No./ 17 How Raquel Welch made Hollywood take her seriously
The late actor channelled her One Million Years B.C. fame into a formidable career — on her own terms
IT WASN’T THE most promising of beginnings. In 1966’s One Million Years B.C., Raquel Welch had just three lines of dialogue and wore scraps of fur, as a cavewoman braving prehistoric beasts. The same year, she appeared in sci-fi Fantastic Voyage as tech assistant Cora Peterson. Reviews of the former focused on her looks, and she became an instant pin-up icon. But during a career that spanned over 50 years, Welch — who passed away in February, aged 82 — proved to be so much more, reinventing her sex-symbol image and becoming an emblem of power and vitality.
Born Jo-raquel Tejada, Welch was encouraged to go blonde and drop her Bolivian surname, but she refused to ditch her “hard-to-pronounce” first name. That strength was something she would display throughout the decades to come. When she was fired during the shoot for 1982’s Cannery Row and replaced with a younger actor, she successfully sued MGM for more than $10 million. She even spoofed her diva reputation on an episode of Seinfeld, laying claim to the last laugh.
Welch’s range proved formidable. Her performance as a woman hellbent on revenge in 1971 Western Hannie Caulder partially inspired Quentin Tarantino to create Kill Bill. And she could be very funny. When she wasn’t dueting with Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show, she was being imperiously haughty even in a spa face-mask in
Legally Blonde. “She was professional and glamorous beyond belief,” said Reese Witherspoon recently, in tribute to her late co-star.
Sex appeal was undeniably a part of her success; she literally sizzled as the personification of Lust in 1967’s
Bedazzled. However, her Christian values meant she took a hard line on nude scenes. Who else would refuse requests for nudity from both Playboy and Merchant Ivory (in 1975 comedy
The Wild Party)? “I reserve some things for my private life,” she wrote in her memoir Beyond The Cleavage. “They are not for sale.” But while a fur bikini catapulted Welch to fame, it was her versatility and resilience that made her a force to reckon with.