![\"Raquel](\"https:\/\/insidepulse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Raquel-Welch-2.png\")
<\/p>\nIconic Actress Raquel Welch Passes Away At 82! RIP.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
THR reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Raquel Welch, the almond-eyed sex symbol who turned a doeskin bikini into one of the most iconic cinematic images of the 1960s, has died. She was 82.<\/span><\/p>\n Welch\u2019s management company confirmed her death to The Hollywood Reporter.<\/span><\/p>\n Her success in Hollywood was due partly to talent, partly to perseverance but mostly to hitting the genetic jackpot. Although she turned in several respectable performances \u2014 as a scientist\u2019s assistant in Fantastic Voyage (1966), as Lilian Lust in Bedazzled (1967), as a transgender revolutionary in Myra Breckinridge (1970) \u2014 it was her strikingly photogenic features and voluptuous figure that catapulted her to international stardom.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe indelible image of a woman as queen of nature,\u201d is how cultural critic Camille Paglia once described Welch\u2019s onscreen appeal. The actress herself put it more succinctly. \u201cI became,\u201d she wrote in her 2010 autobiography, Beyond the Cleavage, \u201cevery male\u2019s fantasy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Her first starring role came with her second film after signing with 20th Century Fox, though it was hardly an actor\u2019s dream. Her biggest line of dialogue in the prehistoric drama One Million Years B.C. (1966) was, \u201cMe, Loana \u2026 You, Tumak.\u201d Her experience on the set was even less inspiring.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOn the first day of shooting,\u201d she recalled, \u201cI went straight up to the director, Don Chaffey, and said quite seriously, \u2018Listen, Don, I\u2019ve been studying the script and I was thinking \u2026\u2019 He turned to me in amazement and said, \u2018You were thinking? Don\u2019t.’\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Still, even before the film came out, it was clear it would make Welch a star. The advance poster \u2014 Welch in the animal-skin two-piece \u2014 became the linchpin of the entire marketing campaign (\u201cMankind\u2019s first bikini,\u201d boasted one tagline). Although the movie was not a hit, Welch was. \u201cA marvelous breathing monument to womankind,\u201d raved The New York Times. Time magazine listed her cavewoman costume in its \u201cTop Ten Bikinis in Pop Culture.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Welch was not prepared for the attention. \u201cIn one fell swoop, everything in my life changed and everything about the real me was swept away,\u201d she wrote years later of the rush of sudden fame. \u201cShe came into public consciousness as a physical presence, without a voice \u2026 It felt like I\u2019d stumbled into a booby trap \u2014 pun intended.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She was born in Chicago on Sept. 5, 1940, and christened Jo Raquel Tejada. Her dad was a Bolivian aeronautical engineer and her mom a seamstress whose ancestry dated to John Quincy Adams.<\/span><\/p>\n Her family moved to San Diego when she was 2, and while her childhood was mostly trauma-free, it was hardly warm or nurturing. \u201cPhysical affection was in short supply,\u201d she wrote in her memoir. \u201cThere was no cuddling or lovey-dovey stuff happening, even between Mom and Dad. I don\u2019t recall ever seeing him kiss her or hold her hand.\u201d Her father, she went on, was \u201cterrifying.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The \u201cJo\u201d fell off her name early on in her school days, but the rest of Raquel took some time to develop, especially in her own estimation. \u201cI didn\u2019t like my hair (very fine like my mother\u2019s), or my eyes (too deeply set and almond-shaped, in standard-issue brown), or my nose (not cute enough) or my mouth (a bit too wide),\u201d she admitted. Nevertheless, while in high school, she won first prize in a local beauty contest \u2014 \u201cMiss Photogenic\u201d \u2014 which launched a string of pageant triumphs. She soon was crowned Miss La Jolla, Miss San Diego and finally, Maid of California.<\/span><\/p>\n She\u2019d also won a scholarship to San Diego State University, where she studied drama for a time, but her heart was elsewhere. Against her father\u2019s wishes, she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch.<\/span><\/p>\n Soon after, she landed a job as a local TV weather girl, but meteorology was not her destiny, and she left the gig after giving birth, at age 19, to son Damon. Two years later, she had a daughter, Tahnee. Within a few more years, though, her marriage fell apart. She wanted to move the family to New York where she could pursue acting. He didn\u2019t. Instead, Raquel left her husband and took the kids to Los Angeles, a decision she later described as rash. \u201cThe damage I did to my children and Jim by taking off as I did is immeasurable,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI have no defense for my foolishness, except to say that I was young and pigheaded.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She was also lucky. She arrived in L.A. in 1963 with no car, no connections and $200 in her pocket; within a year, she was landing roles in Elvis Presley movies (1964\u2019s Roundabout) and small parts on TV shows like Bewitched and McHale\u2019s Navy. At one point, she nearly was Mary Ann on Gilligan\u2019s Island and a \u201cBond Girl\u201d in Thunderball.<\/span><\/p>\n But even if she always didn\u2019t get the part, her auditions created enough buzz that she was offered a contract with 20th Century Fox \u2014 though not before some discussion about her name. Her agent convinced her to keep her married surname, arguing that it would help her avoid being pigeonholed in Latino roles. The studio tried to convince her to change her given name to Debbie. Welch declined.<\/span><\/p>\n Her first film for Fox was Fantastic Voyage, an ensemble sci-fi thriller about a team of doctors shrunken to microscopic size and injected into the body of an ailing scientist. The movie did respectable box office \u2014 and won Oscars for visual effects and art direction \u2014 and Welch\u2019s performance was well-received (even if she spent much of the picture paddling around hemoglobin in a tight, white scuba suit).<\/span><\/p>\n After One Million Years B.C. (1966), she spent the next couple of years hopping between international productions \u2014 an Italian comedy titled Sex Quartet (1966), a French farce about prostitution called The Oldest Profession (1967) \u2014 and projects for Fox, including 1968\u2019s Lady in Cement, co-starring Frank Sinatra) and Bandolero!, with James Stewart and Dean Martin; 100 Rifles (1969), in which she and Jim Brown broke taboos with an interracial love scene; and Bedazzled, a Stanley Donen satire about the seven deadly sins in which she was typecast as the incarnation of lust.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t have many lines,\u201d she recalled of the part to THR in 2019, shortly after Donen died. \u201cAll I did was saunter up in a red-lace bikini and say, \u2018Hot-buttered buns?\u2019 I did it in a Southern accent because I figured Lust came from a hot [climate].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n After playing a go-go dancer in Flareup and a slave driver amid topless oarswomen in Terry Southern\u2019s The Magic Christian in 1969, Welch took on the role that most stretched her range \u2014 and might well have ended her career. That would be Maya Breckinridge in the film adaptation of Gore Vidal\u2019s scandalous novel about a gay film buff turned acting teacher who fakes his own death, undergoes a sex-change operation and then claims to be his own widow.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know exactly what kind of actress you\u2019re looking for,\u201d she supposedly told producer Richard Zanuck to get the part, \u201cbut I was thinking if a guy was going to change his sex and wanted to be like a movie star type of girl, don\u2019t you think he might want to look like me?\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The production was a train wreck, with British director Michael Sarne taking seven-hour \u201cthinking breaks\u201d while the cast and crew waited on the set (he would never make another Hollywood movie). Meanwhile, Welch and Mae West, who came out of retirement for a small role, feuded over wardrobe and refused to shoot scenes with each other.<\/span><\/p>\n When it was released, critics tore it to pieces; to this day, Myra Breckinridge is often cited as \u201cthe worst movie ever made.\u201d But Welch \u2014 whose character at one point anally rapes one of her male students \u2014 remained proud of her performance. \u201cMyra Breckinridge is the antithesis of sex symbol,\u201d she told GQ in 2012. \u201cShe\u2019s revolutionary. She\u2019s a warrior.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout the 1970s, Welch continued to sharpen her acting chops. In \u201972, she starred as a single mom on the professional roller derby circuit in Kansas City Bomber (Jodie Foster, in one of her first film roles, played her daughter). She co-starred with Charlton Heston, Oliver Reed and Faye Dunaway in The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974) and with Richard Benjamin in The Last of Sheila (1973). There also were leads in James Ivory\u2019s The Wild Party (1975); Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), an ambulance-company comedy with Bill Cosby and Harvey Keitel (she played Jugs); and the French action film Animal (1977), in which she co-starred with Jean-Paul Belmondo.<\/span><\/p>\n She also became a fixture on television, with CBS producing her 1970 variety special, Raquel! (Tom Jones, Bob Hope and John Wayne were guests), and another in 1973, Really Raquel (the only guests this time were Sid and Marty Krofft puppets), along with appearances on Saturday Night Live, The Muppet Show and as a presenter at the Oscars.<\/span><\/p>\n The \u201970s, though, were also a difficult decade. Her second marriage, to publicist Patrick Curtis \u2014 he produced her 1965 film A Swingin\u2019 Summer \u2014 fell apart in 1972, after she learned he\u2019d cheated on her. \u201cI couldn\u2019t stand that my husband was being unfaithful,\u201d she said afterward. \u201cI am Raquel Welch, understand?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She would marry twice more, to French producer Andre Weinfeld (from 1980-90) and to restaurateur Richard Palmer (1999-2003). But perhaps the roughest patch of her career came during the next decade, as she entered her 40s.<\/span><\/p>\n A dispute with MGM over her casting in a 1982 adaptation of John Steinbeck\u2019s Cannery Row ended up in court after the studio fired her a few weeks into production, claiming she was showing up late for early morning rehearsals. Welch ultimately ended up winning $10.8 million in damages after she proved the studio was falsely blaming her for cost overruns and delays. Still, the case soured Hollywood on Welch, and she found herself blackballed by the film industry.<\/span><\/p>\n She found roles in TV movies (like the 1987 NBC drama Right to Die, about a woman with ALS), began a fitness and beauty career (with a video and book in 1984) and flirted with pop music (releasing a 1987 dance single \u201cThis Girl\u2019s Back in Town\u201d). But it wasn\u2019t until Naked Gun 33 1\/3: The Final Insult (1994) that she returned to the big screen, and it was for an uncredited role-playing herself.<\/span><\/p>\n There were a scattering of other appearances \u2014 a don\u2019t-blink part in Legally Blonde (2001), a recurring role on PBS\u2019 American Family \u2014 and TV guest spots (a 1996 episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, a 1997 installment of Seinfeld). In 1997, she also had a stint on Broadway in Victor\/Victoria.<\/span><\/p>\n And even into her 70s, she continued appearing on talk shows (like Fox\u2019s O\u2019Reilly Factor in 2011, when she described herself as \u201csomewhat conservative\u201d) and on television (including a 2017 turn on the Canadian sitcom Date My Dad).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n But for the most part, Welch spent her final years at home in Beverly Hills, living contentedly by herself. \u201cI don\u2019t like to have a man,\u201d the woman who once described herself as \u201cevery male\u2019s fantasy\u201d told Piers Morgan in 2015. \u201cBecause I\u2019m too set in my ways. I like what I do. I actually enjoy being me, and I make a very good living at it and I\u2019m happy.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n On behalf of the IP team, I offer our condolences to the family, friends and fans of Raquel Welch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sad news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":5445669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","slim_seo":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1130],"tags":[133897,2805],"zone":[121883,121886,121874,121876],"series":[],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/insidepulse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Raquel-Welch-0-1-e1676496046546.png","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/insidepulse.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/seriously-simple-podcasting\/assets\/images\/no-album-art.png","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/insidepulse.com\/feed\/podcast\/inside-pulse","embedCode":"\n
Raquel Welch, Star of \u2018One Million Years B.C.,\u2019 Dies at 82<\/span><\/h2>\n
The actress and ’60s sex symbol first won attention for her role in ‘Fantastic Voyage’ and had a don’t-blink part in ‘Legally Blonde.’<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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<\/p>\nIconic Actress Raquel Welch Passes Away At 82! RIP<\/a><\/blockquote>