Eden," it soared hundreds of thousands of places to the top of the book charts.
During a show about Mad Cow disease with Howard Lyman aired on April 16, 1996, Winfrey exclaimed, "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!" Texas cattlemen sued Oprah and Lyman in early 1998 for "false defamation of perishable food" and "business disparagement," claiming that Winfrey's remarks subsequently sent cattle prices tumbling, costing beef producers some $12 million. After a trial spanning over two months in a court in the thick of Texas cattle country, the jury found on February 26 that Oprah was not guilty, did not act with malice, and was not liable for damages. After the trial, Oprah received a postcard from Rosie O'Donnell reading, "Congratulations, you beat the meat!" It was during this trial that Oprah hired Dr. Phil Magraw's company (Courtroom Sciences, Inc ) to help her analyze and read the jury. Dr. Phil made such an impression on Oprah that she invited him to be on her show. He accepted the invitation and the rest is history. Oprah's production company, Harpo, produces Dr. Phil's show.
Winfrey has started The Angel Network, an organization that collects millions of dollars a year for charities. She publishes her own magazines, O, The Oprah Magazine and O at Home , and cofounded the women's cable television network Oxygen . She is the president of Harpo Productions (Oprah spelled backwards), which, among other things, produced the screen adaptation of the Toni Morrison novel Beloved. Winfrey has also ventured into acting, most notably in the screen adaptation of the Alice Walker novel The Color Purple (for which she received an Oscar nomination) and in her own production Beloved. Winfrey is also a published author, and was the recipient of the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Emmy Awards. Winfrey is based in Chicago, Illinois but has a home in Montecito, California; she is reported to have recently been buying property on Maui.
Winfrey recently made a deal to extend her show until the 2010-2011 season, by which time it will have been on the air twenty-five years. She also plans to host 140 episodes per season, until her final season, when it will return to its current number, 130.[1]
Oprah Winfrey is believed to be worth over $1 Billion according to the 2004 Forbes Magazine Issue. Oprah currently lives on her 42 acre ocean view estate in Montecito, California. Allegedly Oprah was at a party the previous owners were throwing and fell in love with the estate such that she offered to buy it for $50 Million, although it was not for sale. Oprah also owns a house in Lavalette, New Jersey.
Criticism
Oprah Winfrey was criticized by conservatives for allegedly championing liberal causes. One critic, Myrna Blyth, editor-in-chief of Ladies' Home Journal magazine from 1981 to 2002, charges in her book Spin Sisters : How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness— and Liberalism—to the Women of America, that the "elite women of the media" allegedly sell unhappiness to women and tout false advice.[2]
She also has had everything from her book club to her interviewing style mocked by TV sketch comedy shows, including Saturday Night Live (where she has been lampooned by Jan Hooks, Tim Meadows and Maya Rudolph); MADtv (where Debra Wilson and Daniele Gaither have impersonated her); In Living Color; and Chappelle's Show.
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