DN:FILM Ask Dr. Ruth

At 90, Dr. Ruth Westheimer—the world’s most famous sex therapist and the star of Hulu’s buoyant ASK DR. RUTH—is still tramping the talk-show circuit, tickling hosts and beguiling audiences with her frank, prurient patter; teaching university courses at Columbia and Hunter College; writing books (three last year, 40 to date); penning a column in Time magazine; lecturing across the country; and snow-skiing black diamond slopes. With her squeaky, German-accented voice, that of a giddy gremlin or a squeeze toy, Dr. Ruth laughs at retirement—and what a laugh it is—using her superhuman dynamism as a survival mechanism in a life pitted with tragedy: She lost her parents in the Holocaust and, in 1997, her husband of 36 years died of a stroke.

Filmmaker Ryan White casts a hagiographic glow on his subject, who at an elfin 4-foot-7-inches tall is larger than life. The movie follows the uncritical strain of personality docs like last year’s inspirational hits “RBG” and the Mr. Rogers love-fest “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” As facile as they can be, they are often fun and informative.

Our feisty sexpert is both. Dubbed “Grandma Freud,” the German-Jewish refugee parlayed her roaring ambition into a 36-year radio and television career, call-in shows in which she dispensed explicit counsel about intercourse, masturbation, abortion, homosexuality, STDs and AIDS. With her own board game and a spot on “Hollywood Squares,” Dr. Ruth became an adored pop-culture icon and ubiquitous media celebrity, a one-woman, one-name industry decades before Dr. Laura, Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz honed their schticks.

With that voice, stature and blonde dandelion of hair, Dr. Ruth in her 1980s heyday came off like a bubbly, finger-wagging schoolmarm, an impishness undergirding her learned authority. (She earned a doctorate at Columbia, then studied sex therapy under Helen Singer Kaplan, before starting her own practice of psychosexual and relationship therapy in New York.)

Despite detractors who found her candor offensive and advice “reckless,” people were helped “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,” says one of her show’s producers.

Dr. Ruth turns 91 on June 4, and she sees no end. “I have an obligation to live large and make a dent in this world,” she says, as if she’s just getting started.