Zack O’Malley Greenburg is the author of five books, including“A-List Angels”and the Jay-Z biography“Empire State of Mind,” and a former senior editor for Forbes. He writes a music business newsletter called the Zogblog.
I first got to know legendary sex guru Dr. Ruth Westheimer as an undergrad at Yale, where I took her seminar on “Personal Fulfillment and Intimacy in the American Family” in the spring of 2007. And although I learned a great deal about her primary area of expertise, some of her most memorable comments involved another passion of hers: music.
“Some people get aroused by Bolero,” she explained, rolling each letter “r” as she always did. “And I say fine! If that’s what arouses you, then go have a good time.”
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Westheimer, who passed away on Saturday at the age of 96, became an international celebrity in the 1980s, breaking societal taboos around sex while building an empire that included syndicated television programs, radio shows, and dozens of books.
The world wasn’t accustomed to hearing the word “orgasm” on-air from anyone, let alone a four-and-a-half-foot-tall Jewish grandma with a German accent, but that was part of Westheimer’s unique appeal. Her relentless spunk and positivity hid a personal history of tragedy — born in 1928 to a Jewish family in Germany, she lost her parents in the Holocaust. And Westheimer credits music for getting her through it all.
“I am often asked — indeed, I often wonder myself — why it is that I should always have had such joie de vivre in the face of the losses and dislocations I had to endure,” she wrote in her 2003 book “Musically Speaking: A Life Through Song.” “The answer I always gave was that the warmth and security of my early childhood had a remarkable power and influence. This is certainly true. But now I have realized that there is another part to the answer. And that is music.”
Raised on comforting traditional German melodies even as the nationalist strains of Nazism reached a fever pitch, Westheimer came to adore the patriotic songs of Switzerland. She spent her adolescence there as a refugee, but tried not to get too attached, knowing she’d have to leave after the war. Westheimer moved to Israel just as it was declaring statehood; living on a kibbutz, ancient Horah dance tunes lifted her spirits (they “helped us clean the toilets,” she once told me).
Westheimer eventually moved to Paris and studied psychology at the Sorbonne, where her musical affinity grew. She fell in love with the French music of Edith Piaf and Yves Montand, and even learned to play the recorder. Westheimer decamped to the U.S. and received her doctorate in 1970, making her radio debut with the show “Sexually Speaking” a decade later.
Westheimer’s popularity exploded as she brought her talents to television. For someone who’d spent years as a single mother, struggling to get by with jobs ranging from teacher to housemaid, the financial success that followed was a welcome surprise. Westheimer became a popular speaker on college campuses and even appeared in ads for cars, typewriters, and condoms. The income enabled her pop up regularly at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.
“I love music when I can concentrate — I love to soar with the music,” she told me. “I don’t like music in the elevator.”
Westheimer stayed active well into her nineties. I reconnected with her after college when I was the entertainment editor at Forbes. We featured her at several “30 Under 30” Summits as a mentor who could provide something along the lines of couples’ therapy for startup founders.
In one featuring the founders of the popular lyrics website Genius, she drew parallels between relationships and business — but was careful to note some key differences.
“You can use some fantasies and keep your mouth shut” in a relationship, she explained. But “business-wise, you can’t hold back. You have to put some things on the table.”
Despite her lifelong affinity for music and everything she felt it had done for her, there was one scenario in particular where Westheimer — rather surprisingly — felt it was inappropriate.
“Music during sex? Absolutely no!” she told me. “People should use their brain to concentrate on being with a loved one. They don’t need to be distracted by music.”
