According to the 6 Sep 1985 Publishers Weekly, author Alice Walker was initially reticent about selling screen rights to her 1982 Pultizer Prize and American Book Award winning novel, The Color Purple. She convened with a group of five women to discuss the merits of executive producers Jon Peters and Peter Gruber’s offer. At that time, the men were known for their recent 1983 blockbuster Flashdance (see entry), and Walker was concerned about Hollywood’s portrayal of women and African Americans. The friends concluded the only way to improve the exploitation of minorities was to work within the prevailing system, and Walker agreed to the deal.
       As stated in the Dec 1985 edition of San Francisco Focus, Walker’s contract stipulated she would serve as project consultant and fifty percent of the production team, aside from the cast, would be African American, female, or “people of the Third World.” Walker was also involved with casting and lobbied for “lesser-known actors” because their rise from obscurity represented the experience of characters in her novels. Publishers Weekly stated Walker selected Whoopi Goldberg to star in her feature film debut as “Celie” after seeing the comedienne perform in a small, San Francisco, CA, cabaret. However, San Francisco Focus maintained that Goldberg lobbied for a role in the picture before screen rights were sold. A 15 Feb 1985 LAT article, which announced Steven Spielberg had been contracted to direct and produce the picture, noted Goldberg was already being courted by several Hollywood studios at that time, and had recently signed a two-picture deal with Warner Bros. Pictures, the film’s distributor. San Francisco Focus reported that producer Quincy Jones personally selected Spielberg to direct, despite skepticism from Walker fans and the African American community, who questioned whether a white male could adequately capture the central story of a black woman. A 15 Dec 1985 NYT article stated that Spielberg waived his salary to direct the $15 million picture, and earned only the Directors Guild of America’s (DGA) required minimum wage of $40,000.
       Detractors also doubted the hiring of Dutch, male screenwriter, Menno Meyjes, to adapt Walker’s novel. According to San Francisco Focus, Walker wrote a draft of the screenplay herself, but agreed to turn the job over to Meyjes on condition that she maintain script approval. She reportedly collaborated with Meyjes, adding lines and making adjustments during production. Publishers Weekly noted that Meyjes worked closely with Spielberg on The Color Purple, which marked his first theatrically-produced feature film script. As stated in Publishers Weekly, Meyjes wrote the initial draft in three weeks and, after a series of daily meetings with Spielberg, composed five drafts within the next five months to complete the final screenplay. Walker noted that she felt greater empathy for the novel’s male characters in Meyjes’ adaptation than she did when she was writing the novel. She also helped the actors translate their lines with greater authenticity, teaching them the pacing and rhythm of the Southern black dialect she new as a child. The 15 Dec 1985 NYT added that the novel’s attention to the lesbian relationship between Celie and “Shug Avery” was vastly truncated in the film.
       Walker’s daughter, Rebecca Leventhal, is credited onscreen as production associate.
       A 23 Apr 1985 HR news item stated that principal photography was scheduled to begin 3 Jun 1985 in Los Angeles, CA, because Spielberg’s then-wife, actress Amy Irving, was due to deliver their child around that time. According to the 15 Dec 1985 NYT, Amy Irving went into labor on 12 Jun 1985, the same moment in which Spielberg was filming “take three” of the scene in which “Celie” gives birth. San Francisco Focus noted that Spielberg’s infant son, Max, and Amy Irving, were consistently present on the set. The film was poised for a Dec 1985 release to attract Academy Award consideration, as noted in a 24 May 1985 LAHExam brief.
       According to production notes in AMPAS library files and San Francisco Focus, North Carolina provided the primary locations for the film, even though Walker’s novel reflected her childhood memories in segregated Eatonton, Georgia. While production offices were headquartered at a Holiday Inn in Monroe, NC, photography took place in the small Union County town of Marshville, where clay was poured over modern paved streets. In addition, sets were situated at an antebellum plantation in Anson County, near Wadesboro, NC, as stated in a Feb 1986 AmCin article. The farm was leased for a total of six months, with the time divided equally between construction and filming. A small, sixty-year-old Baptist church, threatened with demolition, was relocated to the plantation, where “Harpo’s” saloon and Celie’s home were also constructed. The field in front of Celie’s house was sown with purple flowers that bloomed within two weeks, providing the location of Celie’s climactic conversation with “Shug Avery” and her reunion with “Nettie.” In the last week of filming, the flowers were replaced with fabricated snow for winter scenes, even though the actors were enduring sweltering summer heat. Other parts of the picture were filmed by a second unit in the Maasai tribal areas of Kenya, as well as in the country’s capital, Nairobi. At that time, Spielberg remained in the U.S. to edit the film. The production spent its first three weeks at Universal City Studios in Los Angeles, CA, as stated in another Feb 1986 AmCin article.
       The picture provoked controversy in the African American community before and after its 18 Dec 1985 domestic release in 200 theaters. On 1 Nov 1985, both LA Weekly and HR stated that the twenty members of the Coalition Against Black Exploitation (CABE) released formal complaints about the film’s alleged degrading representation of black men and the “subtle promotion of lesbianism,” claiming that such portrayals conveyed “a negative message that is potentially destructive to the black family.” The organization demanded access to the shooting script and meetings to discuss changes in the narrative. Although Warner Bros. representatives were reportedly “sympathetic,” and CABE received a letter signed by both Quincy Jones and Alice Walker, the filmmakers did not agree to a meeting, and a demonstration took place in front of Jones’s Los Angeles office on 9 Nov 1985, as reported in the 10 Nov 1985 LAHExam. Several days after the film’s opening, a 20 Dec 1985 LAT article noted the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) joined CABE in its concern about the depiction of black men, but hailed the production for employing more African American actors and filmmakers than any motion picture to date since Sounder (1972, see entry). Although CABE sponsored another protest outside the AMPAS Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles on 17 Dec 1985, several members admitted most of the group had not yet seen the picture. African American California State Assemblywoman, Maxine Waters, who organized an exclusive screening for the Black Woman’s Forum, argued that the film was not “degrading or dehumanizing.”
       One week after its release, the film was honored as the National Board of Review’s Best Film of 1985, and Whoopi Goldberg was singled out as Best Actress. Although the picture garnered mixed reviews from both critics and audiences, it outperformed all other Christmas 1985 releases, as noted in a 28 Dec 1985 LAT article. A Warner Bros. press release in AMPAS library files announced that the film earned $1,710,333 its opening weekend, then received an eighty-five percent increase per theater in its second weekend, grossing $3,162,958 from 27 Dec 1985 to 29 Dec 1985 in 202 domestic engagements. In a 5 Jan 1986 Chicago Tribune article, critic Gene Siskel interviewed two black leaders about the film’s controversy and noted that Walker gave the film a “timid endorsement” due to its “softened version” of her novel. However, Walker attended a red-carpet screening of the picture one month after its release in her hometown of Eatonton, as stated in the 21 Jan 1986 Daily News. There, the film was released in a formerly segregated theater, where Walker and other black residents were once forced to sit in the balcony. The Color Purple continued to gain momentum, and on 23 Jan 1986, HR announced that Warner Bros. added 352 theaters the previous Friday, 17 Jan 1986, and the film had earned a four day gross of $6,819,607 over Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday weekend, amassing a net total of $26,148,105 to date.
       The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards in the following categories: Actress in a Leading Role (Whoopi Goldberg), Actress in a Supporting Role (Margaret Avery), Actress in a Supporting Role (Oprah Winfrey), Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Makeup, Music (Original Score), Music (Original Song, “Miss Celie’s Blues [Sister]”), Writing, and Best Picture. According to a 7 Feb 1986 LAT article, film industry insiders were surprised by the omission of Spielberg as Best Director, and speculation circulated that other filmmakers were envious of his success, that there was an error in the Price-Waterhouse computer calculations, or that voters were swayed by the film’s negative reviews. Many colleagues complained that Spielberg turned the sophisticated, dark narrative into a clichéd, feel-good fairy tale. They also commented that the producer-director may have wished to mark his first Academy Award win with The Color Purple, since he had been nominated previously three times without receiving recognition. However, Spielberg was honored with the Directors Guild of America’s (DGA) Best Director award, and noted in his acceptance speech that his colleagues may have been “making a statement” against his Academy Awards’ snub, according to a 10 Mar 1986 LAT article. When The Color Purple failed to win any of its eleven Academy Award nominations, the Hollywood-Beverly Hills, CA, chapter of the NAACP, which had previously voiced its concern about the film’s depiction of black men, issued a formal complaint against the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The 26 Mar 1986 HR cited the NAACP’s claim that the slight was a “black-out,” a term used to illustrate the film industry’s suppression of African American projects.
       Ten years later, a 6 Feb 1996 LAT article announced the publication of Alice Walker’s latest book, The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult, which described her experiences during production of The Color Purple and the ensuing controversy. According to LAT, Walker not only endured, in her words, “the severe criticism, bashing, [and] trashing” of her literary work and her decision to adapt it into a Spielberg film, but also suffered great personal difficulties during the time of the film’s release. Walker’s mother suffered a stroke, leaving her paralyzed, and Walker, herself, feared she was dying from Lyme disease. At the same time, Walker’s romantic partner, Robert Allen, announced he had been having an affair because he was envious of Walker’s success. Although Walker had reservations about the film version of The Color Purple, she noted that she never expected the picture to replicate the novel, and that “successful does not mean perfect… successful is adequate.”

      End credits include "Special thanks" to: the Huntley Family, David Dykis, the North Carolina Film Commission, the Anson County Historical Society, and the citizens of Anson and Union Counties, North Carolina.