Sexes: Nice Girls Do - Get Sued

An ex-lover demands royalties from a sexy bestseller

Herb Margolis, 56, strolled into a Los Angeles bookstore 15 months ago, flipped to the index page of Nice Girls Do, the hot-selling sex manual, and went into shock. Reason: he claims that the book, which has sold 183,000 hardcover copies and is now on the paperback bestseller lists, is half his—the result of collaboration in and out of bed with Author Irene Kassorla during a passionate romance that cooled in June 1978. Kassorla, a fiftyish Bel Air psychologist, admits the affair but denies working with Margolis. Says Margolis plaintively: "She wanted us to become the Masters and Johnson of the '80s." Nonsense, replies Kassorla: "I am a distinguished scientist with impeccable credentials. Mr. Margolis has made no contribution to my book."

Margolis, an independent film producer and a former West Coast editor for Penthouse, has filed suit for damages, half the royalties and title credit on all future editions of the book. As he tells it, he and Kassorla went from bed to tape recorder, chatting up sexual bouts and working out a detailed, 90-page prospectus for a "revolutionary new book on sexual behavior." He says that 114 of the 229 pages of the bestseller are his. He also claims joint credit for most of the book's original ideas, including "Silence Isn't Golden" (lovers should constantly talk during and after sex), "Fingertipping" (when lovers simultaneously rub each other's back lightly with their fingertips, the results are highly erotic) and "The Maxi Orgasm" (a shattering "untamable" mega-orgasm well within the reach of most women).

Material that Margolis says was in the prospectus prepared jointly with Kassorla turns up almost word for word in the book. "There's no holding back. The spotlight is on her," swoons the prospectus. "The man becomes the orchestrator, playing her body as if it were a precious instrument." A similar passage is in Nice Girls Do: "There's no holding back. The spotlight is on you. Your partner becomes the musician, playing your body as if it were a precious instrument."

Slight, with thinning hair and glasses, Margolis does not look like a Don Juan. "I'm no sexual athlete," he says. Yet, as his transcripts of the Margolis-Kassorla tapes show, he may be too modest. An entry for the weekend of March 6, 1977, consists of Kassorla's dreamy recollections of love-making that brought her dozens of orgasms: "Herb was like a giant. He was like a superman. Three successive interludes of sensuality within a few hours." Such experiences may be related to the spunky claim in Kassorla's book that 100 orgasms within two hours are "not uncommon" among women she treats in sex therapy. Perhaps because of Margolis' selection, the transcripts depict Kassorla as the uncertain, dependent partner, learning from Margolis. "Your smiling, nonjudgmental attitude helped me," Kassorla says at one point. Margolis replies as flatly as any real sexologist: "I think what comes out of this is the value of vocalizing feelings as opposed to silence, which creates an interpretative feeling which may be all wrong."