Oprah: A Biography by Kitty Kelley

Author:Kitty Kelley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Autobiography
ISBN: 9780307718778
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-08-15T08:59:00+00:00

List your hat, sweater, shoe, dress, glove and shirt size.

List five really expensive gift items I would cry with delight if I received.

Here is where you can purchase them: list stores, addresses and 800 numbers.

List five things that would make me very happy to receive as a gift.

List five possible gifts that you could buy and I would harbor no resentment toward you throughout the year.

Here are five gifts I would hate.

Here are five stores you should avoid buying me anything at.

The day of the luncheon Oprah began the gift-giving by handing her personal assistant, Beverly Coleman, a small box. Inside was a brochure of a Jeep Cherokee, and outside a horn was blaring. Then everyone heard Oprah’s theme song, “I’m Every Woman.” The producers ran to the window and saw the shiny black Jeep Grand Cherokee awaiting Beverly from the boss who saw herself as Everywoman. Her other stupendous gifts to her producers included: a Bang & Olufsen stereo system, a set of luggage with $10,000 worth of travel gift certificates, diamond earrings, and a truckload of antique furniture. She gave her executive producer a year’s certificate for once-a-month dinners with friends in different cities around the world—Montreal, Paris, London—all expenses paid.

“When you work for one of the richest and most famous entertainers in America,” said the Redbook subtitle, “two questions rule your holiday season: What will you give her? And what will you get?” The article hit Harpo like a wrecking ball. Yet, as one former employee said, “It wasn’t a complete take-down.… I remember on Santow’s list of ‘Five Things That Would Make Me Very Happy to Receive as a Gift,’ he had written ‘Anything by Modigliani.’ He saw Oprah a couple days later and she asked him if Modigliani was a local artist. I know he felt embarrassed for her that she didn’t know who Modigliani was, and if he’d put that into the article he might have made her look really foolish.”

Dan Santow retained the distinction of being one of the last employees to get over the fence without signing a lifetime confidentiality agreement, and the only one to put his hand in the cage to write about working for Oprah. His article dropped the hammer on all of Harpo, binding each and every future employee to a lifetime of silence about their employer. He also put an end to the annual rite of the producers’ Christmas luncheon.

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