She charms, but never doubt, it’s Oprah’s show

Oprah Winfrey does a lot of generous and touching things for her TV fans, but this weekend, Tina Turner alluded to a "whole other side of Oprah" during a taping of "Oprah" at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

You see, Oprah and her best girlfriend, Gayle, went shopping with Tina in Switzerland, and apparently it was good times. But while Oprah was interviewing her on Saturday, Tina alluded to Oprah's grumpier moods, when she doesn't want to put up with certain people.

Tina's story made Oprah seem no different than any regular human being. But the TV titan was having none of it. During a commercial break, she told the crowd of about 4,000 that she was cutting Tina's quote from the TV episode, which airs May 8.

"So you won't be seeing that on TV," Oprah said. "When you say, 'She took that (out)?' Yes, she did! ... Zip! Gone!"

The taping was typical Vegas and typical Oprah, all wrapped up like a big, shiny Vegas-Oprah sandwich. During a commercial break, Oprah joked about hugging Tom Cruise sensually while snowboarding with him on Friday. (For more on that, read Norm Clarke's column on Page 3A.)

Also while off the air, she spoke intimately about washing her privates, extolling the virtues of Caesars Palace's high-roller suite, where an automatic toilet or bidet gave her the choice between "rear clean" or "front clean."

"You get your butt cleaned AND your 'punie-shawn.' And it air dries with a nice little scent. It's unbelievable. I swear I'm going to get that toilet on the show."

Off the air, Oprah was funny like that, slinging more of her Southern-roots slang than usual. To be honest, she seemed more charming off camera than on.

On camera, she announced her "Oprah Winfrey Show" exclusive: the first dual interview of Tina and Cher, to promote Cher's new show at Caesars, which is selling fast, and Tina's upcoming tour.

Cher and Tina performed separately, then together in miniskirts. From the 10th row, the legs of Tina, 68, and Cher, 61, looked like the legs of 30-year-old thin women. Clearly, they've sold their souls to somebody for something.

At the climax of the Tina-Cher duet, Oprah joined them to sing a final chorus and wave goodbye to Vegas. A few minutes later, Cher and Tina reappeared without Oprah to re-shoot parts of the duet.

Tina and Cher wondered where Oprah was. But Oprah stayed off stage. Through speakers, we all heard the distended voice of Oprah explaining she was not coming back out; editors would splice her Cher-Tina hug into the TV duet; so she asked Cher and Tina to bid adieu for her. They did.

Those off-air Oprah-isms were fascinating. As a group of hair and makeup people sped out to poof her up, she referred to them as her "Village People," then they sprayed a big cloud of gunk around her head.

With Cher and Tina in the house, it was during one of those makeup moments that Oprah joked (self-deprecatingly?), "There's more than two queens in the house."

Oprah gave away taping tickets through her TV show and a local TV station. Last week, people at Caesars told the media that Oprah demanded a media blackout. A Caesars person told me that if I was spotted interviewing show-goers before or after the taping, I'd be escorted out.

But Oprah's people and other publicists ended up inviting me and other columnists to sit in the 10th row. They didn't ask me to hold back from writing about anything I saw. So who knows what this "media blackout" was about.

The crowd looked 95 percent female, clashing with a wigged-up row of male impersonators of Cher and Tina.

I asked three rare guys why they were there. One came for his wife. Another came to see Cher. The third wanted to see a friend who dances with Cher.

In another off-air bit, Oprah was not wrong when she described her very womanly, somewhat curvy crowd as dressed up for "Easter Sunday morning, strapless."

A few strapless ladies shook with nerves in anticipation, sputtering, "We're gonna be on 'Oprah!'" Excited fans such as these didn't need prodding.

But beforehand, a production worker took the stage and rehearsed the crowd to increase the volume of their "Ewws" and "Awwws" and instructed them to laugh louder, place their purses under their seats, spit out their gum, and apply more lip gloss.

"Gloss up. You can never have too much on for 'The Oprah Winfrey Show,'" the production worker said. "Is this not the best day of your life?"

Doug Elfman's column appears on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.