WELCH GOES TITS UP!
Iconic Hollywood sex symbol Raquel Welch has died aged 82, affirming a prewritten obituary from The Mary Tyler Moore Show that states she didn’t drown. Born Jo Raquel Tejada, she initially worked as a weather presenter before turning to entertainment. She married Patrick Curtis, a Hollywood producer whose own career began as an infant in Gone with the Wind, and the two concocted a plan to establish her as a sex symbol while taking her first husband’s surname to avoid anti-Latina prejudice.
Amidst bit parts in 60s TV, her first lead role aptly came bikini-clad in the beach party film A Swingin’ Summer. Mostly devised as a vehicle for popular era music acts such as the Righteous Brothers, it also succeeded in making Welch a person of interest for starring roles. She rebuffed studio insistence that she further de-ethnicise her name from Raquel to Debbie, and won her stardom as part of the shrunken-down submarine crew who journeys through a scientist’s body in Fantastic Voyage.
While Fantastic Voyage went on to influence episodes of seemingly every cartoon in existence, Welch proceeded to fill in the pin-up void left by Marilyn Monroe’s death as the deerskin bikini-clad cavewoman Loana in One Million Years B.C.. Despite only having three lines in the film, the bikini spoke for itself as did the iconic promotional poster, and her buxom bona fides were no longer in doubt. Ursula Andress (who turned down the Loana role) is now the only living person to don a bikini famous enough for a standalone Wikipedia article.
The sex symbol superstardom was a mixed bag for Welch – she liked the attention, but not how it impeded her efforts to be recognised as a serious actress. Subsequent film roles were a mixed bag and included another bikini-heavy role as Lust incarnate in Peter Cook-Dudley Moore comedy Bedazzled, the female lead in Frank Sinatra detective mystery Lady in Cement, a freedom fighter who shags NFLer Jim Brown in western 100 Rifles, and a transgender film critic in train wreck Myra Breckinridge.
Television granted her opportunities to delve into more serious roles, with one of her personal favourite turns as an ALS-afflicted professor in TV movie Right to Die. Her role as the aunt in PBS drama American Family was the first to acknowledge her Latina heritage. She relished in many oft-tongue-in-cheek cameos for the rest of her days, including twice duetting Peggy Lee song “I’m a Woman” with all-time great divas Cher (on The Cher Show) and Miss Piggy (on The Muppet Show), playing Sabrina’s feisty Aunt Vesta in Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, and catfighting with Elaine in Seinfeld.
She was a unique for vintage beauties team Once Shaggable, Now Baggable. Should’ve been on two teams…
Raquel Welch
5 September 1940 – 15 February 2023, aged 82
💀💀💀💀💀💀 + 👻 = 10 POINTS