’30s sex symbol Mae West had ‘passionate affair’ with man 40 years younger before he left to serve God: book

Mae West, a Hollywood sex symbol of the 1930s, was in her 60s when she embarked on a “passionate affair” with 21-year-old Richard DuBois — but it was her heavily muscled lover who ultimately walked away. “By all accounts from the people who were there, it was, at the very least, a passionate affair,” author Michael Gregg Michaud told Fox News Digital. “This was 1954… There was about a 40-year age difference here… She liked young men. But it was also part of the myth she worked so hard to create about herself.” “She wanted to be known as an international sex symbol, and she was going to do everything to keep that title,” Michaud shared. “She presented herself in a very sexy way. She surrounded herself with very sexy men. Richard was one of them. But she left a lasting impression on him.”

MAE WEST’S ASSISTANT SAYS ‘30S SEX SYMBOL WASN’T A FAN OF NUDITY IN FILMS

Michaud has written a new book about the classic Hollywood star, “Mae West and Her Adonises.” It focuses on her later years when she hit the nightclub circuit and performed alongside a sea of Herculean boy toys who quickly became lovers when the curtains went down. “This is my third book about Mae West,” Michaud explained. “She had a very long and productive life. There are several biographies already written about her, but I wanted to focus on this one aspect of her life, which has never been fully explored before. “I wanted to dig deep into her nightclub acts and how they were perceived by the public. Yes, she was making movies, but she wanted to hit the road. And she never let her age limit her in how she presented herself. She didn’t think there was anything old about a sexy woman.”

It was in 1954 when West heated up Las Vegas with a nightclub act. At the time, Hollywood was censoring her saucy screenplays with a heavy stroke, causing her once sizzling film career to cool down, Life magazine reported. So West did what she knew best — surrounded herself with Chippendales in loincloths and not much else on stage. It was there that she met DuBois.

“All anybody has to do is look at a picture of him on the internet,” Michaud chuckled. “He was an extraordinarily handsome young man with an even more extraordinary physique. After she first laid eyes on him, she immediately featured him on her show, right from the very beginning. It didn’t take long for him to express an interest in her.”