The real 'Masters of Sex'? Brilliant, creative and aloof

Sharon Jayson | USA TODAY

At a time when talking about sex in mixed company was all but taboo, sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson did much more than talk.

They watched.

Now the pair are the subjects of a provocative new TV series, Masters of Sex, which premieres Sunday on Showtime. But just how accurate is the TV portrayal of the pioneering couple, who studied the physiology of human sexuality in the 1950s and '60s?

Just how true to life the portrayals will be won't make much difference to TV viewers, many of whom weren't even born in 1956 when then-married obstetrician-gynecologist Masters hired Johnson, a young, single mother of two, as his assistant for the research in St. Louis. Their relationship went from business to personal and resulted in a 22-year marriage that ended in divorce. Masters died in 2001 at age 85 and Johnson died in July at age 88.

But for those who knew Masters and Johnson, their real personas will override the fiction.

"They were both quite brilliant and creative people," says Ruth Clifford, a clinical psychologist and sex therapist in Los Altos, Calif. She worked with them for five years beginning in 1977.

"I came there after the research they did where they observed people sexually. A lot of the political uproar they endured had settled down by then," she says.

While Clifford says they were "very different," she says they shared some qualities. Both had "big personalities." And both were "temperamental."

"He was extremely charming. He was delightful. He was funny. He would do this deadpan thing a lot of times -- say something with eyes twinkling and his mouth flat. It was priceless," Clifford says. "He just had this adorableness -- a very seductive kind of character."

"She was very good socially. She just completely put me at ease. She just had that gift," Clifford says.

Clifford says Johnson wasn't in the office much. And when she was, "they kind of kept their distance."

"I saw almost no direct informal interaction between them. I never saw them affectionate to each other. I don't think you could tell they were married," she says.

Retired sex therapist Judy Simic, of Bloomington, Ind., had much the same impression from her encounters. In 1978, she attended her first weeklong educational training session with them. She subsequently attended one more weeklong session and at least a half-dozen shorter seminars.

"They were somewhat aloof," she says of their personal interaction. As for their teaching, she says Masters and Johnson were "formal."

"She was the one that seemed to know more about human relationships," Simic says. "She was just better at figuring out how to get the information you wanted from couples you were working with."

Robert Kolodny, now a retired physician in Amherst, N.H., started working with the pair in 1968 when he was a medical student. He continued to work with them for 25 years and was an associate director of what later became known as the Masters and Johnson Institute. It closed in 1994.

Kolodny says the observational research was concluded by 1964 and the result was the groundbreaking 1966 book Human Sexual Response. By the time Kolodny, Clifford and Simic were involved with Masters and Johnson, the work had shifted focus to sex therapy and resulted in the 1970 book Human Sexual Inadequacy.

"There was never any observation of couples who came for sex therapy during their sexual activity. No sexual activity ever took place in their office. It was simply a talking therapy," Kolodny says.

Because Johnson didn't have a college degree and hadn't been exposed to "the accepted wisdom of the day" about sex, Kolodny says she had a more commonsense approach to sex therapy.

"Masters alone would never have designed a successful sex therapy program. He needed her contribution and balance and better 'people sense' to pull that one off," Kolodny says.

The new TV series is based on the 2009 book Masters of Sex by Thomas Maier, who was a consultant for the show. He says he's seen six episodes.

"The show really reflects that vibrant, dynamic, combative, creative, lustful aspect of this extraordinary relationship between Masters and Johnson," Maier says. "Their relationship goes from a very uneven relationship -- boss to low-level secretary filling out forms -- to a more equal relationship."

Maier says he interviewed Masters in 1994 when he retired and the family gave him an unpublished memoir. He says he spent 100 hours in face-to-face and phone conversations with Johnson.

The TV show " pulls these very important historical figures out of obscurity and underlines why their work is so important to our lives today -- particularly for women and their independent-mindedness about their own bodies," Maier says.

"Virginia would not say 'I'm a feminist.' She was like a Katharine Hepburn," he says. "She was a very independent-minded woman at a time where women were overwhelmingly dominated by male power. She was a woman without a degree who was literally transforming medicine's view about women's sexuality."