Dr. Ruth Westheimer

If Congress wants to get involved in the business of morality by allowing a moment of silence in our schools, I support that. But if our representatives in Washington are truly going to be moral leaders, then they have to do more than just tell us to pray for guidance. 

-Ruth Westheimer

Karola Ruth Westheimer

June 4, 1928 – July 12, 2024

better known as Dr. Ruth

After receiving her doctorate, Westheimer briefly worked for Planned Parenthood in Harlem training women to teach sex education, and this experience encouraged her to continue studying human sexuality. She went on to work as a postdoctoral researcher at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She continued to work there as an adjunct associate professor for five years. She also taught at Lehman College, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, Adelphi University, Columbia University, Yale University, Princeton University, New York University, New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center/Weill Cornell Medicine, and West Point. In addition, she treated sex therapy patients in a private practice, on East 73rd Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Described as "Grandma Freud" and the "Sister Wendy of Sexuality", Westheimer helped revolutionize talk about sex and sexuality on radio and television, advocating for speaking openly about sexual issues.^[64] She fielded questions ranging from women who did not have orgasms, to the best time of day to have sex (the morning), to men with premature ejaculations, to foreplay, to oral sex, to sexual fantasies ("embrace them"; "If you want to believe that a whole football team is in bed with you, that's fine"), to masturbation, to erections, to sexual positions, to the G-spot. She stressed that: "anything that two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom or kitchen floor is all right with me". Asked a question as to having sex with an animal, she responded: "I'm not a veterinarian." She spoke out against engaging in any sexual activity under pressure, and against pedophilia. She educated her listeners about sexually transmitted diseases, and spoke out strongly in favor of having sex, in favor of contraception being used, in favor of the availability of abortion as an aid for contraception failures, in favor of sex within relationships rather than one-night stands, in favor of funding for Planned Parenthood, and in favor of research on AIDS. She became known for giving serious advice while being candid and funny, but warm, cheerful, and respectful; and for her tag phrase: "Get some." Journalist Joyce Wadler described her as a "world class charmer".

One journalist described her voice as "a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse". She was noted for having "an accent only a psychologist could love", one that was "dripping chicken soup."

In 1984 The New York Times noted that on radio the 55-year-old had risen "from obscurity to almost instant stardom." Journalist Jeannette Catsoulis wrote later in The New York Times, "It's hard to explain how revolutionary her humor, candor and sexual explicitness seemed for the time."

Westheimer's media career began in 1980 when she was 52 years old, and her radio show, Sexually Speaking, debuted on WYNY-FM in New York City. In it, she answered questions called in by listeners, and the show ultimately became nationally syndicated. She was offered the opportunity after she gave a lecture to New York broadcasters about the need for sex education programming to help deal with issues of contraception and unwanted pregnancies. Betty Elam, the community affairs manager at WYNY, was impressed with her talk and offered Westheimer $25 per week to make Sexually Speaking, which started as a 15-minute show airing every Sunday at midnight, which was historically a dead time.

By 1981, as the show attracted 250,000 listeners every week despite the network not doing any promotion for it—growing simply by word of mouth—it was extended to be one hour long on Sunday nights, starting at 10 pm. It was soon picked up by 90 stations across the United States, and it ran for a decade. The show broke taboos of the time against speaking publicly and explicitly about sex. The New York Times described it as one of the station's "oddest shows", and among its biggest draws. A New York University professor of human sexuality made listening to her show a class assignment. When the station offered a "Dr. Ruth T-shirt" ("Sex on Sunday? You Bet!"), it received 3,500 orders.

By 1982, her show was WYNY's top-rated phone-in talk show. Singer Pattie Brooks recorded a song as an ode to her, "Dr. Ruth," with a trendy, dance-rock tinged, high pressure beat.

By 1983 her show was the top-rated radio show in the area, in the country's largest radio market. In 1984 NBC Radio began syndicating the radio program nationwide—it was now heard in 93 markets. She went on to produce her radio show until 1990.

In 1984, Westheimer began hosting several television programs on the Lifetime TV network, and one in syndication. Her first show was Good Sex! With Dr. Ruth Westheimer, airing for a half hour at 10 pm on weeknights. She would end each show by reminding her audience: "Have good sex!"

The show was expanded in 1985 to a full hour, and its name was changed to The Dr. Ruth Show. During each of her live shows, 3,000 callers tried to get through, and the show attracted an average of 450,000 viewers a night, double the audience previously watching at that hour, and attracted more viewers than any other show on Lifetime; that number rose to 2 million homes a week. In April 1985 she appeared on the cover of People. That year she also appeared as an actress in the French romantic comedy film Une Femme ou Deux (One Woman or Two), starring Gérard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver, playing the part of a wealthy philanthropist.

Dr. Ruth's Game of Good Sex was released in 1985. A Baltimore distributor said: "I'm going to have to compare this to Trivial Pursuit. The orders overshadow anything we've had in our company's 100-year history." Dr. Ruth's Computer Game of Good Sex was a hit, released in 1986 for the Commodore 64, MS-DOS, and Apple II. In addition, she gave an interview in the January 1986 issue of Playboy.

She appeared on a TV Guide cover in 1988. Dr. Ruth returned to the Lifetime network in 1988 with The All New Dr. Ruth Show. That was followed in 1989 by two teen advice shows called What's Up, Dr. Ruth?, and a call-in show, You're on the Air with Dr. Ruth in 1990. That year she also appeared in an episode of the television series Tall Tales & Legends as the "Mysterious Stranger."

During the 1980s, "Dr. Ruth" became a household name and a major cultural figure; during the 1980s and 1990s, she made frequent guest appearances on several network television shows, including Late Night with David Letterman, and appeared on talk shows on German television. She was portrayed on Saturday Night Live by Mary Gross in "Saturday Night News" four times in 1983, and twice in 1984, and was a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson twice in 1982, once in 1983, three times in 1984, twice in 1985 – in addition to being impersonated in a "Mighty Carson Art Players" sketch, and once in 1986, on Joan Rivers: Can We Talk? twice in 1986, seven times as a panelist on the game show The New Hollywood Squares in 1986–87, on The Arsenio Hall Show once in 1989, on The Joan Rivers Show once in 1989, and on Live with Kelly and Ryan in both 1989 and 1990. In 1987, she made a TV commercial for Signal mouthwash.

In 1993, Westheimer and Israeli TV host Arad Nir hosted a talk show in Hebrew titled Min Tochnit, on the newly opened Israeli Channel 2. The show was similar to her US Sexually Speaking show. The name of the show, Min Tochnit, is a play on words: literally "Kind of a program", but "Min" (מין) in Hebrew also means "sex" and "gender". 1993 and 1994 saw the publication of "Dr. Ruth's Good Sex Night-to-Night Calendar."

In 1994, she appeared in a computer game, an interactive CD-ROM adaptation of Dr. Ruth's Encyclopedia of Sex released for Windows and the Philips CD-i.

In 1995, she hosted a series of Playboy instructional videos entitled "Making Love". She also wrote a column distributed both nationally and internationally by the King Features Syndicate. In 1996, she co-authored Heavenly Sex, on Judaism and sex, in which she wrote: "The great rabbi Simeon ben-Halafta called the penis the great peacemaker of the home." She refers to the Book of Ruth as encouraging single women to initiate sex (providing the relationship leads to marriage), cites a Talmudic mandate that an unemployed man must make love to his wife every day, and mentions the writings of a 12th-century rabbi who suggested that couples use different positions while having sex.

In the 1990s, Westheimer was a guest star in 1992 on the television soap opera One Life to Live, and appeared as herself in "Dr. Ruth", a 1993 episode of the sci-fi drama series Quantum Leap She appeared on the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs in 1990, on The Arsenio Hall Show once in 1990, once in 1991, once in 1993, and once in 1994, on The Howard Stern Show once in 1991, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien once in 1994, twice in 1995, three times in 1996, and once in 1997, on The Daily Show once in 1998, and was featured in a Celebrity Deathmatch episode in 1999.

Westheimer also appeared in several commercial advertisements, including a 1990 commercial for Clairol Herbal Essences shampoo and body wash, a 1991 Pepsi commercial (along with Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon, Bo Jackson, and Gilbert Gottfried), and a 1994 Honda Prelude ad.

In 2000, she appeared on Grammy Award winner Tom Chapin's album This Pretty Planet, in the song "Two Kinds of Seagulls", in which she and Chapin sing in a duet of various animals that reproduce sexually. "It takes two to tingle" says the song. That year, she also made a TV commercial for Entenmann's Raspberry Danish Twist.

Between 2001 and 2007, Westheimer made regular appearances on the PBS children's television series Between the Lions as "Dr. Ruth Wordheimer" in a spoof of her therapist role, in which she helps anxious readers and spellers overcome their fear of long words. In 2002, she received a nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for Children, for Timeless Tales and Music of Our Time. In 2003–04, she made 10 appearances as a panelist on the game show Hollywood Squares.

In 2004, she made a guest appearance on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, an NPR news panel game, and in 2007 she appeared on Live with Regis and Kelly. In January 2009, the 55th anniversary issue of Playboy magazine included Westheimer as #13 in a list of the 55 most important people in sex from the past 55 years. That year, Vanity Fair named her one of "12 women who changed the way we look at sex." She also appeared in the 2009 documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel.

In 2011, interior designer Nate Berkus hosted her on The Nate Berkus Show, after redoing the living room and dining room of her Manhattan apartment, in which she had lived for 50 years, to reduce clutter. She appeared as a guest on The Doctors in 2011 and 2012, on Joy Behar: Say Anything! in 2012, on Rachael Ray in 2013 and 2015, and on The Today Show in 2015 and 2019.

In 2018, she wrote three books. In 2019, she published her 45th book on sex and sexuality. On her 91st birthday, June 4, 2019, Westheimer appeared as a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and she visited Ellen's show again in November 2019, taking questions from the audience, and was also a guest in November 2020. In 2019, Westheimer also appeared as a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers, The View, The Today Show, and twice on Strahan, Sara and Keke. She also had over 100,000 followers on Twitter.

Good Night Dr. Ruth

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa