This Sunday, Showtime will air the first episode of a new series called Masters of Sex, a show inspired by famed St. Louis researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson.
Starring Frost/Nixon’s Michael Sheen as Masters and Mean Girls’ Lizzy Caplan as Johnson, the series details the lives and relationship of the doctor/scientist and his research assistant, who together conducted thousands of illuminating experiments while researching human sexual responses (read: watching a lot of people have a lot of sex).
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Given the taboo nature of their research, Masters and Johnson kept their findings mostly secret in straight-laced St. Louis during the late ’50s and early ’60s. “Eastman-Kodak swore to keep the [research] film images confidential,” SLM recounted in a 2009 story about Thomas Maier’s Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love—the book upon which the show is based. “The St. Louis Globe-Democrat’s publisher agreed to keep silent. The St. Louis police chief granted immunity to the prostitutes who volunteered for studies. Washington University chancellor Ethan A. Shepley told his board in only the vaguest terms what the star of the OB/GYN faculty was researching. Even Cardinal Joseph Ritter, who’d no doubt heard his share of unhappily married confidences, told Masters that while the Catholic Church could not sanction his research, it would be interested to know his results.”
Masters and Johnson have been renowned since their scintillating works, including the 1966 text Human Sexual Response, were published. Many St. Louisans already realize what sort of brow-raising research had been going on. Some scientists criticized Masters and Johnson’s methodology and the veracity of their research, but it was never enough to impede the public’s curiosity about their findings.
When the duo published a controversial paper on the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s, it raised their national profile again. (Their findings, including that AIDS could be transmitted through contact as simple as kissing, have since been rebuked.) Back then, St. Louis Magazine ran a cover story on Masters and Johnson. The 1988 article, written by former editor Steve Friedman, revealed a number of little-known facts about the couple:
• Johnson was “never told about sex,” but claimed none of her three marriages suffered from physical-intimacy issues.
• Masters had season tickets to the St. Louis football Cardinals.
• The couple had a pair of Dobermans that would attack on command and that slept on their bedroom floors.
• The pair was offered $100,000 for film rights to Human Sexual Response in 1968, while the book was still in high demand. Over the years, TV writers had tried on multiple occasions to capture the couple and their works. In 1985, Johnson did provide consultation for one project—but the project was ultimately axed.
Masters passed away in February 2001, after a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s disease. Johnson passed away this past July at the age of 88. At the time of Johnson’s passing this summer, adulation was abundant. The New York Times credited her to helping “make the frank discussion of sex in postwar America possible if not downright acceptable.” In an obituary featured on CNN.com, Maier recalled Masters’ concession that their work wouldn’t have been possible without Johnson’s zeal and persuasiveness: “That a woman without a degree had come up with such an effective approach heralding a quintessentially America quick-fix—an 80 percent success rate within a mere two weeks (as opposed to years on a Viennese analysts’ couch talking about your feelings about poor old Mother!)—was galling to the medical establishment. Yet Masters and Johnson’s pioneering work created the modern sex-therapy industry, with clinics around the world relying on their methods and wisdom to this day.”
Anticipation about Showtime’s new series is high. The likes of the Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Times have provided behind-the-scenes looks at the show, and early reviews have been positive. Showtime is betting that viewers will find Masters and Johnson’s story compelling—with all of the onscreen nudity being incidental to the tale, of course.
The pilot of the 12-epsiode first season premieres Sunday, Sepember 29, at 9 p.m.
