Ruth Westheimer

73
Ruth Westheimer bigraphy, stories - American sex therapist

Ruth Westheimer : biography

4 June 1928 –

Ruth Westheimer (born June 4, 1928) is an American sex therapist, media personality, and author best known as Dr. Ruth. The New York Times described her as a "Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a kind of cultural icon in the 1980s.… She ushered in the new age of freer, franker talk about sex on radio and television—and was endlessly parodied for her limitless enthusiasm and for having an accent only a psychologist could have."Barron, James. "." The New York Times 13 December 1998.

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 makeover 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. After attending a New York Market Radio (NYMRAD) convention at which Westheimer was a speaker, she was taken with Westheimer’s passion, information, sense of humor, and personality and suggested that WYNY do something with her. She made two appearances as a guest on a taped Sunday morning public affairs program. WYNY’s General Manager, Dan Griffin, then suggested that Tunick find a way to develop a public affairs show for her.

The show was assigned 15 minutes beginning at midnight on Sunday nights. 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. Westheimer could then control the questions and read them on the air with her answers. Typically each question began 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 two months the show was expanded to an hour and went live, with Westheimer taking phone calls with a 7 second digital delay. Within a year "Dr. Ruth" had a larger audience on Sunday night at midnight on this struggling station than many New York stations had in morning drive-time. She became known for being candid and funny, but respectful, and for her tag phrase, "Get some."

As "Dr. Ruth", Westheimer became nationally known after several appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in the early 1980s.http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0922756/http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=6129 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.

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.