On the release day for "Oprah," Kitty Kelley's unauthorized biography of the media superstar, The Sun reviewed the sections about her up-and-down experience at WJZ-TV (check out the hair styles in these photos). Oprah worked as a news anchor, was exiled to a less prestigious assignment, but then found her niche as a talk show host. As reporter Mary McCauley says, Kelley's chapters on Baltimore "contain little that's new or truly revelatory, but it does gather into one place threads of the early-day Oprah legend that have been talked about elsewhere."
Here are more excerpts from McCauley's article: A lot of ink is given to Winfrey's doomed-from-the-start love affair with Tim Watts, a long-time figure in Baltimore radio who, according to Kelley's book, was "a married man with a young son and no intention of leaving his wife." Winfrey, again according to the book, has never spoken of Watts by name publicly, but has frequently referred to an obsessive, unhealthy relationship she had while living in Baltimore. "This is a guy I used to take the seeds out of the watermelon for so he wouldn't have to spit," she's quoted as telling Entertainment Weekly.
There's also lots of talk about her appetite (voracious, apparently, especially in times of stress) and fluctuating weight, and a passing reference to her drug use, something she first admitted to on-air during a memorable edition of her show in January 1995. And Kelley quotes extensively from a commencement address Winfrey gave at Goucher College in 1981, where she urged the graduates "not to believe that Mr. Right was the answer to their prayers."