Jerry Lewis: Sex Secrets He Took To The Grave

Jerry Lewis played a man-child on screen, but the comic legend was a legendary Hollywood womanizer away from the stage — seducing costars and screen legends like Marilyn Monroe!

The controversial comic grew up on the vaudeville circuit with his performer parents, and recalled losing his virginity at the age of 11 to a stripper. "Whatever we did," Jerry later recalled, "I remember it took only a minute." But the comedy legend didn't let that keep him from growing into an obsessive womanizer, as his former personal secretary Rita Stone spilled to The National ENQUIRER!

"To Jerry Lewis, there were only two kinds of women," Rita says. "Women like Patti, his wife of 36 years, were ladies. Then there were starlets who followed Jerry around. To them, sex was like taking a drink of water. Jerry had these women stashed all over the place!"

Jerry romanced major starlets like Gloria DeHaven and Marilyn — whom he said left him "crippled for a month" — but Patti revealed that Jerry also had an endless string of aspiring actresses sent around for his pleasure: "He told me, 'Rita, I would never, ever leave Mrs. Lewis...All men in my position do this. It has nothing to do with my family, my life or my children. It's just something to do when I have nothing else to do.'"

Lewis was just 18 when he and Patti married in 1944, and they'd stay married until 1980 while Jerry indulged himself with other women. One employee who became involved with him, said Rita, got Lewis to pay for her many abortions. "She got pregnant every other month. She never knew whose it was because she was very promiscuous. She always told Jerry that it was his, so he would pay for the abortion...He loved to think that he was very virile."

Rita also witnesses Jerry's fondness for flying in Las Vegas showgirls. "Jerry sent his assistant to the airport to pick up one showgirl," recalled Rita. "A gigantic, beautiful brunette. She walked by the office wearing a sexy red dress, and into Jerry's dressing room. It lasted all lunchtime. She was lunch. She got back on a plane and went back to Vegas the same day. Jerry paid the airfare."

It was even a Las Vegas showgirl who put an end to Jerry's marriage to Patti — with Jerry reportedly finally leaving his first wife for future bride SanDee Pitnick in 1980. In a typically bizarre twist, Jerry is said to have informed his kids about the impending divorce by bringing home a copy of The National ENQUIRER that declared: "Jerry and Patti Lewis Split!"

Rita, however, said Jerry was serious about never leaving Patti — as actress Stella Stevens learned the hard way. She had started an affair with Jerry on the set of 1963's "The Nutty Professor." Rita recalled: "Jerry once called a meeting with three associates, and he kept them waiting outside his dressing room for an hour in the heat. Jerry had Stella inside, and he wasn't leaving!"

Rita, however, recounted what happened when Stella tried to get too serious. "She was going to spend the weekend with him on Shelter Island, N.Y. He was waiting for her at the boat that would take them there...As she got out of the cab, she said that if he didn't divorce his wife and marry her, the relationship was over. Jerry just put her back in the cab and said goodbye!"