"Masters of Sex" Book Excerpt -- "Betrayals" -- What Happened to Bill, Libby and Virginia Johnson When The Masters Marriage Exploded

Betrayals

Coming home one day from school, sixteen-year-old Howie

Masters found his mother in inconsolable tears. He’d never

seen her like this before. He pleaded with her to let him

know what could be so wrong.

Libby Masters, her eyes reddened, gazed sadly upon her son.

“We’re getting divorced,” she cried. “Your father has moved out.”

Howie looked around and noticed a disturbance in the serene,

orderly atmosphere of their house. All of his father’s belongings were

missing. “He was gone, had moved his stuff out,” Howie recalled.

Until this day, the life of young William Howell Masters III

had seemed ideal. Not far from their large suburban home, Howie

attended the prestigious Country Day School in St. Louis, where

his friends included Gini’s son, Scott. He chose to attend Hamilton

College, his father’s alma mater, but didn’t harbor the pent-up

anger that had driven his dad at the same age. He was thoughtful,

soft-spoken, and considerate, more like Libby Masters in temperament.

Yet Howie became enraged to see his mother so upset,

to have their otherwise happy life turned upside down. He demanded

that his mother tell him where his father could be found.

She eventually mentioned the address of a small apartment.

“I remember jumping into a car and driving downtown and

finding him in whatever place he was, and storming in and sitting

him down, sitting right in front of him, and giving him a real earful,”

recalled Howie.

For quite a while, Bill Masters listened to his son’s irate words.

He paid polite attention to Howie’s rant until enough time had

passed, allowing him a chance to respond. Bill maintained an even

keel and spoke dispassionately, as if he were conducting a psychotherapy

session with some adolescent stranger rather than his

own son. Bill began by stating the hard, irreconcilable truth. As

Howie recalled, his father “communicated to me that the relationship

was over with my mother. Regardless of whether he had

fallen out of love or into some new love, whatever the reasons, it

was over—and it was something that wasn’t going to be salvaged.”

Bill never mentioned Gini Johnson’s name. Instead, he carefully

explained to his teenage son how two adult people can slowly

drift apart in a marriage. He spoke calmly and considerately. “What

he told me was honest and completely made sense,” remembered

Howie. “He didn’t pull the punch. He wasn’t somebody who was

going to lie to me or tell something that wasn’t true, or tell me what

he thought I needed to hear to make it easier.” Bill informed his

son he had been considering this move for years. He didn’t attack

Libby or blame her. He treated Howie like a young man, worthy

of his respect, without adult condescension. Yet persuasively, perhaps

even manipulatively, he made his son realize that the quietude

in their house had been partly the missing bond of communication

between a husband and wife.

Because of his demanding career, Bill wasn’t home very much.

His absence made his presence and words even more valued by his

son. Howie very much wanted to believe his father, particularly at

this awful moment, the fracturing of their family life. Years later,

Howie could talk in hindsight about how his father calmly handled

this confrontation. “It was something I appreciated, actually,

because he could defuse a young kid who was confused and angry

and left with a teary mother who was sort of a basket case,” Howie

remembered. “I had to go home now and pick up those pieces. My

life had changed and my role had changed. What would any kid

feel when you come home and life as you’ve known it has exploded?

That doesn’t sit too well. I felt it warranted an explanation—and

I got it.”

Elisabeth Masters knew deep in her bones about Bill’s infidelities.

For years, Bill’s audaciousness with his sex research, his

drive to become recognized in his field, and particularly the absent

nights and personal indignities of his intimacy with Virginia Johnson 

were painfully apparent to Libby. She recognized enough telltale

signs, so she didn’t want to know anything more, as if to keep

her old image of Bill intact. “She just loved him very much and

she had nothing but respect for him,” recalls her friend Dodie Brodhead,

whose husband, John, served as a foundation board member.

Perhaps Libby hoped her husband’s recklessness would all go

away. Perhaps the sex studies would cease, his need for Gini’s assistance

would dissipate, and his everyday life as an ob-gyn doctor

based at the university would return. “She acted like this was a stage

he was going through and it would pass,” explained Judith Seifer,

a therapist friend who later helped Bill prepare his unpublished

memoir. “And so, if you pretend like it’s not there, it will all go

away.” Bill’s nonstop work schedule undermined their marriage,

never allowing for much of a home life with Libby. “From January

1954, when I started the clinic to December 1971, I never

missed a day of work, seven days a week,” he said. In asking for a

divorce after twenty-nine years of marriage, Bill could be clinical

in his postmortem: “Ultimately, my wife and I had to face the fact

that our relationship was essentially nonexistent.”

Libby’s life, however, was devoted to her children and her community

of friends and neighbors. “She was fiercely devoted to us

always, but certainly after [the divorce],” said Howie. “She lived

for us.” To not disturb this universe, she sacrificed and worked

hard to keep her family intact. She tended to Bill’s mother, Estabrooks

Masters, until she passed away in the 1960s. She encouraged

Bill to remain in touch with his younger brother, Frank,

a plastic surgeon who lived in Kansas City. At age fifty-four, Libby

remained thin and active, though her hair had turned gray and her

appearance increasingly more reserved. She was true to her Episcopal

faith, enough to make sure their children were confirmed,

even though her husband didn’t encourage church attendance. “My

father preferred—in the best years of our little insular family’s

lives—that on Sundays, we’d go bowling,” said Howie, who tagged

along with his sister. “We thought it was a riot that—out there in

the suburbs of St. Louis—people went to church on Sundays and

we’d go bowling instead.” As attentive as she could be to her husband’s

needs, Libby perhaps felt no match for Gini Johnson, a

younger woman, more vibrant and more crucial to Bill’s ambitions.

Yet Libby couldn’t bring herself to dislike Gini, no matter how uneasy

she might feel in her presence. “Gini and Betty were friends,”

recalled Peggy Shepley, the second wife of Ethan Shepley Jr., then

the foundation’s chairman. “That’s the damnedest thing of all time.

I can’t imagine being friends with the first wife. Normally there

isn’t any love lost between the first and second wife. But Gini and

Betty became friends.” 

Intuitively, Elisabeth Masters seemed to understand

she and Gini shared Bill, that he had defined both their

lives, and they would always be under his sway. “I knew her well

and we liked one another in a way,” Gini said of Libby years later.

“I think we would have been pleased to conspire against him, but

she didn’t quite have the sophistication to do that.”

Those who knew of the long-running personal affair between

Bill and Gini wondered about Libby’s reaction at home. “I never

quite understood why Bill left Libby,” admitted Bob Kolodny. “It

didn’t make sense to me. Was something missing from their marriage?

Was Bill put upon in some way? I never heard Bill say something

critical of her.” At work, Kolodny sensed that Gini envied

the stable, upper-class lifestyle the Masters family enjoyed in the

suburbs. “She undoubtedly was somewhat jealous of someone who

was securely married, lived in a nice house, and everything seemed

to be hunky-dory,” he said. “Gini lived in a different world than

Libby.” In an emotional match with Gini, some believed Libby

never stood a chance of retaining Bill’s fidelity, no matter how long

they had been married. “I’m not so sure that Betty Masters and

Bill had that sexual intimacy that he needed, that he may have

found with Gini,” said Torrey Foster, who always distrusted Gini

while he served on the foundation board. “Maybe it was one of the

ways that drew him towards her, as opposed to staying with Betty.

There was a very bright sexual attractiveness to Gini, and Betty

Masters was a very plain Jane. . . .”

After Bill moved out of their English Tudor house in Ladue,

several months elapsed before the divorce became final in December

1970. In the meantime, friends of Betty Masters rallied to

her side. They expressed outrage at Bill’s actions and voiced their

previously whispered contempt for Gini. By then, many had heard

of Gini’s summer stays at the Masters house, while Betty was away

in Michigan with the kids. “He just brought Virginia into the

house, just blatantly was there with her—I think that’s a pretty

ruthless thing to do!” said Dodie Brodhead. “Betty was a lovely

person who never understood something could happen, because

she loved Bill and assumed he loved her that much. But Virginia

was the other woman—cherchez la femme—who wormed her way

in and Betty was out, which devastated her. And it was very hard

on the children too.”

Dodie’s husband also felt his friendship had been abused. At

considerable risk as a local businessman, John Brodhead agreed to

join Bill’s sexual research foundation as an original board trustee,

mostly as a favor to Betty. John had known Betty as a teenager,

when their families vacationed in Michigan, when she was “a marvelous

girl, very gregarious, energetic type.” He admired how Betty

had overcome the adversity of her mother’s death and her father’s

abandonment, and had grown into “a remarkably well-balanced

and resilient person.” Although grateful to Bill for their successful

fertility treatments, the Brodheads were offended by his callousness

toward Betty, prompting them to choose sides. After six years

as a trustee, John resigned from the Reproductive Biology Research

Foundation. Nearly everyone knew why, but no one on the board

asked his reasons for leaving. “I got off the board when Bill and

Betty split,” he said. “It was pretty hard to be neutral. If there had

been any discussion of who was right and who was wrong, we decided

it was Betty.”

The Masters family, and their seemingly serene life in Ladue,

were never the same again. At the time her parents split, Sali Masters,

a year older than her brother, Howie, attended boarding school.

She had been sent away for school because her parents decided the

nasty phone calls and snide remarks from the community about

what transpired at her father’s clinic were too much for a young

girl’s ears. “Our children were socially ostracized,” Bill later recalled.

Too often, he said, Sali heard other parents tell her friends, “I don’t

want you hanging around with that Masters girl—her father’s a sex

maniac!” Years later, Sali declined to talk about her experiences but

Howie remembered her situation well. “Sent away, my father would

always say, because he wasn’t sure what would happen with his

work, that she could ultimately as a young girl be put into too

many difficult circumstances if she was around home, so it was

safer to have her at boarding school,” he said. Sali came home to

find that her father would never return. Bill compounded the hurt

with coy, deceptive comments about his reasons for leaving. At

least once, he denied Gini’s involvement in the breakup. “After my

divorce, you won’t see us running off to Mexico or anything like

that,” he told The Atlantic magazine, the same month his divorce

decree was finalized by a judge. “But I may take it upon myself to

chase as many women, eighteen years and older, as a slightly fat,

bald, fifty-four-year-old can catch.”

Libby adopted her own defensive posture. She never accused

Gini of wrecking her marriage. “If she did expect that Gini was,

say, an ‘interloper,’ she never said it. If she was jealous, she held it

pretty close,” recalled Howie. “She would have stuck it out longer

with my father if he hadn’t walked. She was a loyal sort, one of her

great strengths and one of her great faults.”

During Howie’s last year at the Country Day School, the Masters

house in suburban Ladue was even quieter. Libby tried to carry

on, but the central focus of their family life had been shattered.

Not wanting to lose contact altogether, Howie traveled occasionally

into the city to see his father. They talked at length but never

discussed Virginia Johnson or whatever Bill had in mind for his

own future. “I’d go down and have dinners with him, wherever

his new digs were, his new apartment, and scold him or talk to him

about whatever was going on,” Howie said. “Pretty soon after that

[divorce], I was gone. I went away to college and started my professional

career. But it didn’t have anything to do with St. Louis.”