I’American actress Raquel Welch, star of the 60s-70s who is widely remembered in Hollywood for her role as a cave naiad in an animal skin bikini in One Million Years BC, died Wednesday at the age of 82, announced his manager. Raquel Welch “died peacefully early this morning after a brief illness”, he explained in a press release sent to Agence France-Presse, without further details. During her career, she had appeared in more than thirty films, including The Fantastic Journey And The three Musketeers.
After the disappearance of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, the young amazon with the auburn mane resumed in 1966 the status of universal sex symbol, sweeping away the idea that only a blonde could embody the quintessence of femininity. But her fame was based on a misunderstanding: she was only asked to undress when Raquel Welch always wanted to prove that she had talent. “I really had the feeling that people were totally laughing at me, they were only interested in the other woman: the one astride, in a rabbit skin bikini, with this impossible hourglass figure! They were all in love with this kind of super woman coming straight from the Amazon. »
Jo-Raquel Tejada, born in Chicago on September 5, 1940 to a Bolivian aeronautical engineer and an American, grew up in California, where she learned classical dance. At 14, the young Latin American won the “Miss Photogenic” prize, the first of a long series, including “Miss shapes”, “Miss beauty among beauties”, “Miss lady from California”.
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Spotted by 20th Century Fox since 1966
After a brief marriage to James Welch, a high school dunce with whom she has two children under 20, she moves to Dallas and lives odd jobs as a waitress and a model for suggestive posters. In search of stardom, she returned to Los Angeles in 1963, where she met Patrick Curtis, an enterprising advertising agent. He launches the career of this young woman with maddening lines and convinces her to keep the name of Welch to hide her Latin origins, then little to Hollywood taste. She starts in mediocre films, the most notable of them being The handyman, where she appears alongside Elvis Presley.
After twenty extra roles, she was spotted by 20th Century Fox, who chose her in 1966 as the headliner for The Fantastic Journey by Richard Fleischer. The science fiction film makes her take off. That same year, she embodied a prehistoric savage in One Million Years BC, a poor almost silent film whose only poster will mark the history of cinema. Raquel poses there in the famous animal skin bikini whose shreds seem to have been torn off by a ferocious animal or a hungry caveman.
“People saw me as a sex symbol, but in reality I was a single mother with two young children,” she exclaimed half a century later in her autobiography, Beyond the Cleavage (Beyond the neckline). “Can you imagine me on the poster with one kid under my arm and the other in a stroller? That breaks the myth a bit, doesn’t it? »
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15 million euros for “abusive breach of contract”
In 1967, she married her pygmalion in Paris, wearing a sensational white mesh mini-dress. Rich, famous, she then led the way: sumptuous villa in Beverly Hills, black marble swimming pool, Rolls-Royce. THE Times made her cover in November 1969. She went on to make films in the 1970s but remained confined to her status as a beauty in all the genres in which she ventured. Westerns (Bandolero, One colt for three bastards), Detective movies, detective films (The woman in cement) or comedies (The Animal by Claude Zidi with Belmondo).
In 1969, previously unseen erotic scenes with black actor Jim Brown in The Hundred Rifles and her transgender role in the parody Myra Breckinridgee (1970) did not help him to develop his image. However, she won a Golden Globe for The three Musketeers in 1973.
Fired by MGM on the set of Sardine Street in 1982, she attacked the studio and obtained 15 million dollars for wrongful breach of contract. The case does not give him good publicity. A yoga enthusiast, she launched herself, like Jane Fonda, into the wellness business. After having hidden her Latin origins for a long time, the dashing sexagenarian then assumes her roots, embodying roles of Hispanics in AmericanFamily (2002) or tortilla soup (2001). At 68, she divorced her fourth husband, 14 years her junior.
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