O to a higher power

By Mary McNamara

Dec. 11, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Chicago — IN a West Loop office on a bleak winter day, two women stare solemnly at what they have become. They are African American women, clad in long dresses, unaware of the leaden skies beyond the window, the white vans roaring past, the restaurants promising Polish Sausage and Cold Beer.

The women are charcoal images, larger than life, emblazoned on wooden panels that run from the floor to the ceiling, 9 feet high. One is seated, one is standing; around them are several wooden crates heaped high with pennies. They are the creation of artist Whitfield Lovell and they are called “Having.”

In front of them sits Oprah Winfrey.

The portrait is of real women who owned their own sewing shop, she explains, back when “colored people” weren’t supposed to own anything.

“I saw them in the catalog,” she says, “and I wanted them. But I thought they would be too big. But do you know? They fit exactly on that wall. Exactly on my wall. I felt like I was bringing them home.”

It is easy, these days, to forget that Winfrey is black or a woman or that she was born poor. From her media mogul perch high atop any power list in the country, she seems to transcend race or gender or class or even job description.

She is Oprah, ubiquitous, possibly eternal, her face smiling down from billboards, out from the television screens, up from magazine racks, her name emblazoned on bestselling books and this month a Broadway musical. Used now as noun, adjective and verb -- Americans, we are told occasionally, have been ‘Oprah-fied’ -- it carries more weight than any other stamp of approval. It is the cultural equivalent of the presidential seal.

Her impact is immeasurable, though as with any mythic figure there are the Big Moments -- the book club that single-handedly brought a windfall to the publishing industry, the remark about mad cow disease that sent the beef industry into a litigious tailspin, the recent Tom Cruise interview that kicked off a media review of the star’s mental health. Winfrey has won so many Emmys (more than 40) that she took her show out of consideration in 1999.

There are, of course, people who find her literary tastes pedestrian or her message of personal growth simplistic, who consider a billionaire media mogul acting like an ordinary gal disingenuous. Earlier this year, when she got angry at Hermes after being turned away from their Paris store, she was labeled by some as a diva.

But far outnumbering the critics are the millions for whom she perfectly embodies the American Dream.

“One woman came up to me, I’ll never forget it, and said, ‘Watching you be yourself makes me want to be more myself,’ ” Winfrey says, putting a hand on her heart. “That was the best thing anyone has ever said to me.”

More than anything, her name embodies endless possibility -- for success, for hope, for change. Winfrey understands the importance of this, both on a personal and business level. Like the electronic age that brought her to full flower, she concedes the ascendancy of motion over matter.

“For a brief time you get to be in this experience, this life,” she says. “The question is then what you will do.”

What Winfrey does now is use her vast influence to make a wide variety of things happen. Over the years, she has become careful about her name -- for example, none of the many products she endorses on her show or in her magazine can use it in subsequent advertising. “Otherwise,” she says, “I will marginalize myself.”

But she was happy to give it to the Broadway production of “The Color Purple.” Alice Walker’s book is a banner she has carried for 20 years. She made her acting debut in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film version, an experience she calls “the most spiritual of my life” and that left her with an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Sofia, and a new understanding of what was possible.

“The reason I have this studio,” she says, referring to the newly renovated Harpo Studios, “is because I saw that Steven had his own studio. Before, I didn’t know a person could even do that.”

Preparing to go to New York for the premiere of the musical is, she says, “a full-circle moment,” the cap of a full-circle year. Her television show celebrated its 20th anniversary; she reopened her book club to new books, including nonfiction; she galvanized much of the celebrity presence that filled the void during the first days following Hurricane Katrina, and through her Angel Network subsequently created a relief “registry.”

Perhaps more significantly, she now offers $100,000 rewards for the capture of known child predators. “Oprah’s Child Predator Watch List,” which includes photos, profiles and stories of the criminals and their victims, is featured on her show and her website -- three of the 10 she has identified have been turned in so far.

It’s a lot, and she knows it. Recently, she had a schedule that required her to be in nine cities in a week. She flew from Chicago to Los Angeles (to interview Geena Davis) to Hawaii for an O, the Oprah Magazine photo shoot (“Those covers! They used to be fun, but now they’re just one more thing I have to do”) during which time civil rights leader Rosa Parks died. Though she had honored Parks at her Legends event, Winfrey felt she had to attend one of the services. Her best friend and consigliere, Gayle King, told her she could make the Washington, D.C., funeral if she flew all night. So she did.

“And I picked the right one,” she says. “Because the Detroit funeral was seven hours, and you can’t exactly walk out.”

After a stop in New York to attend the Christie’s auction of Impressionists, she was back in Chicago and up the next day “to have that people-pleasing personality for the show.” “Diane Sawyer and I joke,” she says. “We say, ‘Whadda we got that they ain’t got? Stamina!’ ”

Not that she’s complaining; Winfrey would not dream of complaining about her life even as the assistants pop anxiously in and out of her office when an interview runs long, as the phone calls pile up and the line outside her door grows longer and more agitated. Because this is precisely the life she wanted, the life she has worked and prayed for since she was a child.

“I have a Polaroid Swinger camera on my shelf,” she says. “Because when I was young all I wanted was to be that girl, the Polaroid Swinger camera girl, I wanted her life, what it represented. That and that perfume, Charlie. Remember that? Char-lie,” she sings the familiar jingle. “I wanted a busy, stimulating life, I wanted to go from day to night with a spritz. And even when I am dragging off the plane, I think, ‘This is what I wished for’ and it is fantastic.”

MIDWESTERN MECCA

HARPO PRODUCTIONS INC. is in West Loop Gate, a downtown Chicago neighborhood in the middle stages of gentrification. The studio is so much of a draw that a series of signs guides visitors down Randolph Street. Studding surrounding blocks, there is a Starbucks and a Calphalon store, refurbished lofts and some trendy little lunch places, but there are also vacant lots, abandoned tenements and fire escapes zigzagging past boarded-up windows.

In the middle is Harpo, a beige hulk of a building with signs directing audience members where to park and which entrance to use. The main entrance is marked by a security kiosk with at least 14 screens keeping track of activity around the 88,000-square-foot building.

Inside, a rose marble staircase rises away from the front door and leads to the offices that are behind closed doors. A request for a tour of the office is politely denied, though the path to Winfrey’s office passes a small cafe and a lovely autumnal display, with pumpkins and gourds and cornstalks.

The staff members blur all sorts of demographic lines, though most tend toward the young and good-looking and all are smiling. Perhaps because, with taping over for the year, many will be going on paid hiatus. Or because Winfrey is famous for her generosity, especially at the holidays -- each year, her 450 staff members get a week’s salary as a bonus.

Winfrey’s office is large and luxurious with a thick, pale carpet. Bookshelves surround the large desk in front of which lounge two spaniels, Sophie and Solomon. She recently acquired three golden retriever puppies, who live at her home in Montecito, Calif., and have been providing a definite balance to the general fabulousness of her life. “If you knew,” she says, laughing, “how much dog [poop] I picked up last weekend, you would not believe it. But I will never ask another person to do it because I never want to hear someone say, ‘And then she asked me to pick up her dog [poop].’ ”

To the right is a closet the size of a respectable living room; from racks hang velvet and sequins, wool and feathers, Lycra and leather. Shelves are stacked with sweaters and shirts and an island in the middle serves as a folding station and a rack for hundreds of pairs of shoes. A young woman named Kelly is busy sorting outfits for Winfrey’s impending trip to South Africa, where she is building an academy for girls -- as she explained on “Late Show With David Letterman,” she will personally go from village to village finding pupils, girls who otherwise would have no chance of getting an education.

Behind her desk, Winfrey is on the phone. She looks almost precisely like she does on television, beaming smile even as she talks, perhaps a little fatigued. As soon as she is off, she launches herself into an embrace followed by an amusing story about her book collection -- not surprisingly, she collects first editions. But apparently in her early days, she was not quite as discerning: Her library consisted of Franklin Library collections -- the 100 Greatest Novels, the Best of Science Fiction, etc. When she was given, as a gift, the services of a personal librarian -- “You can get someone to help you with your books, you know,” she says, eyes wide -- she watched as his face fell in horror.

“He took one look and said, ‘Oh, my, gawd,’ ” she says, doing a fair gentrified Southern accent. “ ‘Oh, my, gawd.’ I thought he was impressed, you know, because there were so many of them and they were all different colors. But he said, ‘You must shut these doors and not let anyone see. This is like a great art collector decorating her wall with posters. No one must see this. Oh, my, gawd.’ ” She laughs ruefully and sits down. “So now I keep them in the bathroom.”

It is a classic Oprah story, combining elements of high living with the charming ingenuousness of real folks. With a private jet, a house in Chicago, a $70-million estate in Montecito and two huge properties in Maui, this ability to wander through the bright gardens of wealth and power and still maintain an image of the delighted -- almost accidental -- visitor is one of Winfrey’s greatest talents. She realizes that some people find her enthusiasm forced, or think her audience “giveaways” are just glorified product placement -- “I read everything the critics write about me,” she says pointedly -- but she finds nothing contradictory in a message that promotes spirituality, personal growth and the giving away of cars or $600 Burberry coats. The more universal notion that the path to illumination requires the divesture of earthly things is not shared by Winfrey.

“It’s not duality to me,” she says. “I think of spirituality as living life with a capital L. I think of spirituality as living life full throttle. We are human beings who live on the planet, we consume things, we go to the movies, amusement parks, we entertain ourselves. The question is: How do you do these things without selling out? Is it possible to do good but with a sense of fun and a sense of value.”

As an example she offers the story of a friend who, upon returning from Africa, was stricken with guilt. “She’s on my private jet saying, ‘Oh, don’t you feel guilty?’ and I said, ‘No.’ It’s not about making yourself poor. What I have been able to create I can use to help other people. I’m not going around, ‘Oh, woe is me, I’m not a starving child in Africa with HIV.’ How is that going to help anyone?”

This said, she admits that when she watched this year’s “Favorite Things” show -- an annual event during which she extols the virtues of dozens of luxury items and gives audience members thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise -- she felt “uncomfortable.”

“I asked this of myself, so you don’t even have to,” she says. “Here I am bemoaning the commercialization of Christmas and I watch the show and I realize that is exactly what I am doing. How can I get mad at this consumer culture when there I am saying, ‘This is my faaaaavorite brownie and it’s only $25.’ So,” she says, with a small smile, “there are going to be some changes. People around here won’t be very happy about that -- I talked about it this year and everyone said, ‘You can’t not do “Favorite Things,” everyone expects it’ -- but next year we are going to rethink things.”

It is not the only aspect of the show that is being reconsidered. For years she has ridden the popularity of “makeover” shows, offering as fodder for her program everything from dazzling wardrobes for harried working mothers to a new kitchen for actress Kirstie Alley. But no more. “Every time we did one of those shows, I cringed,” she says. “Literally cringed.”

She recently told her producers to not “even say those words to me anymore. I won’t do it, not even for a number,” she adds, referring to the high ratings those shows inevitably get. “Because if you could fix things with a haircut and a new wardrobe, we’d all be fixed. And we have to be part of the real awakening of women or we are part of the oppression of them. On every show.”

Change is at the core of Winfrey’s message, and her business plan. Five years ago, she had a commercial-break epiphany that she says led to many of the subsequent changes in her show -- a shift away from the controversial toward the inspirational -- and how she viewed her “calling.”

“The Klan made things a lot clearer for me,” she says, recalling a show on which she had a group of skinheads explaining their views. “Back then I thought I had to hold up the banner for every oppressed person. I was going to expose these people for who they were, show exactly what they were like.”

During the commercial break, however, she saw a skinhead in the audience give one onstage an “attaboy” sign. “I had a visceral reaction,” she says. “I realized that I wasn’t exposing anyone -- who didn’t know what these people were about? By putting them on the show, I was validating them. “

It was at this time that she began to look more closely at what she was doing and comparing it with what she wanted to do. “The first 10, 15 years, we had no clue,” she says. “I would do everything people asked, because it was fun and because they asked. Then about five years ago I became more conscious of what this was, of what the television show and, through it, what I had become. Now there is a strategy.”

Now, Winfrey says, she is much more conscious -- of her intention and her limitations. She doesn’t, for example, do pre-interviews, standard in the television industry, either for her own show or guest appearances on other programs because, she says, “it spoils the spontaneity.” She wants to save all the enthusiasm for when the cameras are rolling.

In promoting “The Color Purple,” she has, in fact, done more press in the last few months than she has in the last few years, including ending a 16-year cold war with David Letterman. “People like to say, ‘You’re so controlling,’ ” she says. “But it’s about conserving what you have, so it has meaning, so it’s not being used and exploited.”

The strategy, as she articulates it, comes down to intention and connection -- she will agree to nothing that doesn’t fit a larger goal of what she considers reaching people in a meaningful way. A few years ago, for example, she stopped giving autographs after the show, stopped posing for photographs and shaking hands with the audience members.

“It came to me this one day when I was going to a gynecologist’s appointment in between tapings,” she says. (No, she explains, laughing, she does not have a gynecologist on the premises -- “You can get the podiatrist to come,” she says, “but I haven’t been able to get the gynecologist yet.”)

She hadn’t had time to shake everyone’s hand, and she realized she had so much more energy. “It takes a lot out of you,” she says, “listening to people’s stories 310 times over. And I thought, ‘This is empty, for me and for them.’ So I stopped.”

Instead, she began doing her after-show program, in which she interacts with the audiences, and sometimes the guests, after the show. “I think it gives people a sense of who I am that they could not get from watching the show. It’s more meaningful.”

It’s also easier to control. One of the reasons she stopped shaking hands and taking a photograph with everyone in the audience was that the photographs began turning up in the oddest places. “I don’t want to wind up selling Aunt Bessie’s cookies somewhere in Minnesota,” she says. “And that’s what was happening.”

Now, she will not agree to be photographed by anyone, including the Los Angeles Times, unless the photographer agrees to sell her the rights to the images, an almost unheard-of request (and one The Times declined). When asked about this policy, she is matter-of-fact. Her face and her name are her livelihood, her identity, and she doesn’t want anyone messing with them.

“It’s so I can control to the best of my ability how my image can be used,” she says.

Because her image is not just an image, it is the flagship of the Oprah brand.

“When people started talking about me as a brand, it used to bother me,” she says. “I thought Coca-Cola is a brand; I’m a person. But now I’ve accepted it. I’m a brand.”

“And you know what?” she adds. “When I hear about, like, the ‘Oprah-fication of the culture’ now, I think it’s a good thing. Because if it means being more empathetic, more compassionate, having an actual feeling ... “ She shrugs. “The world needs more of that.”

A BEACON’S LIGHT

THOUGH the guests on her show are legion and disparate, Winfrey remains the star. Her website includes, among many other things, a list of her quotations, as if she were Aristotle or Lao-tse. O, the Oprah Magazine is devoted to her taste, her themes, her thoughts; she is famously on the cover of every issue.

People think this last convention is vanity, she says, “but it’s not. I knew from trying to get celebrities on the cover what a [pain] that is, dealing with publicists and people’s people and their projects, and I swore I wouldn’t put myself in that position.”

She speaks these words without a trace of irony -- though it must be noted that few celebrities are more difficult to reach than Winfrey. With her own show and magazine, she has no need, really, for more publicity. But part of her acknowledged reluctance to give interviews also stems from the feeling that she has “been burned” before in the press. In particular, she cites a story that ran 16 years ago in the New York Times Magazine called “The Importance of Being Oprah.”

“It was the single most awful thing I have ever seen written about anyone,” she says. “It was presented as a piece about the phenomenon of the show and at every turn everything I said was challenged and misinterpreted.”

Sixteen years ago, and she still can quote some of the questions with a shudder. It taught her a lesson, she says. “I don’t get talked into giving interviews easily now. And I am careful to be clear about what I say, whether it be used in or out of context.”

Her image may be, in a large part, based on her ability to reveal embarrassing or painful or poignant truths about herself, but she patrols its borders very carefully. She is spiritual without being specifically religious; in a long-term relationship with partner Stedman Graham, but not married. She exhorts people to vote, but she never endorses a political candidate.

“If I support one person or another,” she says, “I will piss a lot of people off. And I have not seen the politician that I felt was worth that. I have not met the politician that was worth going to the mat for. When I do,” she adds, “I certainly will.”

Even without stepping into such controversial waters, she has had her share of tabloid moments -- her weight is monitored with an obsessiveness usually reserved for the Dow Jones, reports of troubles with Graham occasionally flare up. And this year there was that Hermes incident. When she visited the store in Paris only to be told it was closed (though there were people still visibly shopping), her anger was categorized as either a diva tantrum or righteous outrage, depending on who was doing the categorizing. She responded to the press by having the president of Hermes on her show to clarify his public apology and assure her audience that she had not been “playing the celebrity card.”

Members of the press, she says, have accused her of having a big ego, which she doesn’t think is true. “I think you have to have a certain confidence to do what I do consistently,” she says. “But I am always trying to stay in line with that which is greater than myself. I don’t always and that is when I make mistakes, when I am out of line with that.”

She has worked hard for what she has, she says, but she attributes much of her success to a talent for clarity. “I ask people what it is they want,” she says, “and you would be amazed at how few of them know. They say they want to be happy. So I ask them what that happiness would look like, feel like. And they don’t know. Now, I believe that the universe responds to energy, and particularly to clarity. If you focus on what you want, things clear up. If you don’t, you get stuck in this muddled, fuzzy place.”

But riding alongside it is the almost contradictory passion for celebrity. Like her ecstasies over certain chocolate truffles and bathrobes, Winfrey is unreservedly thrilled by the presence of celebrities on her show, never mind that she tops just about all of them in terms of public admiration and net worth. “I used to be so intimidated by interviewing celebrities,” she says, adding without a hint of irony: “But then I realized they were just people, just like me.”

Though she points out that the star quotient of her show ebbs and flows, her sofa is the place where Tom Cruise felt safe enough to bounce and Arnold Schwarzenegger made his first big public appearance after announcing he would run for governor of California.

“Obviously the public loves the celebrities,” she says. “Loves the celebrities. We are going through,” she adds, “a phase of complete obsession with celebrity.”

She is only saying what many people say daily and her tone is one of shrugging regret. But when asked why she thinks this is, she pauses, and falls silent, which is not something she seems to do regularly. When she speaks again, her voice is quieter, the declarative ring softened.

“The truth is more people have lives that are less fulfilling and they want to live their lives vicariously. The truth is that it’s about a greater loss of self and a projection of yourself on other people.” She falls silent again, and there is, on her face, a look of careful consideration. “The truth is,” she says, “it’s not a good thing.”

She mentions a show on which a girl had transformed herself, including surgically, to look more like Lindsay Lohan, “an intelligent girl who just said, ‘My life would be better if I were her.’ ”

The story obviously disturbs Winfrey, and, as she does so successfully on her show, she refuses to use words associated with judgment or criticism, searching instead for a bit of personal testimony that might offer hope. She is reminded again of the best thing that anyone ever said to her.

“That was what was so heartening,” she says. “That is what I want people to take away. That woman said she wanted to be herself. She didn’t say she wanted to be me. She wanted to be more herself.”

Across the room, the women in the portrait called “Having” stand surrounded by the symbols of wealth, theirs and Winfrey’s. But it isn’t the pennies that draw the eye, shiny bright and numerous as they are. It’s the look on the women’s faces. Steady and calm, resolute, eyes on the horizon, preparing for whatever it is they will do next.

Contact Mary McNamara at calendar.letters@ latimes.com.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

O: The empire

Many empires have sprung from humble beginnings, but few can claim their path to dominance was launched by winning a face-off with Phil Donahue. Oprah Winfrey can. Airing opposite the top-rated Donahue early in her career, Winfrey’s local Chicago talk show outpaced the veteran within a few months. She hasn’t slowed down since.

Not long after its launch in 1984, Winfrey’s “AM Chicago” was renamed to put the host front and center. The show went into national syndication in 1986, quickly becoming the highest-rated talk show in history, holding onto the No. 1 spot for 19 consecutive seasons.

Winfrey established her own production facility, now dubbed Harpo Productions, in Chicago in 1988. The company’s projects include the television films “Tuesdays With Morrie,” “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and a remake of “David and Lisa,” and the theatrically released “Beloved.” The “Dr. Phil” show was spawned in 2002.

“The Oprah Winfrey Show” is syndicated to 215 domestic markets and 121 countries.

In 1991, Oprah initiated the National Child Protection Act, testifying in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of creating a national database of convicted child abusers. President Clinton signed the “Oprah Bill,” which established a national child abuser database, in 1993.

Winfrey received the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998.

Joining with Hearst Magazines in April 2000, Winfrey launched the monthly O, the Oprah Magazine, which now has a circulation of 2.6 million readers. The quarterly shelter magazine, O at Home, debuted in 2004.

Oprah’s Book Club’s 700,000 members can find reading guides, discussion groups and Q&As; with literary figures on Oprah.com. The site also contains Winfrey’s “Live Your Best Life” workshop materials, “Oprah’s Child Predator Watch List” (credited with assisting in the capture of three child-molesting suspects to date) and the “Oprah’s Katrina Homes” initiative to build homes for hurricane victims. The site averages 64 million page views a month.

The Oprah Winfrey Foundation awards grants to organizations that support women, children and families, with a particular focus on education and an outreach arm in South Africa. The separate Oprah’s Angel Network has raised more than $35 million, supporting charities and offering grants around the world.

Winfrey co-founded Oxygen Media, which operates the Oxygen cable network where “Oprah After the Show” airs.

Forbes.com puts Winfrey’s net worth at $1.1 billion.

Sources: Harpo Productions, Oprah.com, Forbes.com