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he Color Purple," a new musical based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Alice Walker that is scheduled to open on Broadway in December, has enlisted Oprah Winfrey as an investor and producer whose name will appear above the title on the show's marquee.

The move is likely to immediately expand the box-office potential of a show that has been extensively revised since receiving mixed reviews in its initial performances in Atlanta last year. Now titled "Oprah Winfrey Presents: 'The Color Purple,' " the musical will begin previews at the Broadway Theater on Nov. 1 and open on Dec. 1.

In what is her first Broadway venture, Ms. Winfrey will contribute more than $1 million of the musical's $10 million production cost, joining Scott Sanders, Roy Furman and Quincy Jones as producers, they said yesterday. Ms. Winfrey first came to national attention in 1985 for her Oscar-nominated role in the film version of "The Color Purple," directed by Steven Spielberg.

Her involvement all but guarantees the show a built-in audience and vastly improves its chances of financial success. Ms. Winfrey said she planned to help promote the show by featuring members of the cast on her syndicated daytime television talk show.

"It's been a secret dream of mine to be part of Broadway," Ms. Winfrey said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I hope to be able to do for this production some of what I've been able to do for books - that is, to open the door to the possibilities for a world of people who have never been or even thought of going to a Broadway show."

The producers have adopted other measures to attract those who have not previously made Broadway shows a priority, Mr. Sanders said, including offering discounted $25 tickets for advance sale - the top ticket price is $101.25 - and lowering the number necessary to qualify for a group discount to 15 from 20.

The musical has been significantly revised since its premiere last September in Atlanta, Mr. Furman said, with changes to the score and the addition of a new choreographer, Donald Byrd. In a review of the Atlanta production, the trade journal Daily Variety called it a "well-meaning but overly prosaic show" that lacked "a sense of the sweeping poetic scale demanded by both the material and the form."

Rocco Landesman, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, a rival to the Shubert Organization, which owns the Broadway Theater, said that "an imprimatur from Oprah Winfrey is huge because it is something that cannot be bought." He is not involved in the show but described himself as a longtime friend of Mr. Furman, one of the producers. "It puts it in an entirely different category, because of her reputation for integrity and for putting her seal only on things that she truly believes in," he said.

That is certainly the effect she has had on the publishing industry, where her recommendations of books for Oprah's Book Club routinely turn the works of little-known authors into best sellers.

While this is her first venture on Broadway, Ms. Winfrey has worked extensively in Hollywood. She acted in and was a producer of the 1998 film "Beloved," based on the Toni Morrison novel, and she has served as executive producer of a number of made-for-television movies, several of which were shown with the title "Oprah Winfrey Presents."

Though "The Color Purple" tells a story of redemptive love and the triumph of the human spirit, it does so through some unsettling elements, including family violence, incest, racial discrimination and lesbianism. As such, it could be considered a somewhat unlikely source for a Broadway musical, particularly at a time when many of the biggest hits on Broadway in recent years have been almost slapstick in character, including "The Producers," "Hairspray" and "Spamalot."

"You're about the one millionth person who has said that to me in the eight years I've been working on this," Mr. Sanders told a reporter yesterday. "But the story has incredible heart, it has incredible pain, and it is about the triumph over adversity. It lends itself to a musical if it is presented in the right way." And, he added, it is in character with great Broadway shows like "West Side Story," "Gypsy" and "Les Misérables."

Ms. Winfrey said she, too, had long been entranced by the potential of "The Color Purple." While she was still the host of a local talk show in Chicago, she read the book and gave copies of it to people she worked with.

When she heard that it was to be made into a film, she longed for a part, and the chance came serendipitously. Mr. Jones, the record producer, who was also helping to produce the film, saw her talk show on television while staying in a hotel in Chicago and asked Mr. Spielberg to consider her for a part.

Ms. Winfrey said yesterday that at the time of movie's filming, her television show was about to be nationally syndicated, and she begged Mr. Spielberg to put her name on the movie poster, to no avail. Now, 20 years later, she said, "my name is on the marquee."

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