Oprah (35 page)

This acquisition made her the first African American woman to own her own film studio, and only the third woman in history to do so (the first two were Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball). However, Oprah was the only one to do it completely on her own, without a husband, although she did have the shrewd counsel of her lawyer/agent, who encouraged her to bet on herself. “Don’t be talent for hire,” Jacobs said. “Own yourself. Don’t take a salary. Take a piece of the action.” At that point in her life Oprah described Jeff Jacobs as “a gift” and kept his
photo in a sterling-silver frame on her desk, next to pictures of Bill Cosby, Quincy Jones, Stedman, and Gayle. “Jeff released me from slave mentality,” she said. “He helped me to see that I really could have control.”

Control was vital to Oprah, perhaps because of her terribly vulnerable childhood in Milwaukee, but Jacobs still had to push her into the concept of ownership. He assured her that her companies need never go public, so she would not have to contend with scrutiny, which she detested. Nor would she have to answer to a board of directors, or trustees, or oversight committees. “My vision of control [then] was not having people tell me what to do,” she said. “[Until then] I was still thinking like a slave. I was thinking like talent. You have to go to another level of things to say, ‘I want to own it.’ ” Fortuitously for Jacobs, her wants outweighed her reservations.

He described his job as Oprah’s counselor. “I present research, options, and opinions to her. We discuss them, and then she makes the decisions. I work for her and with her, and because of that, we’ve built an organization where she knows exactly what’s going on at all times. She signs the checks, she makes the decisions. I protect her and look at things from a legal as well as business standpoint, but she understands this organization from top to bottom.”

Before their acrimonious split in 2002, Jeff Jacobs helped Oprah build her media empire, which included:

Harpo Productions, Inc.

SUBSIDIARIES
: Harpo Interactive, Harpo Music Publishing, Harpo Sounds Music Publishing, Oprah Music Publishing, Harpo Sounds

CREDITS INCLUDE
:
No One Dies Alone
(1988);
The Oprah Winfrey Show
(1988–present);
Just Between Friends
(1989);
The Women of Brewster Place
(1989);
Brewster Place
(1990);
In the Name of Self-Esteem
(1990); ABC Afterschool Specials (1992–1993):
Girlfriend, I Hate the Way I Look, Shades of a Single Protein, and Surviving a Break Up; Nine
(1992);
Oprah Behind the Scenes
(1992);
Overexposed
(1992);
Michael Jackson Talks…to Oprah
(1993);
There Are No Children Here
(1993);
David and Lisa
(1998);
Tuesdays with Morrie
(1999);
Oprah Goes Online
(2000);
Use Your Life
(2001);
Oprah After the Show
(2002);
Dr. Phil
(2002–2005);
Oprah Winfrey Legends Ball
(2006);
Rachael Ray
(2006–present);
Building a Dream
(2007);
Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special
(2007);
Oprah’s Big Give
(2008);
Dr. Oz
(2009–present)

Harpo, Inc.

Does administrative and some publicity chores and owns the trademarks OPRAH,
The Oprah Winfrey Show, Make the Connection,
Oprah’s Book Club, Use Your Life, Oprah’s Favorite Things, Wildest Dreams with Oprah, Oprah Boutique, The Oprah Store,
oprah.com
, Oprah’s Big Give, The Big Give, Give Big or Go Home, Expert Minutes, Oprah & Friends, Oprah Radio, and Live Your Best Life, as well as the Oprah signature and “O” design.

In January 2008, Harpo, Inc., entered into a partnership with Discovery to create the Oprah Winfrey Network, a cable channel that is expected to go on the air in 2011.

Harpo Entertainment Group

Administrative umbrella encompassing Harpo Productions, Inc., Harpo Studios, Inc., and Harpo Films, Inc.

Harpo Studios, Inc.

Production studios for
The Oprah Winfrey Show
at 1058 West Washington Street; other production facilities, and businesses offices, at 110 N. Carpenter Street

Harpo Films, Inc.

CREDITS INCLUDE
:
Before Women Had Wings
(1997);
Beloved
(1998);
The Wedding
(1998);
Amy and Isabelle
(2001);
Their Eyes Were Watching God
(2005);
For One More Day
(2007);
The Great Debaters
(2007)

In 2008, Harpo Films made a three-year deal to provide programming for HBO.

In January 2009 Harpo Films announced a deal to film
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
in partnership with Tom Hanks’s Playtone.

In February 2009, Oprah announced that she would support the distribution of Sundance Film Festival award winner
Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire,
later called
Precious,
by releasing it through Harpo Films.

Harpo Print LLC

CREDITS
:
O, The Oprah Magazine,
and the now defunct
O at Home,
in partnership with Hearst

Owns the trademark
O, The Oprah Magazine.

Harpo Radio Inc.

CREDITS
: Programming for the Oprah Radio Network for Sirius XM

Harpo Video Inc.

CREDIT
:
Make the Connection

OW Licensing Co.

Holder of the rights of publicity of Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah’s Studio Merchandise Inc.

Runs the Oprah Store and the Harpo gym and owns a $780,000 condo in Acorn Loftominiums, purchased in 2006.

In addition to purchasing the property for Harpo Studios, Oprah and her partners invested another $16 million in renovating, extending, and equipping the production studio. They worked with architects, engineers, and designers for eighteen months. “Never in a lifetime, never did I imagine it would be this much work,” she said later. “I still would have gone along with it. The reality is that it’s work and
money.
I’m really not as overwhelmed by the financial responsibility as some people might be….I went in knowing it would cost a lot of money.”

Oprah invested fully—emotionally and financially—in creating a studio that would reflect the image she wanted to present to the world. She did the same with all the homes she built. After purchasing one hundred acres in Telluride, Colorado, she hired the renowned firm of Robert A. M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture.

“First meeting we showed her something natural to the surroundings—alpine timbers and logs,” said one of the architects. “She dismissed it entirely. ‘I want something that when people drive up they will say WOW.’ So we went back to the drawing boards and gave her Tara on a ski slope with marble and white columns and sweeping verandas. When she came back and saw the plans, she said, ‘I wanted a house that would make people say WOW. Not Holy shit!’ ” The house was never built.

Oprah wanted her Harpo Studios to become the major production center in the Midwest, with state-of-the-art facilities for television, commercials, and film production. “With cost factors being less here than in Hollywood, we hope to keep existing production and attract new production to Chicago, which will create new jobs and other economic benefits,” she said. “It is a joy for me to be able to invest in the city whose people have been so supportive of my work.”

Harpo’s opulent facility covers one entire square block and contains three soundstages; office suites; conference rooms; control rooms; production and editing rooms; a screening room with a popcorn machine; a private dining room with an in-house chef; a gymnasium stocked with Nautilus bicycles, treadmills, and ellipticals; a beauty salon with hairdressers, makeup artists, and manicurists; plus a staff cafeteria. Oprah said she wanted “to create an environment so stimulating and comfortable that people will love coming to work.” However, as one woman noted, Oprah did not build a day-care center for the children of her employees “because at Harpo it’s full steam ahead for Oprah and only for Oprah, and of course, for her dogs.”

She said she considered her cocker spaniels Sophie and Solomon to be her children, and allowed them to roam freely through the hallways of Harpo. “They are allowed to prowl through the offices,” said a former employee. “Solomon wears a cone around his neck. Poor thing was walking into walls, always banging himself.” Oprah occasionally included her dogs on her show. Once she teased an upcoming segment (May 2005) by announcing, “Stedman and I have a daughter. She has issues and I think it’s my fault.” The “daughter” was their dog Sophie.

Reflecting Oprah’s fear of assassination, her studio is a fortress. In addition to the phalanx of security guards who pass a wand over the studio audiences at the entrance, checking all purses and packages, there is a private code that Harpo employees must punch into a computer at each steel door to be admitted. All guests must be scheduled and present identification. There is no access for visitors.

Harpo contains three different green rooms, two for ordinary guests—“We need two because sometimes we have to keep guests separated before they go on the air,” said one employee. Ordinary guests get served fruit, muffins, and water. The VIP green room—for celebrity
guests such as John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and Julia Roberts—has its own private side door leading into a lush area of soft leather chairs, a large television, fabulous foods, and a private bathroom filled with Molton Brown products. “The difference between the ordinary green rooms and the VIP green room is the difference between the Marriott and the Ritz,” said a woman who has spent time in both.

In addition, Harpo also contains warehouse space the length of five football fields packed with Oprah’s fan art, done and sent by viewers: crochet doilies of Oprah, oil paintings of Oprah as an angel or a Madonna, ceramic figurines of Oprah, rhinestone replicas of Oprah as queen of the world, watercolors of Oprah eating mashed potatoes (her favorite food), oil paintings of Stedman and Oprah on a wedding cake. “It was funny, interesting, quirky,” said an art director who toured the space with Oprah. “I told her, ‘This is really very touching.’ She said, ‘Well, yes and no. Most of them came with invoices.’ ”

Eventually Harpo would consist of six buildings, and her real estate corporation would purchase an additional building nearby for the Oprah Store, a 5,500-square-foot emporium that opened in 2008 to sell Oprah merchandise to Oprah fans, with all proceeds going to Oprah’s Angel Network and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation. Almost everything in the store is marked, stitched, embossed, or imprinted with an
O.
During the Christmas holidays the store sells a snow globe of
The Oprah Winfrey Show
that contains eighty-eight
O
s, including snowmen made of
O
s. Year-round there are
O
pajamas,
O
candles,
O
metallic purses,
O
canvas bags,
O
caps,
O
mugs,
O
place mats, even grocery bags marked “gr
O
ceries.” In one corner of the store is “Oprah’s Closet,” which contains Oprah’s hand-me-downs, ranging in size from ten to eighteen. Each item, including her used Prada skirt ($400) and Ferré boots ($300), contains a tag: “Harpo Inc. hereby certifies that the item to which this tag is attached is a genuine garment from the closet of Oprah Winfrey.” The Oprah Store also sells chartreuse boxes of little Oprah note cards containing Oprah’s inspirational sayings:

After Harpo was built, the Near West Side of Chicago became gentrified. Developers moved into the area to build apartments and condominiums, thanks in large part to the substantial investment of Oprah in her production studio.

During the time she was building Harpo, Oprah flew to Los Angeles to film
The Women of Brewster Place,
based on the novel by Gloria Naylor about seven black women who bond to overcome the ghetto setbacks life has dealt them. “This will be the best miniseries any television network has done to date,” Oprah told reporters. “Do you hear me? The best. You can quote me on that.”

This was her first starring role and her first movie as executive producer. “After
The Color Purple
I wanted to prove my acting wasn’t a fluke,” she said. She chose Naylor’s book of broken dreams, betrayal, and bitterness because she felt it made a statement about surviving with dignity in a world that tries to strip you of it. But all three networks turned the project down. “They said it was too womanish,” said Oprah, who finally exercised her clout with ABC by flying to Los Angeles to meet directly with Brandon Stoddard, president of network entertainment. “Basically I got it on the air,” she said later. “My participation convinced ABC to do it.”

She then helped assemble the cast, including Cicely Tyson, Robin Givens, Jackée Harry, Lynn Whitfield, Lonette McKee, Olivia Cole, and Paula Kelly. “This is the first time [in my memory] that television
has ever presented a drama dealing with the lives of black women,” said the casting director, Reuben Cannon, a close friend of Oprah’s.

The Gloria Naylor novel, like
The Color Purple
by Alice Walker, had been criticized for its treatment of black men, so Oprah softened some of the male characters to make them less menacing, but she refused a request from the NAACP to review the script. “I just don’t think you can allow yourself to be controlled,” she said. “[Besides] I’m insulted. I am more conscious of my legacy as a black person than anybody. I realize I didn’t get here by myself, that I’ve crossed over on the backs of black people whose names made the history books, and a whole lot of them who did not. I have a responsibility not only as a black woman but as a human being to do good work. I am just as concerned about the images of black men as anybody, but there are black men who abuse their families, and there are white men who do it too, and brown men. It’s just a fact of life; I deal with it every day. So I refuse to be controlled by other people’s ideas and ideals of what I should do.”