Raquel Has Left Us

She was the last of the old-school Hollywood bombshells and the most frequent complaint about her was that she couldn’t act.

If that was why you were watching Raquel Welch, you were doing life wrong.

She arrived in a Life magazine spread called “The End of the Great Girl Drought.” This got her a 7-year / 5-picture deal with 20th Century Fox. The studio wanted her to change her name to Debbie, instead, she made Raquel a household name. She first busted out (sorry) in 1966, starring in Hammer Films 1,000,000 years BC. It was a remake of a 1940 caveman film starring Victor Mature. Raquel played Whocares from the race of blonde cavemen. She only had a handful of lines and didn’t really need any of them.

Her second film that year was Fantastic Voyage. A not terrible science fiction film about a team of surgeons that climb into a submarine, are shrunk down to a hypodermic-friendly size, and injected into their patient. Decent enough little sci-fi film.

This start gave Raquel a permanent seat in the science fiction and fantasy genre, whose fans are nothing if not insanely loyal.

Throughout her career, she never entirely got away from it. She frequently tried to get taken seriously as an actress, and never succeeded at it for the simple reason that she was as wooden as a fence post. Nonetheless, she was given a couple of chances in some weird sixties flicks that tried to play to the psychedelically minded like in Myra Breckenridge and The Magic Christian. You could admire her determination if not her actual talent.

When all was said and done, nobody would deny she had charisma.

Consequently, her career which should have burned out early never really ended. She moved into TV in the 70s, I think she was a little more comfortable with TV’s level of sex appeal, the movies had changed. She at least had comedic timing, you had to give Raquel that and she held her own against Miss Piggy, which few flesh and blood women could.

Was she a joke?

Sure, but she was in on the joke.

She was never out of work even into her late seventies. And she never did a nude scene.

“I am my father’s daughter and that’s just not the way you behave. You don’t do that if you are a certain kind of a woman and that’s the kind of woman I was raised to be.”

Her family reported her passing this morning after a brief illness.

Raquel Welch

1940-2023

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