Color Purple

Add "The Color Purple" to Broadway's financial hit column. The stage version of Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has recouped its $11-million investment -- less than a year after opening in New York, producer Scott Sanders said Friday. The musical, the story of a determined black woman's triumph over adversity, has grossed more than $60 million since opening Dec. 1, 2005, at the Broadway Theatre, one of New York's largest playhouses. It has been seen by almost 750,000 theater-goers.

Southern California's biggest theater company was the biggest winner at the 2012 Ovation Awards, which were handed out Monday evening at a ceremony at the Los Angeles Theatre in downtown. Center Theatre Group scooped 13 trophies for its productions of "Waiting for Godot," "The Convert" and "War Horse. " The company also received the evening's biggest honor as having the best season. The Ovations, organized by the L.A. Stage Alliance, honor excellence in stage productions throughout the L.A. area.

Always elegant and ever luxurious, purple takes center stage as the season's newest neutral. Long the color of royalty, it has finally trickled down to the masses. Shoes and sunglasses, plates and pillows, ties and tiles--everything, it seems, is turning up in shades of grape and eggplant, lilac and lavender. But now that you don't have to be born to the purple to dress yourself or your home in the imperial color, one caveat: Best to be a shrinking violet-- a little goes a long way.

Christina Aguilera's hair is going the opposite direction of Miley Cyrus': While Miley was taking the color out and the length short, Xtina is leaving it long and adding color. The color purple, as a matter of fact. Aguilera showed off her new look Sunday at a media event for "The Voice," where she appeared with fellow judges Blake Shelton, Cee Lo Green and Adam Levine, host Carson Daly and producer Mark Burnett. The series premieres Sept. 10. The big news of the event, in addition to the purple?

I stand on the cliffs in the People's Republic of Santa Monica, where the Pacific dazzles, palms sway and a brilliant sun torches all memory of the other 49 states. The intersection is Ocean and California, edge of the continent and nexus of national dissent. "Smoke-Free Park," says a sign. Another: "Recycled Water." We stand apart. At the top of the California Incline, a blue obelisk spikes skyward like a pin on the map of the United States, marking it for John Kerry.

"The Color Purple," directed by Steven Spielberg, has been named Best Film of 1985 by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, the nation's oldest film organization. The 76-year-old review board selected Whoopi Goldberg as best actress for her film debut in "The Color Purple." Goldberg, 35, had a successful one-woman show on Broadway last season. William Hurt and Raul Julia shared best actor award for their roles in "Kiss of the Spider Woman."

At Primarily Purple, everything is exactly as the name promises. Owners Anita and Ira Horn began their violet-centered venture more than three years ago with purple dresses. When fans started pouring in, many of them with purple hair, Anita recalls, items such as I Purple bumper stickers, "Purple Power" T-shirts and a frameable purple-lovers' creed on purple parchment were added.

They are, from left to right on the couch in front of you, TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, Ashanti princess Akosua Busia and born-again singer Margaret Avery. They are the actresses of "The Color Purple," minus Whoopi Goldberg, and no matter what anyone says or writes about the movie--no matter what you, white guy with the pointed questions, think--they are proud of it.

Earlier this year, trainer Ron McAnally said he had a 2-year-old filly in his barn who might be as good as Mr Purple. On July 14, that filly, Call Now, was beaten by a half-length in her first start, after the winner, Ski Dancer, bumped her at the top of the stretch. Mr Purple, making only his second start, had no such trouble Monday, holding off a filly, Serena's Song, to win the $102,600 Hollywood Juvenile Championship by a half-length on the last day of Hollywood Park's 68-day meeting.

Steven Spielberg's "The Color Purple" got off to the best start among the latest batch of Christmas releases, earning an average of nearly $9,000 in each of 192 theaters over the weekend. "Out of Africa," Sydney Pollack's $30-million adaptation of the Isak Dinesen novel, grossed $3.6 million in 922 theaters, averaging a lukewarm $3,945.

Even before filming was finished, more than a few Hollywood wags and insiders were saying that Steven Spielberg's "War Horse" had the look of a thoroughbred in the annual Hollywood derby known as Oscar season. Spielberg's films had certainly racked up Academy Award nominations in the past when he ventured into wartime epics ("Schindler's List," "Saving Private Ryan"), bookshelf adaptations ("The Color Purple," "Jaws") or an evocative tale of youth and friendship ("E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial")

It's about time we got to talk about: Fantasia It's been almost six years since she won "American Idol," and for whatever unjust reason, the 25-year-old single mom hasn't blown up like Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood. With any luck that will change. She's got an album planned for spring, her VH1 series "Fantasia for Real" is super addicting -- anyone want to help me shake her family hard? -- and starting this week, Angelenos can see her as abused heroine Celie in Oprah Winfrey's stage musical "The Color Purple" at the Pantages.

After his pounding by the New Orleans Saints, Brett Favre might be sporting as much purple today as he did Sunday. . . . As Deion Sanders of the NFL Network said of Favre's postgame appearance, "He looks like a [ Floyd ] Mayweather opponent." . . . At least he was on his feet. . . . Favre enjoyed perhaps his greatest season at 40 because he avoided the type of unnecessary risk that doomed the Minnesota Vikings against the Saints. . . . Old habits die hard.

You'd be hard-pressed to find an artist who lives her life more openly than Fantasia Barrino. In the six years since she became the third "American Idol," Fantasia -- who, like Bjork or Madonna, needs no last name -- has published a bestselling memoir, starred in a top-rated Lifetime movie about her life, and now has invited cameras into her house for a VH1 docu-series, "Fantasia for Real," which premieres Monday. The way she sees it, her life is a "testimony," a way to help others even when it means sharing deeply personal and painful aspects of her life, such as her functional illiteracy or that she was raped at 14. But this time, when the 25-year-old single mother, who won America over with her rendition of on the "Idol" stage, opens her doors to public scrutiny again, Fantasia hopes to help herself most of all. The last couple of years haven't been kind.

A repeat of its popular "Fall for Dance" festival and a dance gala featuring a dozen ballet stars, including Diana Vishneva, Angel Corella and Alina Cojocaru, will highlight the 2008-09 season at the Orange County Performing Artscenter. The second "Fall for Dance" festival, showcasing an eclectic, as yet unannounced lineup of companies, will run Oct. 2-5.

"The Color Purple," Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel, is all about liberating black female voices from the shackles of racial and gender oppression. And the good news about the otherwise forgettable touring Broadway musical version, which opened Sunday at the Ahmanson Theatre, is that it provides an opportunity for the gospel recording artist Jeannette Bayardelle to showcase her sumptuous, tidal-wave vocals as Celie.

Sydney Pollack's "Out of Africa" and Steven Spielberg's "The Color Purple," movies based on best-selling novels about and written by women, each received 11 nominations--including best picture--to pace the list of 1985 Oscar nominees, announced today by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

"The Color Purple," an intimate story of suffering, endurance and triumph set primarily in the rural South from 1910-1940, has arrived as a film, its story still distinctive and deeply moving. For the film's existence alone we can be grateful, and it contains at least three memorable performances, but the transition has been at a harrowing cost to the tone and scale and even the underlying theme of Alice Walker's book.

MICHELLE Williams is caught up these days in a world without Destiny. And that's just fine by her. Best known as one third of a superstar pop group, Williams has traded the flash of Destiny's Child for the earthy pathos of blues singer Shug Avery in "The Color Purple," the theatrical adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Alice Walker novel and the Steven Spielberg film.

Many books are made into films, and a few into genuinely good ones. Other literary works are given a second life as musicals. But it is the rare novel that inspires both a movie and a successful musical. Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" is one of the few.