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She was the cavewoman in the fur-lined bikini, fighting dinosaurs in the Hammer schlock-thriller One Million Years B.C.
But would Raquel Welch, who has died aged 82 after a short illness, ever have been an international sex symbol if she had bowed to Hollywood demands at the start of her career . . . and changed her name to Debbie?
‘People didn’t like my name. They said it was too ethnic, too difficult to pronounce, too exotic,’ she said. ‘They wanted to change it and I was not happy at all. I did really feel like Raquel.’
The daughter of a Bolivian engineer, she became the biggest movie sex symbol since Marilyn Monroe, though she was auburn-haired and the films she made were never as highly rated. The cruel consensus was that, as an actress, she looked great — and that was it.
In particular, it was her vertiginous bosom that attracted attention and millions of admirers. Nightclub comedians used to do a bad-taste gag about it: ‘I’m so unlucky, if Raquel Welch had triplets, I’d be the one on the bottle.’
Would Raquel Welch, who has died aged 82 after a short illness, ever have been an international sex symbol if she had bowed to Hollywood demands at the start of her career . . . and changed her name to Debbie?
She was the cavewoman in the fur-lined bikini, fighting dinosaurs in the Hammer schlock-thriller One Million Years B.C
The daughter of a Bolivian engineer, she became the biggest movie sex symbol since Marilyn Monroe, though she was auburn-haired and the films she made were never as highly rated. Pictured with her children
Here’s how Rolling Stone magazine described her in 1974: ‘Impressive are her big eyes, strong teeth, tumble of red curls, her broad shoulders and soft breasts, high waist and good legs, her balancing-act sex queen vulnerability. She wears too much eye make-up and seems never to make a move, not even to knock the ash off her cigarette, without thinking about it first.’
But she refused to be exploited for her body and was proud of the fact that she never did a nude photoshoot, unlike many who were regarded as more serious actresses.
‘I am my father’s daughter,’ she told Piers Morgan when she appeared on his chat show Life Stories, ‘and that’s just not the way you behave. There were times when I disliked him quite a lot but at the same time I had enormous respect for him.’
Fooled by the glamour and sex appeal, men often underestimated her. When she agreed to pose for Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine in 1979, famous for its full-frontal centrefolds, she insisted on wearing a high-cut swimsuit.
Hefner tried to bully her into undressing. He called her into his office, where he had nothing on but a bathrobe. She was being ‘boring’, he said. Raquel faced him down. ‘We made a deal,’ she retorted.
But she wasn’t shy in her love life and notched up a string of desirable lotharios, including Roger Moore (‘adorable’), Steve McQueen (‘lovely’) and Warren Beatty (who was no particular triumph: ‘He’s been with everything. Anything that moves’).
She dismissed the idea that her figure was extraordinary. ‘A lot has been made of the gigantic dimensions of my breasts,’ she said. ‘It’s total myth. I’m really a rather normal-sized lady of good proportions and a nice figure. I have a tiny waist and I go in and out, and I’m not that voluptuous.
‘To have it said that you’re a sex symbol, the most beautiful girl in the world, is initially terrific. You think, isn’t that neat? Then you pass a mirror and you say, “Uh-oh, that face ain’t gonna launch a thousand ships, and that bod’s not so hot either.” Nobody can be the most beautiful girl in the world.
‘The stupidity of it is that once somebody says you’re something, you try to be it.’
She was born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago in September 1940, the first child of aerospace engineer Armando and his Irish-American wife Josephine. When Raquel was two years old, the family moved to California and she began taking dance lessons.
‘My father was always a very hard taskmaster. When I was little he was the universe, I wanted to please him. He made us all feel that just to be alive wasn’t enough. We had to do better than well.’
Welch, pictured in 2017, is survived by her two children, Tahnee and Damon Welch
She refused to be exploited for her body and was proud of the fact that she never did a nude photoshoot, unlike many who were regarded as more serious actresses
As a teenager, she won a series of beauty contests with titles such as Miss Photogenic, Miss Contour, the Maid of California and Miss Fairest of the Fair.
At 19, she married her high school boyfriend James Welch and had two children, Damon and Tahnee, who both went on to act. But by 1962, after a brief stint as a television weather girl in San Diego, her marriage broke down and she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a barmaid.
‘It was very frightening,’ she said. ‘My husband was bitter — there was a bumpy area when we first got divorced. Everybody said, “This is the end of your ambition.” They told me, “You’ll never be an actress now, you’ve wrecked your life, you can’t have children and a career.”
‘Well, it isn’t true. But there’s a price to pay and I’ve paid it. I went back to Hollywood in my early 20s with two babies. It’s not easy, bringing up children on your own and trying to get discovered, but I thought I’m certainly going to give it a good hard try.’
With surfing all the rage in California, she was soon popular in beach party films such as A Swingin’ Summer, with the Righteous Brothers. She landed roles in a series of TV shows and films, too, including parts in Bewitched and The Virginian, and a cameo with Elvis Presley in Roustabout.
‘In the Fifties I had been completely gaga over Elvis,’ she admitted. ‘But when I saw him on the set of Roustabout I was a little bit taken aback, because something about him had changed.
‘He was more packaged, his hair was obviously dyed and it was all sprayed into place. It was a whitewashed, cleaned-up Elvis. They took all the sex out of him!’
Her breakthrough came when Ursula Andress turned down One Million Years B.C. The dialogue for the heroine, Loana, was undemanding, mostly grunts and screams. But the exposure was priceless — and the movie, made for less than half a million pounds, made profits of over £6 million (£90 million today).
Asked about that iconic 1966 picture of her in the fur bikini, she told the Mail’s Liz Jones in an interview: ‘I never really looked like that. There was a make-up thing going on, full body make-up, costume, lighting.
‘I was a single mother of two when that photo was taken, but nobody knew that at the time. It’s hard to believe but there I was on top of that volcano, while down at the bottom of the hill in a hotel were my two children.’
Dudley Moore, always a man with an eye for a Hollywood starlet, was smitten with her and Raquel was cast in his 1967 flop with Peter Cook, Bedazzled. A spy spoof followed, with Raquel playing the title role, Fathom.
Here’s how Rolling Stone magazine described her in 1974: ‘Impressive are her big eyes, strong teeth, tumble of red curls, her broad shoulders and soft breasts, high waist and good legs, her balancing-act sex queen vulnerability’
Fooled by the glamour and sex appeal, men often underestimated her
But it was the spaghetti Western 100 Rifles that really caused controversy, thanks to a passionate kiss with its black star, American football player Jim Brown. Rumours said the sexual attraction continued off camera, before degenerating into a feud.
Brown scoffed at that claim. His co-star was a diva, he insisted. ‘All of the B.S. that was going on involving Raquel’s image,’ he said. ‘What I don’t see is why she doesn’t relax. The real sex symbols are the ones who don’t mind getting a little sweaty. Raquel always has to look perfect.’
Her growing reputation as a difficult star was compounded by some truly awful movies, including Myra Breckinridge, a comedy in which she starred as a trans woman. Mae West, then 77, the original sex bombshell, was her co-star, and the two women detested each other from the start.
‘Mae resembled a dock worker in drag,’ Raquel said. ‘I really think she’s a man. She never walked anywhere. The limo that took her to her dressing room also brought her onto the set . . . she was kind of like a piece of scenery.’
When Raquel Welch took a dislike to someone, everybody knew it.
Her career struggled upwards with The Three Musketeers in 1973, which won her a Golden Globe, but her love life was in the dumps again, following divorce from her second husband, Patrick Curtis.
Aged 30, she was granted a nominal divorce settlement of just $1 and told she had to split all her property, including her Beverly Hills home and two production companies, with Curtis, even though they had been married for less than three years.
She married again in 1980 to Andre Weinfeld, a film director six years her junior. ‘He may not be beautiful or famous,’ she said, ‘but I love him deeply. After my last marriage, I said, “Never again,” but Andre must’ve sent out the right signals because never did not last for ever.’
Neither did the marriage. They divorced in 1990. A fourth marriage, to Richard Palmer, a pizzeria owner, in 1999, lasted just four years.
She insisted she had ‘real feelings for all of those men. At the time I thought I was legitimately in love and we could make a great life together, but it wasn’t in the cards.’
By the time of her third marriage, her reputation for being impossible on set was cemented, and it never changed.
‘As prickly as a hedgehog,’ commented Liz Jones, after interviewing her. The business of being beautiful was exhausting.
Welch was named one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History in 1995
Welch is pictured posing for a portrait in 1978 in Los Angeles after years of stardom
The star is pictured filming her workout video Body and Mind: Total Relaxation and Stress Relief Program
‘I think I was always more intimidated by my image than anyone else,’ Raquel once said sadly.
‘I mean, there’s a tremendous loss of self, because you really are in a job with this image that has been created.
‘You get tired, you wake up ugly, you don’t have anything new to say to people, and you feel like a lemon that’s had all the juice squeezed out of it.’
She added: ‘I don’t want people to think I’m ungrateful. To have people think you are a knockout is a huge advantage in showbusiness, but it doesn’t get you roles like those offered to Judi Dench.’
But could Dame Judi ever have fought a dinosaur while wearing nothing but a bearskin bikini?
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