I read the book before seeing the movie and thought that they did an incredible job of translating it to the screen. The book is written, completely in letters written by Celie and her sister. And it starts off in very broken English with bad spelling and terrible grammar and gets better as Celie gets older and learns to read and write. But most of the book, Celie is basically silent out of fear of being beaten by her husband, Albert (Mister) so Whoopi Goldberg had to play that character with very few lines for the majority of the movie and she was amazing. And I don't think they really left anything scandalous or controversial out. Celie and Shug shared a single kiss, but I don't think it was even implied that they had sex in the book.
The love story was really between Celie and her sister.
I saw the musical on tour about a month ago and it is dreadful. They completely changed the story and the ending, and I won't give away any spoilers, but I walked out thinking "God, I hope they never make that into a movie"
The movie is coming out this year. ☹️
And Oprah's inclusion was a twist of fate. She had a regional talk show, but the Color Purple came out in 1985 and her national talk show that catapulted her to fame didn't start until 1986. So it wasn't stunt casting. In 1985, she was just Oprah Winfrey, not yet OPRAH®.
FWIW, when I posted how much I was disappointed in the musical, all of my black female friends on Facebook posted how disappointed they were to hear that, because they hadn't seen it, but the book AND the movie, were among their favorites.
Only one black male friend posted, and that was to say that Alice Walker has turned into a conspiracy theorist nutcase. The rest of them probably never saw, or read the book. They're mostly anarchists who would rather watch war documentaries than a drama and definitely weren't into discussing musical theater.
As for why it why no Academy Awards, 🤷🏻. It's certainly held up better than anything else that was nominated that year that I can recall.
As excellent as Whoopi Goldberg was, Oprah deserved the Oscar more than anyone. Every scene she is in is so indelibly ingrained into most people's minds that it's a travesty that she wasn't acknowledged for that performance. And like I said, she was not famous yet.
