Her irreproachable plastic led her several times, from an early age, on the podiums of beauty contests. She undoubtedly helped him then to cross the threshold of the Hollywood studios. The career that she led there made her turn in about forty films, sometimes under the leadership of great directors such as Richard Fleischer, Stanley Donen, Edward Dmytryk. It is never enough, however, to detach her from this iconic image enthroned in the Pantheon of the most beautiful women in the world.
Raquel Welch, whose beauty we systematically preferred to highlight rather than play, died in Los Angeles on Wednesday February 15, “peacefully early this morning after a brief illness”, according to the statement sent to AFP by his manager. The American actress, star of the 1960s and 1970s, was 82 years old.
Born on September 5, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois, to a Brazilian father, an aeronautical engineer and an American mother, Jo Raquel Tejada took dance and dramatic comedy lessons at a very young age. She was in her last year of high school when, in 1957, she presented herself and won the contest of Miss Fairest of the Fair in San Diego (California), the first of a long series. Two years later, she married James Welch, whose name she took. Model, she begins to get small roles in the cinema. Producer Patrick Curtis spots her, and wants to launch her career. Raquel Welch finds herself alongside Elvis Presley in The Handyman by John Rich (1964) then in his first science fiction film, The Fantastic Journey by Richard Fleischer (1966), where she is part of the (miniaturized) crew in charge of exploring the human body. The actress gained a little notoriety there.
sex symbol
It is, however, with One million years BC by Don Chaffrey (1966) that Raquel Welch imposes herself, definitively earning her stripes as a sex symbol, thanks essentially to the bra and the shredded animal skin skirt that she wears throughout the film. For the rest, his interpretation is not enough to shake the earth, any more than that of the other actors (John Richardson, Percy Herbert…). We are in prehistory, in hostile territory, in the company of almost silent characters, with somewhat raw reactions. But Raquel Welch thrones on all the posters, feeds the fantasies and now imposes herself as the rival of Ursula Andress, whose swimsuit, in james Bond 007 vs Dr No (1962), has just been shelved by three shreds of animal skin.
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