The Queen of Talk Declined to Speak
By Janet Maslin
Published: New York Times, April 11, 2010

OPRAH -A Biography
By Kitty Kelley
Illustrated. 524 pages. Crown Publishers. $30.

Kitty Kelley’s name will not be showing up on any of Oprah Winfrey’s lists of her favorite things. Here’s one reason: If Ms. Kelley’s cage-match Winfrey biography is to be believed, Ms. Winfrey has begged to learn the identity and background of her biological father. Her relatives won’t tell her. But on July 30, 2007, Ms. Kelley pried it out of one of them. This coup, the only real “Gotcha!” in Ms. Kelley’s “Oprah,” is the kind of reportorial discovery on which Ms. Kelley has built her giant-killer reputation.

Right - Kitty Kelley - photo by Clay Blackmore

In a rare show of discretion, Ms. Kelley claims to be keeping this secret from the world until Ms. Winfrey can extract it firsthand from her mother, Vernita Lee. It’s far more typical of Ms. Kelley to dish about how Ms. Lee can’t get her famous daughter on the phone. She also quotes Vernon Winfrey, who raised the future mogul and media queen as his daughter, as having said, “I need her show like a hog needs a holiday.”

Since Ms. Kelley is well aware that there is such a thing as Oprah omertà — and that it is why unauthorized Winfrey books (like one proposed by Mr. Winfrey) don’t ordinarily get written, let alone published — she is eager to appear authoritative about her research and reporting. How else to explain the photograph of Vernon Winfrey whispering into Ms. Kelley’s ear as proof that he talked to her?

“She may be admired by the world, but I know the truth,” Mr. Winfrey told Ms. Kelley. “So does God and so does Oprah. Two of us remain ashamed.”

Shame: it’s good for a zinger but otherwise an alien concept to Ms. Kelley. That Ms. Winfrey refused to cooperate with this book has done nothing to cramp the author’s style. “In the end it was Oprah herself who turned out to be a major source of information,” Ms. Kelley claims in a foreword, going on to explain that “Oprah” draws on 25 years’ worth of newspaper, magazine, television and radio interviews, all of which have been broken down by names, dates and topics “for a total of 2,732 files.” With a harrumph of gravitas, she adds that “from this resource I was able to use Oprah’s own words with surety.”
The full NYT story.
And over at Huffington Post.

Footnote:
There seems to have been a huge amount of secrecy surrounding this title. I have trawled the Web for half an hour this morning and still cannot find a cover image. Here in NZ it is being published this Friday and yet still no publisher has come forth seeking orders? What's going on? If there is a publisher out there who can send The Bookman a cover image I'd be grateful.
By the way if you have an hour to spend and are especially interested in OPrah just put the name of this new biography into Google, there are a myriad of stories online. Why Larry King wouldn't interview Kitty Kelley, the identity if Oprah's real father etc etc.