[Dr. Ruth laughing]
OK, plug it in again.
What's her name? Alexis.
Wait. What's‐‐ Is her name Alexa? Alexa?
Alexa, am I going to get a boyfriend?
[Alexa] Sorry, I don't know that.
I don't know either. Unplug her!
If she doesn't know that, what good is she? [laughing]
Alexa, who is Dr. Ruth?
[Alexa] A towel is a piece of absorbent fabric
or paper used for drying or wiping a body or a surface.
[laughing] No.
Alexa, who is Dr. Ruth Westheimer?
[Alexa] Ruth Westheimer, better known as Dr. Ruth,
is a German‐born Jewish immigrant to the United States
who became a fixture in late night television
and a major pop culture figure
as a sex therapist, media personality and author.
Rafi!
Did you hear? She knows who I am!
OK, I think I'm going to keep her.
She is here with all the answers.
I love her so much,
the goddess of good sex, Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
[applause]
Dr. Ruth!
She talks about the penis like it's a cooking show.
First of all, take the man's penis between your fingers, knead the bread‐‐ No.
Dr. Ruth, is it all right for a man to make sounds
while he's having sex?
Certainly it is all right,
as long as you don't wake up your wife.
[audience laughing]
I am going to make you say "vagina" and "clitoris"
because I always hear you talk about penis.
Can you say that word again?
‐"Erection?" ‐Yes.
‐Say it a little bit louder.
"Erection!"
This is like a cable version of Mr. Rogers or something, you know.
It's like, "can you say clitoris?"
Dr. Ruth, does size matter‐‐
[Dr. Ruth] Nope.
It does not really?
Size has nothing to do...
[Howard] Really?
...with the sexual satisfaction of a woman.
If you do nothing else via your television and radio programs,
you educate people to the fact that they're not alone
‐because they have a sexual problem. ‐I do.
But you have changed sex for America.
Don't you tell me that it's less good now.
[Jerry] No, it's better now. Everyone knows it.
Don't just sit there and suffer.
Don't fake it. Don't be unhappy and frustrated.
But do something about it.
‐[man] Hello, my love. ‐[Dr. Ruth] Hey, there.
‐How are you doing? ‐OK, you're going to go on camera.
‐Awesome. ‐All right.
That is the doctor, she's my love.
‐Thank you. ‐That's my love.
‐You too, come here. ‐Of course, of course.
Both of you here. You'll be on camera. Thank you.
There is a stuka. All right! And there is a film crew coming,
so close my bedroom, I don't want Ryan to be in there.
[indiscernible conversation]
People, here, have some cookies.
I've lived in this apartment for 54 years.
Rob, take some cookie.
Once I started to do television,
people said, "Why don't you move?"
But this is a neighborhood of immigrants and I said,
“No, I'm very comfortable here.”
Did you call your mother?
[phone ringing]
Hi, there! Hello? Yeah. [speaking in Hebrew]
‐Ya. ‐[phone ringing]
OK. [speaking in Hebrew]
‐Shabbat Shalom. ‐[phone ringing]
OK? Ciao Ciao. Bye Bye. [speaking in Hebrew]
[in English] Bye bye. Hello?
Yeah, and I just came back from doing Good Morning America.
It went very very well.
Yes,
find it online and I'll be there 6:30.
OK.
There is no such thing as retiring for me.
And I'm very fortunate.
I have a minister of communications, Pierre.
I tell everybody, if you want to get to me, call Pierre.
[phone ringing]
[Pierre] Hi, Ruth!
[Dr. Ruth] All right! You did send me my calendar, thank you.
Right.
[Pierre] I've worked with Ruth since the beginning of her television career.
That's 36 years now.
Was it Stan Lee?
[Pierre] I would love to retire,
but Dr. Ruth won't retire.
Her calendar is jam packed.
It's nonstop.
So, we talk quite often,
it can be as many as 25‐30 times a day.
Most people can't keep up with Dr. Ruth because she doesn't stop.
She's teaching two courses, one at Hunter College,
and another at Teacher's College at Columbia University.
[Dr. Ruth] Despite the research of Kinsey, Masters
and Johnson and Helen Singer‐Kaplan,
there is still a lot of work to be done.
On Monday, October 2nd,
you are flying to Boston for the Forbes 30 Under 30 event.
You give her an orgasm, if you don't know how to do that
‐I'll teach you that next time. ‐[laughing]
On Wednesday the 21st you are leaving for Boulder, Colorado,
for the air force academy.
I see a short person over there.
I have to tell you that short people make the best lovers.
[Pierre] She still does guest lectures.
She's got a newspaper column for Time Magazine.
She's still writing books.
Can you see it, David?
I think this is number 40.
[Pierre] There's three books that will come out in 2018.
Hot off the press! Roller-Coaster Grandma.
So, on Friday the 12th, you're doing Good Morning America.
Dr. Ruth, my boyfriend spends more time on his smartphone
than visiting with me. Is it a fix or a nix?
‐Nix it! ‐Nix?
[Pierre] On Sunday, you're playing the queen at the medieval festival.
I want you to see that I'm holding the King's hand.
[laughing]
Whoever is applauding the loudest,
I promise good sex for the rest of your life.
‐[audience cheering] ‐Let's have an applause.
[Pierre] If Ruth doesn't have something,
she works at making sure it's busy.
And it's one of the things that she's always giving advice about,
get yourself out there
and meet people.
She has always been like this.
Just constantly going.
And then on June 4th, she's gonna be celebrating her 90 years.
‐[Dr. Ruth] Bye. ‐[security guard] Bye‐bye.
[Dr. Ruth] Bye‐bye in the rain.
[Dr. Ruth] OK, Cliff?
OK.
‐All right. ‐All right.
So, when we took all the tapes and put them on hard drives,
this is what they are, so there's hundreds of shows on these‐‐
[Dr. Ruth] So my whole career is on these little boxes?
[Cliff] Exactly.
But you do know that I could never play that without you here.
‐I know. ‐I don't know which button to push,
but I do enjoy it!
[Cliff] All right, you wanna see some of these?
[Dr. Ruth] Yeah.
The woman known as “Grandma Freud”
has earned millions of devoted fans
simply by talking graphically and endlessly about sex.
If you don't wanna hear the kind of things she says,
please consider this fair warning. Not everyone approves of what she does.
[man] Ruth, I am placing you under arrest.
[crowd groans]
[Diane Sawyer] This is what happened at Oklahoma State University.
Someone in the audience troubled by Ruth Westheimer's sexually explicit talk
tried to make a citizen's arrest.
It was just another day in the life of Dr. Ruth,
the nation's most popular sex therapist.
Hello, you are on the air.
‐[man] Uh, Dr. Ruth? ‐Hello?
[man] I'd like to get your opinion on marital aids...
‐Yes. ‐...like vibrators and such.
Does your wife use a vibrator?
‐[man] No. ‐Would she want to use one?
‐Uh, I'm not sure. ‐You're not sure.
Uh, would you like to see her use one?
‐Yeah. ‐OK, go out and buy one.
[man laughing] OK.
[John] When we went on the air in 1984
there was no one as explicit about sexuality as Ruth.
You have a certain list of words you can't say.
Well, we said them.
And then let him insert his penis into the vagina from behind.
The reason I am saying from behind is so that the clitoris should be exposed,
so that either you or he can stimulate the clitoris to orgasm.
[Greg] Younger people don't understand the controversy.
She was always saying there is no such thing as normal.
We are all normal.
Ruth was on the forefront of that
and she gave us permission to talk about that.
I think it's wonderful that people can ask you these things
that they never would have dared to ask even 10 years ago.
[man] Lately when my girlfriend and I have, um, been having intercourse,
I've been ejaculating right after intercourse begins, and‐‐
You mean as soon as you are entering into the vagina?
[man] Just a little bit.
[Greg] She was very careful to make sure
that her professional credentials were always evident.
She taught at Columbia University, at Princeton,
and she was a licensed sex therapist.
So it worked, and we did almost five hundred shows [laughing].
I think it has something to do with my not being tall and blonde and gorgeous.
And because I'm an older woman, very often they say,
“If only my mother, if only my grandmother could talk like that.”
Thank You.
Thank you, from your mouth to the censors!
[Greg] Every single time I'm with her,
people come up and tell her she affected their life
or saved their life or saved them from committing suicide.
All because this loving grandmother was on TV
talking honestly about relationships,
how we love, who we love.
The most personal and profound things that give us happiness.
[man] Welcome the one and only Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
[applause]
[Diane] Wherever she goes, she advises, she educates, she shocks.
Anything that two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom,
living room, kitchen floor is all right.
[Diane] But some of Dr. Ruth Westheimer's colleagues
think she's doing more harm than good.
[Dr. Lee] I think she's very quick to give very specific advice without having
background information on the person's life.
All right, Tracy. I think that you should find yourself a new man. OK?
[Diane] So you think she's reckless?
It's a hard word. I hate to use the word, but yes, she is reckless.
[Diane] But she's not bothered much by criticism, the woman the magazines call
“The Happy Munchkin of Sex,” is in fact pretty tough.
She was a young child living in Frankfurt, Germany when the Nazis came to power.
[Dr. Ruth] So...
[rustling]
...I have something that is very sacred.
When I left Germany, when I was ten,
the only thing in that suitcase
that came from my parents
was this washcloth.
Look how beautiful it is.
And in here,
KS,
which is Karola Siegel.
My name in Germany was Karola. And this washcloth always was with me.
I never forget where I have it.
And, uh, it kind of links me
to, uh, to my past.
I was born on June 4th, 1928
with the name Karola Siegel
in a village not far from Frankfurt, Germany.
I was an only child to Orthodox Jewish parents.
Not rich people,
but the first 10 years of my childhood were ideal.
Loving parents, adoring grandmother, and they cared for me very much.
But in the 1930s things changed drastically
as Hitler came to power.
One morning in November 1938,
the Nazis arrived at the apartment.
There was no shouting, but I was 10 and a half, so I was scared.
I remember the black boots and the Nazis told my father, "Get dressed."
My grandmother had money in the seam of her skirt.
She gave it to the Nazi and said, “Take good care of my son.”
They took my father downstairs. And before he went into the truck,
he turned around and smiled and waved,
despite the fact that he must've been horrified.
A few months before the war broke out,
it looked very bleak in Germany.
Synagogues were burned and the Jewish business were plundered.
My father sent a postcard from the labor camp saying
that I have to join a group of Orthodox Jewish children.
A Kindertransport that were permitted to come to Switzerland.
I didn't want to leave Frankfurt.
I had 13 dolls. I had 2 doll houses. I had roller skates.
I was an only child.
I had a grandmother with nothing else to do but to take care of me.
But I was 10 and a half and when I saw that postcard, I knew I had to go.
The next morning, my mother and grandmother came with me
to the railroad station in Frankfurt.
My mother hugged me. My grandmother hugged me.
I went into the wagon.
I looked out and I did what my father had done.
I was very sad, but I waved at them
in order to make it easier for them to say goodbye.
[train chugging]
[train chugging in the distance]
My parents actually gave me life twice.
Once when I was born, and once when they sent me to Switzerland.
Everybody was very worried in the train.
We thought, what's going to happen next? Will I ever see my family again?
So, in order to have a little bit of an easier time
I started singing
the songs of my Jewish background.
Some of the songs of Germany. A lot of children songs.
And I made everybody else sing.
[children laughing]
When the group of children got to the village of Heiden in Switzerland,
fifty of us went to a children's home
that became an orphanage for people like us.
And when I got to the home, I wanted to show how well brought up I was,
so I went to the headmistress of this orphanage,
her name was Riesenfeld, and I said,
We were second class citizens.
We had to take care of the Swiss children and do all the housekeeping.
It's strange because that orphanage was called Wartheim.
Warten means "to wait."
But we had no idea how long we would actually be there.
This diary, if you can see this, has even a lock.
Now, don't ask me where the key is. I found it. Here's the key!
I started keeping a diary in the orphanage in Switzerland.
I would write things in there that I would never talk about to anybody.
[speaking German]
[in English] Mommy, why are you not around?
[speaking German]
[in English] Why are you not around? I would work for you.
I would support you. I would make you a good life.
[young Ruth] I get up at 6:30 in the morning. I get dressed.
We wake the children at 7 and then I'm busy until 7:30.
After that, I set the tables, clean the dining room,
and comb the childrens' hair.
After lunch, I put the little girls to bed for their nap.
Then I do some mending.
In the evening, I help bathe the children and after dinner, I clean their shoes.
I like all my chores very much.
[Dr. Ruth] I was always worried the headmistress Riesenfeld
would find those diaries.
So I didn't write anything bad against the orphanage.
The people who took care of us were themselves refugees.
They were worried about their own lives.
So all of these children including me became like brothers and sisters
watching over each other.
[door bell rings]
OK, his wife is here.
[Dr. Ruth] Hey!
‐Saved by the bell! ‐[Dr. Ruth] Hey, we found it.
All right, all right, all right.
‐You were my first boyfriend. ‐[Walter] OK.
You were a little younger than me.
You were the most important person in Heiden
in my life
and then you cheated on me!
‐He went with an older woman. ‐[Debbie speaking]
I know I'm older than him, but he went with a much older woman!
[Walter speaking]
Right.
[beeping]
All the time!
[Dr. Ruth] You were so cute.
You were so good looking
that it was absolutely normal that I was in love with you.
We kept it secret. But I'm sure everybody knew.
[Walter speaking]
Verboten.
‐It was not permitted. ‐Absolutely.
Because you were in the room above me,
you found a way
of getting messages to me.
[Walter speaking]
[Dr. Ruth] And he put little slips there for me!
‐[Walter] Yes! ‐[Dr. Ruth] One of the message was,
You are my sunshine
Let me hear.
[Dr. Ruth] You are my...
♪ You are my sunshine ♪
My little...
♪ My golden sunshine ♪
[both] You make me happy
‐when skies are grey. ‐when skies are blue.
[both] When skies are grey!
♪ You will never know, dear ♪
How much I love you.
♪ Please don't take my sunshine away ♪
[Walter speaking]
[Dr. Ruth] Experimenting.
When we were teenagers, there was somebody
who said that I showed you my breasts.
And I... [laughing]
But there was a rumor going.
And I was horrified.
I knew Switzerland was surrounded by Nazis
and if I would have been kicked out of Heiden,
where would I be?
There was no place on earth for me.
So we didn't have sex, but we hugged and we kissed.
And guess what? Come here, I'll tell you something.
I can still remember the taste of those kisses.
Don't tell anybody!
[young Ruth] I read a book called Letters for Young Girls.
It was written by a physician for sex education.
Everything in nature is so fantastically well organized.
One can't possibly think that anything about it is dirty.
[male announcer reading]
Hello, you are on the air.
‐[Sue] Hi, Dr. Ruth. ‐Hello.
‐My name is Sue. ‐Hi, Sue.
[Sue] I have a question and I'm kind of embarrassed to ask it.
[Dr. Ruth] Take a deep breath.
[Sue] Um, I want to try to start masturbating myself, OK?
Yes.
[Dr. Ruth] In the early 80s...
[woman] Come in!
[Dr. Ruth] ...people did not talk about female sexuality.
Now, Janet, we are living in the 80s,
so I think we can be perfectly frank.
To begin with, men have certain needs.
[audience laughing]
So do women.
‐They do? ‐[audience laughing]
[Dr. Ruth] They were still believing that not only don't you talk about sex,
but that women really don't enjoy it.
[man] When a woman is frigid, what happens‐‐
Oh, hold it! That word you can't say on my program.
There's no more frigid women,
there are only some women who have to learn how to be responsive.
Could you take his hand and show him how you need to be touched,
how you need to be pleasured, in order to be, uh, happy.
That's what I'm after.
It doesn't have to be with words, it has to be something‐‐
Well, men normally don't care, do they?
That's not so.
Julie, very important for you because young people are watching you.
Very important to say that most men do care very much.
Some men, not you and not Andy, but some men
say when if they don't get what they want...
‐Yes. ‐...there is a term for that,
that term is called‐‐
[Conan] What are you talking about right now?
‐ Blue [beep]. ‐[Conan] What?
‐ Blue [beep], say it. ‐[audience laughing]
I'm not gonna‐‐ No, I'm not gonna say that.
No, I'm not gonna say that. No!
[Dr. Ruth] It frustrated me, the term "blue balls"
and there was nothing for women who didn't reach orgasm.
We should coin a new term,
so that she can say, "Honey, I need some more
hugging and kissing and touching."
‐[Conan] Yes. ‐That term should be "blue lips."
‐[audience laughing] ‐So now,
but... but I'll tell you.
[applause and cheering]
[Dr. Ruth] It has a little to do with my having to make decisions about my life
early on showed me that women have to take the initiative
and have the responsibility for themselves
and for their own sexuality.
I have admired you for a long time
and part of what you have been doing has really permitted women like myself
to speak openly and to stand up and to be counted
and talk about such issues as sexuality.
Well, it's something we're all doing together, I think.
I've never heard women tell the truth about sex before in public in my life.
[Miriam] You once told me that
you raised me with certain values but I took them a little too far.
So you wanted me to be a feminist, but you said when you go out to dinner
let the guy pay once in a while.
You don't have to always pay your own way.
Omi, so you know how you keep giving me things that say feminist on them?
‐[Dr. Ruth] Mm‐hmm. No. ‐Are you a feminist?
‐Why? ‐I'm old fashioned and a square.
Do you agree that men and women should have equal rights?
‐Yes. ‐[Miriam] Equal pay?
Absolutely, equal pay.
What about abortion, should women be able to decide?
[Dr. Ruth] Absolutely. I said that already.
OK, so you're a feminist.
[Dr. Ruth] No. I said already‐‐
Recently I asked her, you know, are you a feminist?
And she said no, and I was really upset by this.
Everything she does is what a feminist would do.
Speaks at Planned Parenthood, you know, supports gay rights,
AIDS research, pro‐choice issues.
But she doesn't think she's a feminist herself.
[Miriam] In our language, you would very much be called a feminist.
What you resist is the activist, protesting and you know, the kinda...
‐[Leora] Burning bras. ‐[Miriam] ...bra burning.
I don't want you to walk around burning bra.
But I think people look up to you as a feminist role model.
OK, that's all right. I don't want them to change their mind.
‐[Leora] OK, but‐‐ ‐I just brought you a hat, right?
[Leora] I know, but you should‐‐ instead of giving me the stuff that says feminist
you should keep some of it.
‐Just say it. “I'm a feminist.” ‐No...
‐[Dr. Ruth] But I love you. ‐[Miram] Say "I'm not‐‐"
"I'm a non‐radical feminist."
"I'm a non‐radical feminist" and I love my granddaughter.
[Dr. Ruth] Once I was already in the orphanage,
my father was permitted to return from the labor camp to Frankfurt.
The war had started and it was a very dangerous place to live for my parents.
But they never wrote about that sadness
in the letters that I received every week.
I kept every single one of their letters.
[mother] My dear Karola,
your nice letter of December 15th reached us today.
By this time your Hanukkah party is probably over. Was it nice?
We haven't heard from uncle Max. We hope to get some news soon.
I wish you my darling the heartiest greeting.
Loving kisses from your loving mommy.
[Dr. Ruth] The letters gave me a lot of hope and joy.
My father, almost every letter he wrote me in poetry.
[father] Dear Karola, although verses take time, you should know how to rhyme.
Perhaps someone will teach it to you, so you will know how to do it too.
It's easier to say in a poem what in prose may be too hard to utter.
And just think, if you were at home, you would not get a single letter.
[young Ruth] I am now in the 8th grade and next spring I have to finish school.
I wish I could continue my education
because for my later profession it would be very helpful to attend a high school.
But girls from the orphanage can't go to high school here.
[Dr. Ruth] From all of us,
you were the smartest, even smarter than me.
Your influence on me had to do with your intellect.
‐Maybe. ‐That‐‐ no, that's very serious.
You are lucky because you
were permitted to go to the high school in the village...
‐Yes. ‐...and I was not.
‐That's right. ‐Because the girls
‐had to become housemaids... ‐That's right.
...but my father said you have to learn. Nobody can take learning from you.
Walter went to the high school during the day.
At night, he would hide under my bed
and I took his books to the landing of the stairs because there was light
and I could read History, English and Geography.
What did you do under the bed?
‐Shiver? ‐Yes.
[Dr. Ruth laughing]
[Dr. Ruth] I'm grateful to Switzerland.
They gave me a roof over my head and fed me
but I also know that they used people like Riesenfeld,
to run this orphanage. Stupid.
Instead of her saying, "Your parents sacrificed
to let their only child leave to safety,"
she said that our parents did not love us.
That if she had a child she would never let it go.
So there are certain things I cannot forgive.
[young Ruth] Yesterday I turned 13.
I was permitted to accompany the older girls to the swimming pool in the village.
I can already jump from the three‐meter board.
[splash]
[mother] My dear Karola,
I am looking forward to the day when I can read your diary.
May you grow up to be a capable, young woman,
always healthy and content.
Your birthday present will follow later.
It may take quite a while.
[Dr. Ruth] The first time that I realized that something horrible has happened
is when the letters stopped.
[young Ruth] It is almost seven weeks
that I don't have mail from my parents and grandma.
Today it is nine weeks and 1 day that I have no mail from my parents.
Today it is three years that I am here. Now I must go to bed.
Goodnight mama, papa, grandma, and all, all my relatives.
Yesterday, I helped pick up 12 children who entered Switzerland illegally.
A girl from Hungary was telling us of all the suffering she saw.
Mass murders, gas chambers, and other horrible things.
It's been over five years since I've heard anything from my family.
I would so much like to relive the days with my parents,
I did not know what they meant to me.
I know that I must not lose hope,
but it's not easy to keep believing that I will ever see them again.
[Melissa Eagan] I have great respect for you and I'm really happy you're here.
[Dr. Ruth] Thank you. All right!
Dr. Ruth, wonderful to meet you.
[Dr. Ruth] Nice to meet you, I heard about you.
We are back, this is Midday on WNYC, I'm Jonathan Capehart
and I am speaking with the iconic,
world renowned sex and relationship therapist, Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
‐In her latest book‐‐ ‐[Dr. Ruth] Hold it, Jonathan.
Jonathan, wait.
‐[Jonathan] Yes, ma'am. ‐Now say the word sex with more emotion.
[nervous laughter]
[Dr. Ruth] Say that word sex as if you really mean it.
‐[Jonathan] OK. ‐With some warmth,
with some excitement, with some arousal.
‐[Dr. Ruth] Start again. ‐OK, yes, ma'am.
[Jonathan] Um, I'm speaking with the iconic,
world renowned sex and relationship therapist, Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
How's that?
‐That was wonderful. ‐[laughing]
I just want to thank you personally, Dr. Ruth.
Growing up listening to you on the radio as a young gay kid,
it was wonderful to hear someone say something positive
about an aspect of my life, that I was trying to come to terms with.
So, Dr. Ruth, you write that one of your least favorite words is "normal."
‐Right. ‐Why?
Because we don't know what normal is.
And I want to tell you something about what you just said, Jonathan.
Uh, in those days, in 1981 when I started WYNY...
‐Yeah, that's right. ‐...Sexually Speaking,
nobody talked about homosexuality.
The one thing that I have done forever,
is to say, respect is not debatable.
There is no such thing as normal.
You know, we have a caller in Brooklyn. Michelle.
[Michelle] As a teenager in the '80s listening to you on the radio,
and, there's a lot of shame around sex.
And your nonjudgmental perspective saved my life.
‐Oh, I like to hear that. ‐[Michelle] Thank you. You're an angel.
I like to hear that, I accept to be an angel,
I'm a Jewish angel, that's OK. Thank you.
So you know, to, to Michelle's point,
how does it feel to have people who you've never met before
say things to you that range from "thank you"
to "you saved my life."
As you know, I'm four foot seven,
and I feel like six feet tall.
But I cannot just sit and say I did a good job.
We have to continue
to talk about issues of sexuality,
and about issues of sexually transmitted diseases.
Today, we are going to talk about a very serious subject matter.
We are going to talk about the AIDS health crisis
and we are going to talk about how it affects particularly the gay community.
[Tom Brokaw] Scientists at the national centers for disease control
in Atlanta today released the results of a study
which shows that the lifestyle of some male homosexuals
has triggered an epidemic of a rare form of cancer.
[Dr. Ruth] It was a very unpopular topic
because gay people at the time, not only were they a minority,
they were despised.
[Billy Graham] It may be a judgement of God upon us,
paying us back for our promiscuous society and our free way of life.
We do reap it in our flesh when we violate the laws of God.
[Dr. Ruth] I took that very seriously
because of my background as a German Jewish refugee.
JEWISH RESIDENTIAL AREA NO TRESPASSING
I certainly had a sensitivity
for the people who were really regarded as sub‐human.
[male caller] Hello, Dr. Ruth.
I've got a girlfriend who's got a lot of homosexuals for friends.
Now she smokes cigarettes off them
and drinks off their cokes and eats their sandwiches.
Is there anyway that she can transmit AIDS because I'm, you know,
I'm a healthy male and I don't want to be getting AIDS through my girlfriend
hanging around with homosexuals.
[John] Dr. Ruth's show was at the height of its popularity
when the AIDS crisis erupted.
It was a sad time. People were dying all over the place
and we were right in the middle of it doing a program about sexuality.
[Dr. Ruth] Some people are attracted to members of their own sex,
and I believe strongly
that we, as a society,
have to give these people all the respect.
[man] I'm angry, doctor.
‐[Dr. Ruth] Why are you angry? ‐I think everyone should be angry.
I see people dying alone without their very own families.
And I see grief. And there's enough grief...
This is a... this is a virus, this is, uh, an epidemic.
It seems the high proportion of people who are dying
and succumbing to the AIDS virus
are still in the homosexual community, intravenous drug users‐‐
I don't waste a moment of my time to blame one or another group.
I say, let's educate and let's find a cure.
[Greg] Because she was America's sex therapist,
people trusted her.
So she really started to shift awareness of HIV and AIDS.
[Dr. Ruth] What makes me sad
is that AIDS is still very relevant today.
So you do have to be careful,
you have to know with whom you go.
And you do have‐‐ if you're not very familiar with that person‐‐
to use condoms.
I have a lot of friends who died of that dreadful disease.
But I'm always optimistic.
I still believe that there will be a cure.
[speaking Hebrew]
[Dr. Ruth] Shalom!
[Marga speaking in Hebrew]
[in English] I have no time to go to the hairdresser, but my best friend
already complains that my hair doesn't look good. OK.
[Marga speaking]
[speaking German]
[Dr. Ruth in English] She was peeling potatoes.
‐[radio static] ‐[man speaking German]
[Dr. Ruth] The orphanage received lists of people who had survived
but instead of calling in individual children,
they sat us down together
and read them all to us.
My family was never on any list.
We were worried about what would happen with us.
What now?
We were not Germans anymore. We were never Swiss.
So they assembled all of us on a train.
And we saw another railroad car filled with Nazis.
Those German prisoners of war were looking out the windows
and I remember what I was thinking. "Maybe you killed my family."
When we got to Marseille,
I had never seen an ocean.
‐No. ‐I thought, "Oh, my gosh,
look at that."
[Dr. Ruth] Little seventeen year old Karola Siegel from Frankfurt am Main
is now going on a boat to Palestine."
We came to a Kibbutz
which is a collective settlement for Jews.
There was a tremendous hatred of Germany,
and rightly so. So the people that were responsible for us told me
"You can't be called Karola anymore, it's too German."
So I said OK, if I can't be Karola, I'm going to take my middle name Ruth
because I've thought still hope against hope,
if anybody of my family is alive,
they would know that my middle name was Ruth.
They would come here and they would find me.
[cows mooing]
[Dr. Ruth] Moo!
They're beautiful.
Marga,
this reminds me of the first night of my life.
His name was Kalman.
He was very handsome.
He was in the army
and he came to visit his brother Shaul,
who was my boyfriend.
But just boyfriend of kissing and hugging.
[man] Then how did it‐‐
You ask such stupid questions!
Yes, but I said goodbye to Shaul.
And I went with his younger brother Kalman.
Shaul told his younger brother
"Take good care of her." [speaking Hebrew]
[in English] I knew that I had to go some place for privacy
so Kalman and I went up on a haystack like that, high up.
That was my first night ever of actual sex.
Nice to remember.
[Dr. Ruth] It was young love,
but like many young loves, it was not meant to be.
A few months later, he told me "We have to end the relationship."
I wanted to be together forever.
He didn't want to. He said I would be a burden.
[young Ruth] Why did this have to happen?
I gave him as much love as I could,
but he took everything and gave nothing in return.
One word keeps coming back to me: alone.
I am so alone in this world. I miss my parents terribly.
[Dr. Ruth] The Nazis kept detailed records.
And for many years I really didn't want to see in black and white
what happened to my parents.
But as difficult as it is for me,
I have an obligation to learn about the fate of my family.
I've thought about, you know, when did my parents tell me about the holocaust
or, like, when did my mother tell me that
she never saw her parents after she was 10 years old?
And I don't have any recollection of some moment.
[Miriam] As I grew up, I realized I didn't have grandparents on my mother's side.
So I would ask about that and she would answer the questions.
But my mother didn't offer information.
[Simmy] OK, what's your maiden name?
Siegel, S‐I‐E‐G‐E‐L.
So we have a lot of Siegels here.
Look at Julius Siegel.
‐Julius? ‐Yeah, my father Julius. That's him.
‐What does it say, list of? ‐List murdered Jews from Germany.
[Dr.Ruth] Died in Auschwitz. 1942.
Oh, boy.
My mother's maiden name was Hanauer.
Irma.
[humming]
‐This is also‐‐ ‐Oh, that's it!
‐Ni Hanauer, that's her. ‐Ni Hanauer.
‐What does it say here? Was born in‐‐ ‐Was born in Wiesenfeld...
‐I was born in Wiesenfeld too. Right. ‐...Germany in 1903.
‐Part of the war she lived in‐‐ ‐Frankfurt Am Main, Germany.
During the war she was in the Linchmont Ghetto.
[Dr. Ruth] Right, and nobody knows what happened?
[Simmy] Irma was murdered in the Holocaust,
‐but it doesn't have a specific location. ‐[Dr. Ruth] No place.
Oh, boy.
Sad.
My mother, there is no date of death,
it just says the word “verschollen” which is a horrible word.
Verschollen means disappeared
as if she was disappearing from the world.
She was murdered someplace, but nobody has any... nobody knows where,
nothing.
My father, I now know was killed in Auschwitz and I have that date.
‐You are on a recorder, Ruth. ‐Ruth K.
The K is for Karola.
‐I am‐‐ ‐[Simmy] You are a survivor.
[Dr. Ruth] I don't call myself a survivor.
I call myself an orphan of the Holocaust
because I was not in a camp, but I was a survivor.
Thank you all for keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive.
If I would not have been sent to Switzerland, I would not be alive today.
I'll cry later when nobody is around.
Yekas, German Jews, don't cry in public.
Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer.
[Miriam] I think the trauma from that unimaginable loss of her parents
re‐configured her whole emotional makeup.
And she just doesn't allow herself,
you know, that good deep cry
that you do when you have to get rid of some deep pain.
I don't know if she ever has that. I don't know.
I'm not going further. There is a warning about a dog.
[Ryan] There's no dog.
‐There is no dog, how do you know? ‐[Ryan] No dog. Because I just went in.
[Ryan laughing]
[Dr. Ruth] I don't rely on anybody.
‐Shalom! ‐[speaking in Hebrew]
[Dr. Ruth speaking in Hebrew]
[man in English] Welcome, welcome. [Dr. Ruth and Shmil speaking in Hebrew]
[Dr. Ruth in English] No. OK.
[man speaking in Hebrew]
[people yelling]
[young Ruth] The political situation in Palestine is getting more and more tense.
Since the UN partition broke the country into separate states,
a guerilla war has broken out between Jews and Arabs.
In Germany, I witnessed firsthand
what happened to Jews when they didn't have their own country.
So I have completed my training as a sniper for the Haganah,
the Jewish underground army.
At target practice, I hit the bulls‐eye nearly every time.
Last night, I stood on a rooftop armed with a machine gun
watching over the Israeli soldiers who checked each car for weapons.
My job as a sniper is to phone if anything happens down there.
And shoot if necessary.
Thank God I have never had to shoot anyone.
This makes me very sad.
Who knows how many people were killed with this?
That's enough.
[Dr. Ruth] June 4th, 1948, on my 20th birthday.
I had come back from my rooftop sniper duty
and when I got to this building,
the alarm sounded and I knew what it meant.
It meant go down to the shelter.
‐[alarm blaring] ‐[heavy breathing]
[loud swoosh]
[explosion]
[Dr. Ruth] A cannonball hit, and it threw me
against the wall,
killed some girls next to me.
It was a very horrible scene
of shouting, of blood all over
and then quiet.
A friend of mine opened my shoes.
And then I looked down and I saw a lot of blood.
I ask her, do I have to die?
Then I was taken right away to the hospital in the city.
My injuries on my little feet were horrible.
One foot was almost blown off.
The top of the foot was all torn.
They almost had to amputate both legs.
In the cellar were beds and beds of wounded soldiers.
There was not one spot for me.
So I was on a bookshelf because I was so‐‐ so small.
I had a good‐looking male nurse.
And I made believe that I couldn't feed myself.
Nonsense. My hands were perfectly all right,
but this way he fed me three times a day.
And he fixed me in such a way that my whole life
I could waterski,
I could winter ski,
I could ice skate,
and I can still dance a whole night if I find a good partner.
Ryan, I want you to show that I can walk fast.
All right, so you write about something else in the book
and that's when you should say goodbye.
So, Dr. Ruth, how do you know whether you should stay or go?
Jonathan, I think that deep down in your soul,
you kind of know.
I suggest for people if they feel
that they are not in a good relationship,
go to therapy.
Do something to make it work.
If not,
at least separate so that you can start a new life.
‐[Jonathan] Mm‐hmm. ‐Now I talk from experience.
Here, I got married three times.
But only my last marriage, which lasted almost 40 years,
with Fred Westheimer, was really the marriage.
So I say to people,
“I don't just talk on the top of my head, I really have lived it.”
Husband number one was David Bar‐haim.
He was in the Israeli army. He was handsome.
He was intelligent.
I thought "how fortunate,"
because I thought nobody is ever going to marry me,
I'm short. I thought that I was ugly.
He left to study medicine at the University of Paris,
and I went to Paris to join him.
The Sorbonne had a rule.
Anybody who did not have a high school diploma
because of the war could take a preparation year.
And if they pass the exams, they could enter the Sorbonne.
My father valued education above everything else,
so I wanted to pursue my studies.
I got into the Sorbonne.
I studied at the Institute of Psychology and I loved it.
I remember the Salrecheuer
where I listened to the lectures of big names like Piagi,
Nagash.
I was so short.
The auditorium was filled.
So I knew how to find a tall, good‐looking guy
to put me up on a window sill right next to the professor.
I heard very well.
I took notes and I passed the exams.
While I was studying,
it was clear that David did not want to continue study medicine.
He wanted to go back to his life in Israel.
I thought that that marriage would last for a lifetime.
But I wanted to finish studying.
So he agreed to give me a divorce.
Then, in Paris, I met
husband number two.
His name was Dan. He was gorgeous.
We started a love affair.
And then I got married. No,
then I first got pregnant.
I then married, because once you get pregnant, you marry.
When Miriam was born, I was delighted.
Having been raised with no family around,
to have that little gorgeous baby girl
was just happiness.
All my life, I wanted very badly
to go to the United States, but I thought I will never have the money.
However, there was a check that came automatically
to everybody who had not finished school because of the Holocaust.
And suddenly I had $1500. So I said, "Dan,
we are going to America." We went on a boat called Liberte.
Fourth class, all the way in the bottom.
They told us we cannot go upstairs, we have to stay with our class.
I thought, "Hold it! Don't tell me that I can't go up to first class."
So we sneaked up against all rules
and we stayed up there for the whole night
because I wasn't about to miss that view of the Statue of Liberty.
I knew the Emma Lazarus poem,
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses."
And when I saw that miracle in the sky,
a symbol of freedom to refugees,
I knew that this was home.
I wanted to show you.
I vote, of course,
since I'm now an American citizen I've always voted,
but I don't talk‐‐ I don't talk politics.
Somebody who talks about sex as much as I do
has to stay away from politics.
However...
here is a cartoon from a‐‐
the most widely‐read newspaper in Israel.
I'm saying to the president of North Korea and to the president of the United States,
"Relax, size does not matter."
From the start, I never went on television
to talk about politics.
[reporter] Dr. Ruth, what do you think about Donald Trump's sexual remarks?
No, no comment.
[Leora] She will not discuss politics in public.
She has her views, I don't think it's very hard to figure out her views.
But she really does not want to make any patient of hers,
or fan of hers, feel like they can't trust her because of her political views.
[Joel] Of course it's just a different understanding
of what politics means, right?
A woman called, she's terribly upset because
she has had to have an abortion.
I certainly believe that abortion must remain legal.
I don't do politics,
but I never compromised
on many issues including abortion.
Even when it was not popular.
I am convinced Roe will fall by the end of this presidential term,
and child killing will be driven back to hell where it came from.
I can't help wondering if those who call themselves pro‐choice
have ever stopped to think
that the fetus, the unborn child, never has a choice.
I'm very upset that the whole issue of abortion has become a political football.
I will be terribly upset if abortion becomes illegal again because‐‐
Before abortion was legalized, only women with money could obtain an abortion.
If we have to go back to those years, it would be a terrible state of affair
because abortions would get glitched and coat‐hangers will be used again.
I do believe that abortion must be available.
[applause]
[John] She so diligently avoids politicizing anything.
She just said, "I'm not political, I'm a sex therapist.
That's where I stay."
Tell me what's happening.
Well, ever since the abortion, I just feel so,
I feel so depressed.
I just feel like I did the wrong thing now.
[Dr. Ruth] You usually use contraceptive?
‐[Laura] Oh, yeah. ‐[Dr. Ruth] So this,
was a contraceptive failure.
So don't blame yourself for not being responsible, Laura.
[Joel] She's political in the sense that she's had tremendous positive,
political and social impact in the world.
And she's able to reach people on a very human level
that transcends their political or religious
convictions about things and just speaks to them as human beings.
[Dr. Ruth] When Dan and I first came to New York,
we lived in an apartment here
on the third floor and in a one bedroom.
Soon after we settled,
I realized that Dan and I could not stay together.
I was very bored
because he was not an intellectual.
We had an old car, I gave him the car and I kept the child.
So suddenly I was a single mother
in a country and a language that I didn't know.
It was difficult raising Miriam by myself.
I made $1 an hour working as a housemaid.
But still I needed to learn English fast.
So I read romance novels
because I always wanted to read until the end to know what happened to them.
[laughs]
In the 50s, I don't remember anybody else around me having been a single mother.
I was very poor, I really had no money,
but that didn't keep me from having fun.
I had parties every single weekend.
Everybody bought food.
The only thing I had to buy was potato chips.
[Miriam] I do remember being like the only child in a room full of lots of grownups
dancing and talking and having a great time.
'Cause she would take me wherever she went.
[Dr. Ruth] And when she got tired, I put her on the bed
and I put coats around her so that she wouldn't fall
and she slept through the noise.
I was kind of maybe a forerunner of the single motherhood.
Boy, this is serious.
[Michal] I think I made a mistake.
[Dr. Ruth] I've never let your father or your mother just win. Ever.
‐[Leora] Why not? ‐Because they have to learn to lose.
Jack and Queen. All right! That's a good move.
‐Wait, wait, wait. ‐[man speaking indistinctly]
‐[Leora] Bye. [laughing] ‐Oh, God.
‐That's terrible. They ganged up on me. ‐All right, shake hands?
[Dr. Ruth] Shake hands. Very smart grandchildren I have. Bravo.
So look at this,
here are my four grandchildren, a picture of them, they all ski.
I used to love to ski and I used to be a very good skier. Black diamond.
In fact that's exactly how I met Fred.
One of my friends had a car,
so a group of us pooled our money together
and I left my little girl with some friends
and I went skiing over the weekend.
I had a friend, his name was Hans,
and Hans and I went on a T‐bar
which pushes you up the mountain.
But he was so tall that when it was on my behind, it was on his ankle,
when it was on his behind, it was on my neck, it was an impossibility.
On the mountain, somebody introduced me
to Manfred Westheimer, the head of the Jewish ski club,
staying in the same lodge.
So, I look at this little man
and I say to Hans, "I will go up the mountain with that short one."
Not as short as me, nobody is as short as me.
And on the way up, I learned that he was 35,
he had never been married, he was an engineer,
and I liked him right away and I right there decided I'd marry that guy.
I had to share the room with another woman who was with that group.
As I got into the room at two in the morning,
because Fred and I spent the whole evening talking,
she said "Keep your hands off that guy,
he's mine."
I smiled and I said to myself, "Let's see."
Guess what? I married him.
[phone clicks]
Hello? You are on the air.
Hello, hi there, George.
Yeah, is she divorced?
OK.
Yes.
Mm‐hmm.
Yeah, George? Just because someone has had two bad relationships
does not mean a third one can't be fantastic.
So, to predict horrible things to happen
is not going to be of help.
And I heard you say, George,
I heard you say that you love her very much.
Then I would not worry about her past.
Take a sponge and wipe it off. All right?
[Diane] This is the third marriage for you, right? So you...
‐Yes, but I'm married with him now. ‐...didn't get it right the first time‐‐
[Dr. Ruth] That's true. But I'm married now for 23 years‐
‐Almost 24. ‐That's a long time.
‐[Diane] You think it's gonna last? ‐I think so.
[Dr. Ruth] My first two marriages were legalized love affairs.
But with Freddie, it was true love.
He adopted and adored my daughter Miriam.
And then together, we had our son Joel.
We needed a bigger apartment so that's when we moved to the place
where I've lived for all of these years.
Even after I became Dr. Ruth, I'm very glad I stayed.
Because this is my home.
[doorbell rings]
[Dr. Ruth] Excuse me one moment.
[surprised laughter]
‐Did someone order a pizza? ‐Well, we have pizza.
‐My Joel! ‐I'm pretty sure you needed a pizza.
My Joel, my Joel. My Joel is here.
You can all go home.
[Joel laughs]
[Dr. Ruth] I want to show you something. I found an album.
All right, don't remember who that was. Must be a lover
‐that I don't remember. ‐[Joel laughing]
That's my Joel!
You were the cutest baby in the world.
And now when are you going to get rid of that thing?
‐The earring? ‐ A hundred years ago,
Joel appeared at Oscawana and I see an earring.
Two and a half hours I didn't talk to him.
I think it was two days.
So now you all leave and I'm going to be very sad.
I was very sad when you four left.
[Joel] I know. It was so nice we all stayed here.
‐Yeah, but the apartment was so empty. ‐[Joel] Yeah.
I'm not a grandmother sitting in a rocking chair
waiting for grandchildren to visit,
but I don't like when I have all of you and have you and suddenly I'm all alone.
No, she does not like being alone.
‐No, I'm not going to sit here alone. ‐You've learned that, right?
[Joel] What I remember growing up is she was always always
a whirlwind of activity.
You would wake up on a Saturday morning and there would be, like, some plan.
‐Right. ‐I mean, we were going skiing
or we were going here or we were doing this.
There was always a kind of energy.
But at the same time, she was always keeping her career front and center.
Oh, yeah. Stay‐at‐home mom would probably be about
the most opposite description of our mother that you could possibly imagine.
[Dr. Ruth] I really believed that I would not have been a good mother
if I did not also have some
academic interests and a job.
I got a position at Planned Parenthood of New York City,
which, in those years, was not as known as now.
I worked in East Harlem. Harlem at the time was at the height of the unrest.
[Joel] She would travel everyday asking people for rides,
taking public transportation.
I remember her being gone a lot of evenings and my dad,
who to me always was the kind of stable even keeled engineer,
would make dinner and things like that.
[Dr. Ruth] I trained paraprofessionals,
people who didn't have a high school diploma
to be family planning counselors. And I loved it.
That peaked my interest in the issue of family planning.
[Miriam] At home, she didn't talk to us so much about sexuality.
She always had a kit of birth control from Planned Parenthood.
So in my little all‐girls school, when it came time for sex education,
I would be the one to bring in this kit and say,
"This is an IUD. This is a condom."
I think I just picked it up by you know, being around.
[Joel] I don't remember her having some big talk with me.
She quite deliberately left a lot of books with information around,
and I picked up those books.
[Dr. Ruth] Ever since I was young,
the most important thing for me was education.
So, in 1967,
I started my doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Through that work at Planned Parenthood, I used the data
of following 2,000 women
and their contraceptive and abortive history when abortion was illegal
for my doctorate dissertation.
And I was 42 years of age when I got my doctorate.
While I was in Harlem, at Planned Parenthood,
people asked me questions.
Questions about premature ejaculation.
Inability to have an orgasm.
In that entire area of sexuality
that I could not answer.
I realized I didn't know enough.
I needed further training.
At Cornell University was a sex therapist, famous,
Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan.
She was the first one to devise a methodology
to treat sexual dysfunction.
Sexual therapy is a very complex branch of psychiatry, really.
But the basic principal in a woman who can't have orgasm
is to first teach her to have an orgasm by herself.
[Dr. Ruth] I got accepted into Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan's program
to train as a sex therapist.
And I thought, "I'm in heaven."
In the Jewish tradition,
the word "to know" in Hebrew, it's ladat,
"to know" somebody.
It also means "sex," which is wonderful,
because the word "sex" means "to know" each other.
It means to take the time to listen and to talk to each other.
By not having parents from the age of 10,
I was very much aware of the importance
of being touched, of being loved.
So that's one of the reasons that I became so interested
in the issues of the family and of relationships
and, eventually, of sexuality.
Working with Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan, I was learning on the job.
We sat in a room with a one‐way mirror
and did sex therapy.
And I worked with her at Cornell for seven years.
It was an absolute dream, working in the helping profession.
I had finished my studies, and was running my own private practice
doing psychosexual and relationship therapy.
Until 1981...
[Dr. Ruth] All right!
Hi! How are you?
[Dr. Ruth] ...That was the year that everything changed for me.
‐You look wonderful, you haven't changed. ‐You look wonderful. This is Betty Elam.
Without her, I wouldn't be Dr. Ruth.
[Dr. Ruth] I was still on the staff of Cornell Medical Center
with Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan,
a letter came to the program, would one of us come and talk
about the need for sexuality education.
Nobody wanted to go because there was no money attached.
‐No money. ‐Right.
‐I saw the letter I said, "I'll go." ‐Yes.
‐"I'll fly a balloon." ‐Right.
[radio introduction] Ninety seven
W, Y, N, Y.
[man] Let's check the Y, N, Y weekend weather.
[Maurice] I remember Betty came running back to the radio station,
and she said to our general manager,
"You're not going to believe this woman I met today,
she's this tall,
she has a deep German accent
and she talks about sex in a way that I've never heard anyone talk before.
And I think we should do something with her."
Frankly, this wasn't the top of our priority, we were a music station.
But at the time, radio stations were required with their FCC license
to spend a certain amount of hours every week addressing community issues.
And most radio stations would assign programming
when not a lot of people were listening.
[Betty] A program like this had never been done before.
So I got a lot of pushback on that, but that's OK.
If you're a woman in business, you're used to pushback.
And Ruth can be very very charming, plus she had the educational background.
So together we were able to get them to give Sexually Speaking a chance.
[woman speaking indistinctly]
[Maurice] The show was being done at 30 Rock.
She had never done a radio show before.
So the lawyers were very nervous about that,
were very nervous about giving advice to people.
And so we would record the show so that they could
edit out anything they were uncomfortable with.
Good evening. I'm Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
Our program is called Sexually Speaking.
Hi, you still there? OK, you're up next.
We would go up to our studio they would have about 12 phone lines
and I would answer, "Hello. Sexually Speaking.
Do you have a question?"
And she wanted the element of surprise.
The first time she heard the question was when she hit that button.
‐Sexually Speaking. You're on the air. ‐[John] Hello, Dr. Ruth?
‐Yes. ‐My name is John, I'm from Georgia,
‐and I have kind of a problem. ‐Let me hear.
[Maurice] We recorded the show on Thursdays,
we aired it on midnight on Sunday nights
because it was kind of buried there.
You know, who's up at midnight on a Sunday night?
So this really was a dead time and a perfect time to put on a show
that you're a little nervous about.
I know of one gentleman who can only have an erection
when his partner wears shoes with a high heel.
[Maurice] Back at NBC in those days, you could sit in any studio and call up on
a speaker any other studio in the building and listen to what they're doing there.
Now we weren't doing any promotion,
but, apparently, word of mouth had been spreading,
and we suddenly learned that 11 o'clock on Thursdays at 30 Rock...
[Dr. Ruth] Hello. You are on the air.
[Maurice] Everything was stopping at NBC
as people were listening in to Ruth recording her show for WYNY.
‐[Jeff] Hello, Dr. Ruth. ‐[Dr. Ruth] Yes?
[Jeff] I heard this rumor a while back that a girl only has so many orgasms
‐in her lifetime. ‐[Dr. Ruth] God forbid! [laughing]
That's a new rumor that I have never heard, listen very carefully, Jeff!
[Maurice] It was a different time, in the moral judgements in America back then.
There was nobody you could talk to about those kinds of things.
And suddenly, there was this woman on the radio giving a straight answer.
‐You have to‐‐ ‐[woman] If he found out I was pregnant,
‐I don't know what would happen. ‐OK, but you have to talk to somebody.
When people started to call in, they couldn't say Westheimer.
It's a long name and it's not American.
They called and said "Dr. Ruth."
I said OK. Dr. Ruth.
Now all of your other famous people, on radio and television‐‐
[man] They're all one names.
[Dr. Ruth] Everybody goes with the first name.
But I tell you, I was number one of that.
I'll get back to your calls in just a moment.
[Betty] Everybody at the station was excited.
And then it gave me the argument, now can I do it live?
And they said yes.
[Maurice] We went from 15 minutes to an hour and then to two hours.
[Dr. Ruth] On Sunday nights, people returning from the Hamptons
went into their car at 10 o'clock.
[male caller] I was laying on my bed, and I was reading a Playgirl
and all I had on was my roommate's girlfriend's underwear,
I was masturbating and in walks my roommate.
[female caller] I have a vibrator, and it's gotten to the point
where I'd rather use it than date men.
[Dr. Ruth] Yes.
[male caller] My penis is extremely large,
‐about 14 inches... ‐[Dr. Ruth] Mm‐hmm.
and most girls that I go out with
seem to be intimidated by the size of my penis.
[Dr. Ruth] By 12 o'clock they were home to New York.
I said that means that you were nicely sexually aroused
by the time you came home.
[Maurice] Frankly, we didn't think it would explode like it did.
This was, "Oh this is a cool idea."
But I don't think any of us thought that this was gonna make the difference
in the success or failure of the radio station.
As it turned out, it became what we were known for.
We were the station with Dr. Ruth.
Within a year, there were more people
listening to Ruth on Sunday night
than most of the morning drive radio stations in New York City. Unheard of.
[Joel] She didn't get really widely known until I was off to college.
My freshman year, I remember it was Sunday night and I came back to the dorm…
[Dr. Ruth] There are plenty of women who like to read Playboy magazine for fun!
[Joel] And I heard my mother's voice from, you know, 8 different radios
scattered around the dorm and I was just completely surprised I'm like "Mom?"
[Pierre] Suddenly she's getting tons of media attention,
out of the New York Times story came a book deal.
And she started traveling and giving lectures.
Then came the late night talk shows. Letterman wanted her,
Arsenio wanted her, Carson wanted her.
There are myths that everybody has heard and they will laugh, you will go blind…
Or hair in the palm of your hand.
‐Yep, all those things. ‐You lose your hair.
‐All of that. ‐[audience laughing]
[Pierre] Everybody wanted her.
She was doing all kinds of TV appearances, Quantum Leap,
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Hollywood Squares.
Then she started booking commercials,
she did one with Pepsi, with Bo Jackson,
and then the Herbal Essence commercial which got a lot of attention.
If you think that's great, try the body wash!
[Pierre] She began an acting career.
That's a kiss?
[audience laughing]
[Pierre] She had a sitcom, Dr. Ruth's House.
She was in a major movie with Gerard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver.
[both speaking in French]
She even had her own board game.
[Maurice] She went from just an everyday person here in New York
who goes to work everyday on the subway
to someone who suddenly could be driven around,
could be paid for their appearances.
[Pierre] And then of course she got her own television shows.
After that, she couldn't walk 10 feet without someone wanting to pull her aside
and asking her a question.
I enjoy it, I always watch you on TV and everything.
[Pierre] It just exploded.
[Susan] And she would say we're not going to let this business change us.
Because one day it could go and her line was,
"Poof poof, it could go right out."
And she's the same person today.
Dr. Ruth. Ruth, do you follow your own sexual advice with your husband at home?
Never do I permit him to come on any program with me,
because he would tell you and Phil, "Do not listen to her, it's all talk!"
‐So, that's number one. ‐[audience laughing]
[Diane] Is it true that you say that it's all just talk?
‐It's a good line. ‐[Diane laughs]
[Diane] You never wince that there are Dr. Ruth jokes around?
And Dr. Ruth imitations on Johnny Carson shows?
Well, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, as someone said.
No, I don't wince. She is very enterprising and straightforward
and shrinks back from no controversial subject,
be it whatever it is, and it happens to be sex in this case.
If you can call it controversial.
[Dr. Ruth] This was Fred Westheimer's favorite bench.
He loved this park with a passion. He went here almost everyday after work.
One night in 1997,
I came home from a party for the Academy Awards.
And Fred told me, "Ruth, I had a stroke."
So I called an ambulance,
and they took him to the hospital. He was in a coma for ten days.
They operated, they did everything they could,
and they couldn't save him and he died.
It was very sad because he would have loved to see his grandchildren grow up.
It was too early.
[Miriam] Only time I saw her cry was
right after my father died.
Like at, you know, at his bed, he took his last breath, and...
and I saw her cry.
And I've never seen her cry besides that.
After someone dies, Jews will sit Shivah.
It's a quiet time and you stay at home for seven days
reflecting about the person,
and she did a couple of days and then she went back to work.
[Joel] My mother has had a lot of tragedies in her life.
Going through the Holocaust, losing her parents,
losing my father.
She keeps engaged in so much work.
You know, here she is almost 90 years old,
but she's always busy.
I think she does a part of that
because she loves what she does,
but I think it's also...
it's her survival mechanism.
I think she felt consciously or unconsciously
that she had a choice to go on
or to be devoured by it.
[man] Are there parts of your past that you don't like to talk about?
Of course.
There are certain things that one does not share.
Not even with a spouse or with one's own children.
Let me give you an example,
my family was exterminated in concentration camps.
And there are certain aspects of, um,
the hurt and the loneliness that I don't dwell on
because there are certain things that nobody else can help.
[man] Thank you.
[Joel] It's easy for you and me to say
she's blocking off her feelings
or she should really explore this in depth.
[Miriam] But that's who she is.
That's how she survives
and whatever it takes to be able to live your life
as fully as she has is...
you know, OK by me.
[Dr. Ruth] More flowers?
Oh, my gosh, who sent me that?
That's beautiful.
All right.
Not to be taken for granted,
the New York Times, the most important paper
in the entire United States.
On my birthday, front page,
not just buried sometime, someplace inside.
Look at this.
Oops.
"At 90, still talking about sex
from morning to night."
OK, let's go, let's go.
[laughing]
I do remember
when I was about nine and a half,
before I left Frankfurt for Switzerland,
there was a book in my parent's library
up on the last shelf,
and when nobody was home, I climbed up to look at the book.
It was called The Ideal Marriage.
And saw that book with sexual positions
and said, "That's what my parents are doing!"
So my parents,
even though they never had the opportunity to know me later...
they helped me become the person I am today.
‐Thank you, Vincent. ‐You're welcome.
‐Make sure they're feeding you. ‐OK.
[Michal] We all often get asked,
what's it like to be the grandchildren of Dr. Ruth.
Well, it's having a grandmother who's really funny,
who hikes and who skis and swims,
and who gives wonderful advice to her grandchildren.
Happy 90th birthday to our wonderful Omi.
Anyone who knows Ruth well, also knows
that she does not discuss her area of expertise with her family.
There is one exception in 4th grade,
when she gave a sex education lecture
in my entire class at Riverdale Country School.
[audience laughing]
And I still haven't recovered.
All jokes aside, happy 90th birthday, Omi.
I feel very lucky to be your grandson,
and that think there are millions of people
who are lucky to have taken your advice.
Ruth may have become Dr. Ruth in the 1980s,
but 30 plus years later,
she continues to educate
and inspire all of us.
Tonight provides us an opportunity
to tell you how much of an impact
you and your life still have.
May you have many more healthy and happy birthdays.
Grandchildren!
When I look back,
it was exactly 70 years ago, on my 20th birthday,
that I was wounded in Jerusalem,
and I could've lost both my legs.
And it is 80 years ago
that I left Frankfurt am Main
because of the Nazis.
If I could talk to that girl now,
I would say, "Despite the fact
that you lived through some tragic events,
look what has happened to you in your life."
You people, did you eat something?
Bye‐bye!
Hold my hand, please.
All right.
‐Did you eat? ‐[man] Yeah.
From my background,
all of the things that I've survived,
I have an obligation to live large
and make a dent in this world.
‐OK. ‐OK.
Oh, I see a rainbow!
Get the rainbow!
Rainbows bring good luck.
Here, I see cows.
One, two, a whole bunch of them.
Fred Westheimer would've wanted to stop to talk to them.
Look at that snow.
[man laughing]
Snow in August!
There is an American term
which I don't use, but I'm going to use it now.
"Cock‐teasing."
So, you've never heard me use that word. Right?
We have to discuss that.
Ryan, you have to taste this.
Something special.
Who else in the world has a friend
who is a big shot attorney!
Can I tell them how much money you make?
No.
I know how much money he makes per hour.
I won't say it.
The last one. Eat it, Ryan.
‐[Dr. Ruth] Can you hear me? ‐[Jacobson] I can. You sound beautiful.
[Dr. Ruth] All right.
I just have to remember that it's on all the time.
There's a lot of cow shit. Oop!
I have two dollhouses in New York,
and I need one of those.
I love anything that is small and perfect like me.
[door opens]
[Dr. Ruth speaking]
Look what I took for you!
Look what I stole for you.
Some candy for everyone.
[Greg speaking]
[Dr. Ruth] No, it's not borrowed. You can eat it.
[laughter]
[Ryan] You said the last one.
Another one?
[interviewer]
What a stupid question!
Next question.
With all my talking from morning to night,
I'm actually a very private person.
You will not know how much money I have,
and you're not going to know with whom I'm sleeping either.
‐That's it! Goodbye! ‐[laughter]