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Sunday, June 11 | 2 Movies

Raquel Welch thought her career was over before it began when she appeared on screen in a doeskin bikini as a cavewoman with no lines. Instead, she became one of the top sex symbols on the silver screen.

But being a sex symbol during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s wasn’t easy and sometimes had a negative connotation.

“A sex symbol in the Age of Flower Children didn’t sit very well with the hardline feminists of the time,” Raquel Welch wrote in her 2010 book. “They dismissed me as nothing more than a sex object. They didn’t look beyond the poster image to see what I was made of. It felt like a slap.”

On a guest appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Carson asked Welch how it felt to be called a sex symbol and if it bothered her.

“Not anymore. In the beginning, I used to get a little bit perturbed because it seemed to be a stereotyped idea of what a sex symbol was: vapid, not too bright, not much ability,” Welch said in the June 1968 interview. “It makes you feel that you’re limited in some way, so you kind of fight against it.”

Though she had acting ambitions, Welch soon realized she was cast in roles because of her good looks and not because of her acting ability, she said in an interview for the SAG-AFTRA Foundation.

“Being called a sex symbol is like gum on a shoe. You can’t get rid of it,” Welch said in the interview.

However, it was an image that followed her throughout her career. Nearly 30 years after that role in One Million Years B.C. (1966), the film The Shawshank Redemption (1994) featured a poster of Welch in the famous image associated with the film, helping represent time passing in prison.

Becoming Raquel Welch

Born in Chicago as Jo Raquel Tejada, her father was Bolivian and her mother was American-born. Starting at age two, Welch lived most of her life in California, where she acted in plays as a child and aspired to be a ballet dancer after her father took her to see The Red Shoes (1948). Welch studied ballet starting at age seven for the next 10 years. But when she was 17 years old, her dance instructor said she would never be a classical ballerina, Welch wrote in her book. 

Life took a turn when Welch participated in beauty contests. 

“One day, out of the blue, I got talked into joining a beauty contest,” she wrote. “My home economics teacher recruited all the girls in her class to participate as models at a photography convention. As part of the ‘field trip,’ we would also compete in a contest for the title of Miss Photogenic.”

Welch won the contest and continued to be crowned in other competitions, like the Miss La Jolla pageant, Miss San Diego and was named Maid of California in 1956.

Though she graduated from La Jolla High School with honors and had plans to study theater arts at San Diego State College, Welch married her high school sweetheart, Jim Welch, when she was 19. She started working on a local San Diego news channel until she became pregnant with her son Damon. Her daughter, Tahnee, was born two years later. 

Despite her young family, Welch still had acting aspirations and wanted to move to New York City to perform onstage. In 1963, Welch headed to Los Angeles with her two children because going east would be too expensive. She went without Jim, a split she still called “the most painful decision of my entire life” in her 2010 memoir.

In 1964, Welch appeared in uncredited film and television roles. Her first credited film role was in A Swingin’ Summer (1965), made in the same vein as a beach party film but set at Lake Arrowhead. Welch plays a bikini-wearing intellectual unaware of her beauty or effect on men. The role even allowed her to sing and dance.

“We shot this on location, and a lot of the cast was partying most of the time. Raquel did not want to be a part of that,” William Wellman, Jr. is quoted by film historian Tom Lisanti. “Her room was next to mine, and I could hear her working on her dance routine. She was working all the time. A lot of people who worked on beach movies were there for a good time. Raquel really took it seriously.” 

When she started in Hollywood, studios wanted Welch to change her name to Debbie, saying that “Raquel” was too difficult, according to her SAG-AFTRA Foundation interview. Welch stood her ground and kept her name.

Welch tested to be a Bond girl in Thunderball (1965), but the start date conflicted with her next film, Fantastic Voyage (1965), and she could not take the role, according to her autobiography.

Then came an unexpected breakthrough role: One Million Years, B.C. A remake of a 1940 film of the same title, Welch was cast as Loana and costumed in a doeskin bikini. Welch and the rest of the cast don’t have any real dialogue, only fictional caveman language. They spend much of the film running from giant turtles and a Tyrannosaurus rex, and Welch is carried off by a Pterodactyl — all creatures sculpted and animated by Ray Harryhausen.

“I figured my performance would disappear without a trace,” Welch wrote.

Filmed on location in the Canary Islands in Spain, Welch described the filming as very cold and wished she could wear a heavy coat like the crew. Though Welch figured her career would end with One Million Years, B.C., she was shocked that she predicted wrong.

“When I stepped off the plane in Heathrow Airport, I was greeted by a swarm of press and paparazzi … No one could be more surprised by this than I was,” she wrote. “Suddenly, I had become famous … It was a once-in-a-lifetime break for me and my kids.”

The credit went to the release of the famous poster of Welch to promote the film.

Stardom

“Guess who is the most photographed woman of 1966 — Sophia Loren? Brigitte Bardot? Indira Gandhi? All wrong. Raquel Welch,” boasted an Aug. 26, 1966, article in LIFE magazine. “Who? She is a 24-year-old Chicago-born divorcee and mother of two small children, who went to Europe a year ago determined to be a movie star and chose the route of cover girl.” 

By Aug. 1966, Welch had graced the cover of 92 European and 16 American magazines and finished four films that were soon to be released, according to the LIFE article. 

It happened because of “Excellent timing, good management and hard work,” Welch said in the 1966 article. “I created my own zap and socko.” 

At this time, her press agent was Patrick Curtis, who played Olivia de Havilland’s baby in Gone With the Wind (1939). Welch and Curtis later married.

As Welch’s film career took off, her co-stars were some of film’s best, including James Stewart and Dean Martin in Bandolero! (1968), Marcello Mastroianni in Shoot Loud, Louder … I Don’t Understand (1966), Anthony Franciosa in Fathom (1967) and Jim Brown in 100 Rifles (1969).

By the end of the 1960s, Welch grew tired of playing roles that were simply sex and tried to break from the glamour image. At the start of the 1970s, she took what she called “a giant leap of faith” by agreeing to play the lead in Myra Breckinridge (1970), a film Welch calls “a landmark in gay culture.” In the film, a young man, played by Rex Reed, has gender reassignment surgery, and the result is Raquel Welch as Myra Breckinridge.

“Unquestionably, the movie had its flaws, but you could say that the sexual duality behind the character of Myra/Myron Breckinridge was definitely way ahead of its time,” Welch wrote in her autobiography. 

Welch also took on more physical roles, like learning to skate in the roller derby drama Kansas City Bomber (1972). For the film, she was coached by roller derby athlete Paul Rupert. Welch first practiced on a flat track and then on an oval track built for her on a Hollywood lot, where she practiced five hours a day for three months. She also broke her wrist during filming, according to an article in a June 2, 1972, issue of LIFE magazine.

Welch continued to broaden her range with the murder-mystery-comedy The Last of Sheila (1973), with a script written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, and a cast that included James Mason, James Coburn, Richard Benjamin and Dyan Cannon. 

“We immediately hit it off,” Cannon said in a 2001 Lifetime interview. “She was very specific about what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it.” 

The Last of Sheila inspired director Richard Lester to cast Welch in his upcoming film, The Three Musketeers (1973), a remake of Alexandre Dumas’s novel. Welch played Constance de Bonacieux in the film, a character who was a bit demure, though sexy, but also a comedic, klutzy character. The film’s star-studded cast included Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Christopher Lee, Faye Dunaway and Charlton Heston.

“Raquel was a revelation,” Richard Chamberlain wrote in his memoir about his co-star.

Before arriving on set, rumors circulated that Welch made diva demands, like asking for a dressing room painted in a special color, so the cast wasn’t looking forward to meeting her. When she arrived, they found the rumors couldn’t be further from the truth, Chamberlain wrote.

“She smiled dazzling smiles and said sweet, friendly things with a simple charm that absolutely captivated us,” Chamberlain wrote. “In five minutes, we were enslaved.”

She quickly became part of the group on set, and Chamberlain said she gave one of her best performances in the film. 

“She handled her almost slapstick part with good humor and finesse,” he wrote. “She was gorgeous and funny.”

Welch was uncertain about the script and the comedic role going in.

“I had to trip and fall down constantly, over and over again, in every scene, for no apparent reason. I didn’t get it at first. Nor did I realize that Dick Lester … was a bona fide genius and that he was about to tap into a comedic streak in me that I didn’t even know I had,” Welch said.

The film won Welch a Golden Globe for Best Actress. In her acceptance speech, she said she had been waiting on an acting award since “1 Million Years, B.C.” 

Welch’s involvement in the film also helped the cast and crew. Initially, Three Musketeers was going to be one long film divided by an intermission. Instead, the studio edited the film's second half into a sequel film, The Four Musketeers (1974), but the actors would only be paid for one movie.

“Something in Raquel Welch’s contract allowed the actors to threaten legal action and the producers paid for a second film,” Chamberlain wrote.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Welch acted in television movies and appeared on TV shows, still demonstrating her range. This included the TV movie, Right to Die (1987), where she played a woman with ALS wanting to die on her own terms. She received her second Golden Globe nomination for the role.

She eventually did make it to New York City and performed on Broadway in “Woman of the Year,” replacing Lauren Bacall in 1981, and “Victor/Victoria,” replacing Julie Andrews in 1995.

Welch had other business ventures outside of acting. In 1984 she released the book and accompanying video “Raquel: The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program,” detailing how she enjoyed yoga in her personal life. Welch also created a successful wig line in 1998.

“Raquel knew exactly what she wanted and that’s what it takes to make it big,” said actress Quinn O’Hara in an interview with Tom Lisanti. “Raquel is a businesswoman and a smart lady.”

Welch continued to act until 2017, appearing in comedies later in her career, like Legally Blonde (2001) and How to Be a Latin Lover (2017). 

“She had direction of her attention and a great deal of tenacity and tried everything,” said actor James Coburn in a 2001 Lifetime interview. “Singing, dancing, everything she wanted to do, and she did it all.”