Ask Dr. Ruth

Ask Dr. Ruth

During the early 1940s, a Jewish teenager named Karola Siegel wrote in her diary as she went through puberty: “Nature is so fantastically well-organized. It’s impossible to believe anything about it is dirty.” She was born in Germany to Orthodox Jewish parents and sent to Switzerland in 1939 two months after Kristallnacht on a train with other children who had all been pushed out of Germany by their parents (they hoped) for safety; they were put in an orphanage there for the duration of the war.

In 1941, Siegel stopped getting letters from her parents; terrified that something had happened to them (something had: They were both killed), not knowing what would become of herself, still a teenage girl wondering about sex and writing about it in language far ahead of its time, it’s little wonder that she eventually ended up in America as Dr. Ruth Westheimer, sex therapist licensed in New York State and known throughout the world. The philosophy of “Dr. Ruth” was there all along, stated with great eloquence by a Jewish refugee child experiencing puberty during World War II.

Ryan White’s documentary “Ask Dr. Ruth,” which premiered at Sundance earlier this year and is streaming on Hulu now, tells us what happened after that: how Karola became Ruth, how a “Holocaust orphan” (her words) became famous on radio and television talk shows when nobody knew who or what she was talking about, then kept being famous even after they found out, until now still publishing books at 90 years old (“sex books,” as she calls them) and giving speeches all over the world to young people who’ve never heard of the Holocaust (“I’m doing my part,” she says).

If you didn’t live through the ‘80s, Dr. Ruth seems like she is from another planet in “Ask Dr. Ruth.” Westheimer had a radio show and TV show, and was a frequent guest on late-night shows (watching her make David Letterman squirm by saying “penis” or “vagina” over and over is one of the great joys of life). She was on magazine covers. The New York Times ran full-page stories about her. She was controversial; she was funny.

When critics helpfully inform readers, “This story takes place before cell phones,” I always think: Yeah? Most of human history occurred before cell phones. It’s not that hard to put yourself in another era. But still: Cecil B. Demented is a necessary reminder of how we got information “before the Internet.” Dr. Ruth came up in a world where you learned about sex from reading Judy Blume’s Forever or from sneaking a peek at your friend’s parents’ copy of The Joy of Sex or, disturbingly, from the dog eared copy of Flowers in the Attic surreptitiously passed around your middle-school (as Sofia Coppola depicts it in her first film, Lick the Star). In a society that seemed both puritanical and salacious, Dr. Ruth’s approach was refreshingly frank.

Westheimer herself has one pet theory about why people were so drawn to her: “I think it has something to do with me not being tall and blonde and gorgeous.” She is under five feet tall; she looks like somebody’s nice grandmother; she speaks with an accent; she wears conservative suits. And she does not judge.

Callers would ask her explicit questions about arousal or masturbation or vibrators whatever and she would just start talking, using terms like “insert your penis” without blinking an eye (or pausing to let the audience laugh or squirm with embarrassment). One of her favorite things to say is, “There’s no such thing as normal.”

White follows Westheimer around for a year (her energy level would exhaust a person half her age), going with her on personal appearances and family visits, coming along for a trip to Israel and back. She makes an endearing narrator, and a good guide to the twists and turns of Westheimer’s extraordinary life: After fleeing Switzerland, she lived on a kibbutz in the brand new state of Israel; she then trained as a sniper in the underground Israeli army; she came to America in 1956; she moved to France to study at the Sorbonne after her first marriage broke up; then back to America; second marriage; third marriage; graduate degree in sociology at Columbia University; another graduate degree in education at Wurzweiler School of Social Work, focusing on sex therapy and relationship counseling.

The animated sequences that represent Westheimer’s early years are jarring (especially since this device isn’t established from jump street), as is the use of actresses to read her teenage diary entries in voiceover White herself says that hearing Westheimer tell these stories was what made her want to make a movie about her. Her voice is so distinctive, those clipped cadences, that accent, that intermittent giggle plus, she’s just better at storytelling than any actor could be. For the most part, though, White stays out of the way and lets Dr. Ruth do all the talking.

The movie does an excellent job of putting the phenom of Dr. Ruth into some context.

One of the clips in the film shows a man rushing onstage during a talk Dr. Ruth gave at Oklahoma State University, attempting a citizen’s arrest for obscenity. During the early years of the AIDS epidemic, she was a vocal and forceful presence, intent on countering often-homophobic misinformation about the disease.

Abortion rights were among her many causes, though she never talked politics (she still doesn’t). She does not call herself a “feminist” (“I’m too square for that,” she tells her horrified granddaughter), but her advocacy for women particularly around their bodies and sexuality has been unwavering. In an early scene from “Ask Dr. Ruth,” she’s a guest on a New York radio show. A woman calls in to say: “I listened to your show in the ’80s and I can honestly say you saved my life.” It’s clear she wasn’t alone.

Watch Ask Dr. Ruth For Free On Gomovies.