At 91, Dr. Ruth still has zest for life
Sex therapist’s journey to household name detailed in production
Ihave questions for sex therapist Dr. Ruth, and my pulse quickens as I pick up the phone.
A busy signal. Apparently Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, who in the 1980s got Americans talking about everything from orgasms to orgies, still has a landline. Without call waiting.
The low-tech setup is probably designed to give the 91-year-old some peace — a defense against questions about masturbation, erectile dysfunction and other topics that before her radio show, television programs, newspaper columns and books were only whispered about, if they were spoken of at all.
“People find me in the street and tell me their problems,” Westheimer says in her distinctive voice, high-pitched and German-accented. “But I’m grateful.”
Westheimer’s extraordinary life — from Holocaust survivor to Israeli sniper to household name — is detailed in Mark St. Germain’s play, “Becoming Dr. Ruth.” It opens at Orlando Shakes on Friday.
The play is what I have called to ask about — honestly! — but the good doctor has thoughts on today’s sexual scene.
“The questions have changed,” she says of those who seek her counsel. “They don’t ask about premature ejaculation and how women can have an orgasm anymore. People know much more.”
I suggest a whole generation knows more about their own bodies thanks to her teaching.
“I hope so,” she proclaims. “There were others writing or talking about sex. But I certainly was a big part of it. And I was instrumental about talking about AIDS when no one else wanted to.”
Her career in frank talk is how most people know her. When an actor first suggested to playwright St. Germain that the thrice-married diminutive doc would make a great subject for a play, he was skeptical.
“What? A 15-minute sketch about a talk show?” he remembers thinking. “Then I read about her life, and I was amazed.”
But Westheimer wasn’t interested.
“She said, ‘Absolutely not,’ ”
recalls St. Germain, whose acclaimed plays include “Freud’s Last Session” and “Dancing Lessons.” “I was kind of irritated. I felt too immediately dismissed.”
Upon reflection, Westheimer had a change of heart. She liked St. Germain “right away.” And she felt an obligation to those who didn’t survive World War II.
“I have an obligation to talk about it,” she says. “How lucky I am, how grateful I was saved. Hitler and the Nazis are dead. My four grandchildren are alive.”
She says current affairs bring new resonance to her story.
“I want audiences to laugh but also to cry about the rise of Nazism, especially in today’s world with anti-Semitism on the rise,” she says.
Eileen DeSandre, an Oregon-based actor who stars in Orlando Shakes’ production, says the play hits home for anyone who has faced trauma.
“She lost her family” when the youngster was put on a “Kindertransport,” removing Jewish children from Nazi Germany to an orphanage in Switzerland, DeSandre said. “Her mother and grandmother took her to the train station, waved goodbye, and she never saw them again.”
Young Karola Ruth Siegel, as she was born, already had witnessed the Nazis dragging her father away. After World War II, she emigrated to Palestine before the establishment of Israel. Because of her small stature, 4-foot-7, she was trained as a scout and a sniper in what would become the Israeli armed forces.
Israel is still important to her: She’s proud that in May she’ll receive an honorary doctorate from that nation’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where a psychology scholarship in her name is also being established (aabgu.org/Dr-Ruth). She laughs as she says she has a message for those who donate to the scholarship’s endowment: “I promise they will have good sex for the rest of their lives.”
After her stint in the
Middle East, Westheimer lived in Paris before immigrating to the U.S. in 1956 and earning her master’s and doctorate degrees. Even then, as a divorced woman she bucked convention.
“I was alive in the ’50s, and you did not have single mothers in the ’50s,” DeSandre says. “But she was a single mother in the ’50s without shame.”
St. Germain says with Westheimer what you see is what you get: “I’ve never seen any personality but her real one.”
The two became friends while he wrote the play. Then came the moment of truth.
“I had to read the whole thing to her,” St. Germain says. “She only made two corrections — not about point of view, about locations I had wrong.”
“Becoming Dr. Ruth” debuted in 2013, with The New York Times calling it
“highly enjoyable” and “a design for living, as exemplified by a woman whose father told her always to be cheerful and happy.”
Playing Westheimer is “a little terrifying,” says DeSandre. “It’s not an impersonation. It’s not an imitation. It’s an interpretation.”
Westheimer won’t travel from New York to see the local production. “I’ll be teaching,” she says; she lectures at Hunter College and Teachers College, Columbia University.
Her commitments don’t surprise St. Germain. “She’s unstoppable,” he says. “She can walk faster than I can, she has more energy than I do.”
If she should need mobility assistance, Westheimer knows where to turn.
“I take a young, goodlooking guy with me instead of a cane,” she quips.
She recently updated one of her myriad books.
“I put in some warnings that the art of conversation is getting lost” in the age of social media, she says. “It can lead to a lot of loneliness.”
And though she’s not opposed to finding sexual partners through phone apps or online services, she advises caution. “People can lie,” she says bluntly.
2019 saw her inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame, as well as the release of the documentary film “Ask Dr. Ruth.”
There’s a reason the public remains interested in Westheimer, says St. Germain, and it’s reflected in his play.
“It’s a story about survival. There’s humor, there’s tragedy,” St. Germain says. “She’s had a lot of challenges, and she stayed true to herself. It’s inspirational.”