Ruth Westheimer

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Dr. Ruth speaking on October 4, 2007 at Brown University
Dr. Ruth speaking on October 4, 2007 at Brown University

Ruth Westheimer, Ed.D (born Karola Ruth Siegel on June 4, 1928) is a sex therapist and author. She is best known as Dr. Ruth.

Contents

[edit] Biography

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Westheimer was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to a Jewish family. In 1939 she was sent to Switzerland.[1] In 1945, Westheimer learned that her parents had perished in the Holocaust, most likely at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Westheimer decided to immigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine where she joined the Haganah in Jerusalem. Despite her diminutive height of 4 feet 7 inches, she was trained as a scout and sharpshooter.[1] Westheimer was seriously wounded in action by an exploding shell during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, and it was several months before she was able to walk again.[2]

In 1950, Westheimer moved to France, where she studied and then taught psychology at the University of Paris. In 1956, she immigrated to Washington Heights, New York City. She earned a master's in sociology from Columbia University and an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University. She completed post-doctoral work in human sexuality at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She is multilingual, speaking English, German, French and Hebrew.

Westheimer has written several books on human sexuality including Dr. Ruth's Encyclopedia of Sex and Sex ...for Dummies. She has taught as lecturer and professor at Princeton University and New York University and led a recent seminar on the Jewish Family at Yale University.

In commemoration of Yom Hashoah, Dr. Ruth was the guest speaker at the prestigious Bronx High School of Science in New York in April 2008. She spoke about her life story as well as touching upon her struggle for survival in WWII in Germany and Switzerland. In celebration of her upcoming birthday, the audience (estimate 500 people) sang her a warm Happy Birthday in honor of her 80th birthday.

She has been married three times. Her third marriage, to Manfred Westheimer, lasted until his death in 1997. She has two children, Miriam and Joel, and several grandchildren.

[edit] Media career

In 1980 WYNY FM was NBC Radio's New York City owned and operated station. The struggling Adult Contemporary station had recently gone through a make over in an attempt to build an audience. Part of this rebuild was adding specialized talk shows to the evening and weekend hours. Maurice Tunick was recruited from New York's leading talk station, WOR where he was talk show producer. As WYNY's Program Coordinator he was responsible for developing new talk shows.

Betty Elam was WYNY's Community Affairs Manager. Her job was to work closely with community groups and the station's public affairs programming. Betty was one of dozens of radio station Community Affairs managers attending the NYMRAD ascertainment day which had Westheimer as a speaker, and came back raving about her.

Betty was taken in by Westheimer's passion, information, sense of humor and personality and suggested that WYNY ought to do something with her. She was invited to be a guest on a taped Sunday morning public affairs program twice. Following that, WYNY's General Manager, Dan Griffin suggested Maurice find a way to develop a public affairs show for her.

Maurice was given Sunday night at midnight for 15 minutes. Being a novice in radio, Westheimer thought it would be a good idea to have guests covering urology, neurology, gynecology, etc. — all areas which could have an effect on sex. While that would be important, Tunick thought a better show would be to not have guests at all but to directly answer listeners' questions. NBC was reluctant to allow live phone calls for a sex advice show, which was considered very risqué in the early 1980s, but Tunick suggested soliciting questions via mail. By people submitting their questions, Westheimer could control the questions and read them on the air with her answers. Typically each question could begin with, "I have a letter from a listener who asks..."

The show, Sexually Speaking, using the name "Dr. Ruth, was taped in an NBC Radio studio at 30 Rockefeller Center, NBC's radio and TV headquarters on Thursday mornings at 11:00 a.m. for airing on Sunday nights at midnight. All NBC studios at 30 Rock were accessible from other studios and many offices around the building. A couple of weeks into recording, it was reported that work was stopping in many places in the building on Thursdays at 11 as people were gathering to hear this "cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse," as the Wall Street Journal would later describe her.

After just two months, despite the initial concerns over a live show, it was decided that Westheimer could go live for an hour taking phone calls (with a delay). Within a year "Dr. Ruth" had a larger audience on Sunday night at midnight on this struggling New York station than many NY stations had in morning drive.

As "Dr. Ruth", Westheimer became nationally known after several appearances on "Late Night with David Letterman" in the early 1980's.[3] In less than two years, Dr. Ruth became a household name and was being heard on radio stations across the country.

Her pioneering TV show, also called Sexually Speaking, first aired in 1982 as a 15-minute taped show on Lifetime Cable. It has since increased in popularity and has been nationally syndicated, as has her radio show. She is known to be candid and funny, but respectful.

In recent years, Westheimer has made regular appearances on the PBS Television children's show Between the Lions as "Dr. Ruth Wordheimer" in a parody of her therapist role, in which she helps anxious readers and spellers overcome their fear of long words.

[edit] Popular culture

  • The notably short-statured and German-accented Dr. Westheimer has been occasionally parodied by Mary Gross during her tenure at Saturday Night Live. Gross would be a guest on the News segment, playing Westheimer with a thick accent, and sitting behind the desk where only her head and occasionally her raised arms showed.
  • Westheimer served as a panelist on revivals of television game shows To Tell the Truth (1990) and Hollywood Squares (1998).
  • Westheimer guest-starred as herself on an episode of Quantum Leap, as the person who "leaped" and switched places with the program's time-travelling main character. She was the only celebrity guest star on Quantum Leap to have “Leaped” in the series.
  • Westheimer made many appearances on Late Night with Conan O'Brien during the 1990s as one of Conan's many characters that also included Mr. T, Abe Vigoda, Carl "Oldy" Olsen, Al Roker, NBC Announcer Joel Goddard, The Liberal-Bias Ski-Reporter, Loser at the Beach, Nipple-Hair Don King, Pimpbot 5000, the Masturbating Bear, and of course Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog. In one of Dr. Ruth's most notable appearances, she attempted to re-create the World Series by playing a pretend game of baseball with several of the aforementioned characters.
  • She appears as herself on David Endochrine's show in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel. In it she is killed by the Joker; ironically by his poisoned-lipstick kiss.
  • Dr. Ruth is mentioned in Shania Twain's song "I'm Holdin' on to Love (to Save My Life)".
  • Dr. Ruth appeared on an afternoon newscast of WCBS-TV in summer of 2006.
  • Hip Hop artist Project Pat claims to be "the ghetto Dr. Ruth" in his song "What Money Do" featured on his album "Crook by Da Book"
  • Dr. Ruth was portrayed by Greg Proops, on an episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? during the popular sketch "Let's Make a Date".
  • Dr. Ruth appears on the PBS Kids show Between the Lions as Dr. Ruth Wordheimer.
  • Dr. Ruth is mentioned in the movie "Frankie and Johnny" with Michelle Pfieffer and Al Pacino.
  • In the film Electric Dreams, the computer protagonist "Edgar" calls in to Dr. Ruth's radio show multiple times for an explanation of what love is. When she attempts to explain, Edgar reveals that he has no arms or legs, and is kept "locked up" by Miles (whom Edgar refers to as "Moles"). Dr. Ruth suggests that he call the police "right away". Years later, Westheimer gave an almost identical reading of the "right away" line in response to a question from Max Headroom on his Cinemax talk show -- whether she did this as a nod to a film most of Max's viewers would have enjoyed is unknown.
  • Tony Kornheiser implied in a PTI episode that Wilbon slept with Westheimer while 17 years old.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Urban Legends Reference Pages: Dr. Ruth Was a Sniper by Barbara Mikkelson, Last updated 1 March 2007, Retrieved 2 March 2007
  2. ^ Dr. Ruth: Sex Sage and Ex-Sniper on Global Sexuality by Tom Foreman, National Geographic, June 11, 2003
  3. ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0922756/; http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=6129

[edit] External links