Picturing ‘Purple’

ALICE WALKER’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Color Purple,” traces downtrodden heroine Celie’s odyssey of survival and hope.

The book too has made a transformative journey: Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film starring Whoopi Goldberg and the “Oprah Winfrey Presents” Broadway phenom.

Now a glossy keepsake, “The Color Purple: A Memory Book of the Broadway Musical” (Carroll & Graf Publishers), crafted to resemble a souvenir album, looks back at those years. Inside the soft-hued, padded covers is a foreword by Winfrey as well as costume and set sketches and the show’s libretto -- Marsha Norman’s book and Stephen Bray, Brenda Russell and Allee Willis’ music and lyrics.

Walker is among those interviewed by Lise Funderburg, along with the show’s cast and creators, led by Broadway producer Scott Sanders, who coaxed Walker into the page-to-stage transformation and nurtured it to fruition.

Nearly 200 photographs, including reproductions of pages from Walker’s handwritten draft, are cropped and printed to look hand-mounted or taped. They were shot by the book’s principal photographer, New York photojournalist Jennifer S. Altman, who took thousands of pictures of the show over a six-month period, “from putting up signs and building sets to opening night of previews,” and by production photographer Paul Kolnik.

“The Color Purple” continues on Broadway, with Fantasia Barrino bringing her “American Idol”-winning vocals to the role of Celie. A touring production of the musical will stop in Los Angeles early next year.

-- Lynne Heffley