Raquel Welch

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Raquel Welch (1940 - )

Raquel Welch (born September 5, 1940) is an American actress, author and sex symbol.

Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago, Illinois, the older sister to brother James and sister Gayle. She is the daughter of Josephine Sarah (née Hall) with American ancestry dating back to John Quincy Adams and the Mayflower, and Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, a Bolivian of Spanish descent. Her father (1911–1976), an aeronautical engineer, emigrated from La Paz, Bolivia at age 17; her mother (1909–2000) was American, the daughter of architect Emery Stanford Hall and wife Clara Louise Adams. Raquel was raised in the Presbyterian religion and continues to go to church every Sunday. As a little girl, she wanted to be a performer. Her first love and ambition was ballet and took it since the age of seven until she was seventeen. She gave it up after her instructor told her that she didn't have the proper body. Raquel changed her family name to that of her first husband, James Welch, in 1959. While a student at La Jolla High School in 1958, she won the Fairest of the Fair beauty pageant at the San Diego County Fair.

In 1959, Welch played the title role in The Ramona Pageant, a yearly outdoor play at Hemet, California, which is based on the novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson and Bob Biloe.
She became a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. Because of her heavy schedule, she decided to leave her studies at San Diego State University (then known as San Diego State College). Her first marriage broke up and she moved with her two children, Damon and Latanne, to Dallas, Texas, where she modeled for Neiman Marcus and worked as a cocktail hostess, intending to move on to New York City from there.
Instead, Welch moved back to California, found a place in Los Angeles and started making the rounds of the movie studios. She was cast in bit parts in two films and in the television shows Bewitched, McHale's Navy, and The Virginian, as well as on the weekly variety series The Hollywood Palace as a billboard girl and presenter of acts.
Welch's first featured role came in the beach film A Swingin' Summer, which led to a contract with 20th Century Fox. She was subsequently cast in a leading role in the sci-fi hit Fantastic Voyage (1966), which made her a star. She was the last star created under the studio system.
On loan out to Hammer Studios in Britain, Welch starred in the remake of One Million Years B.C. striking an iconic pose in a prehistoric animal-skin bikini. She was described as "wearing mankind's first bikini" and the fur bikini was described as a "definitive look of the 1960s". One author said, "although she had only three lines in the film, her luscious figure in a fur bikini made her a star and the dream girl of millions of young moviegoers." Her publicity still for the film became a bestselling poster, and helped her be seen as one of the leading sex symbols of the 1960s and 1970s. After her appearance as lust incarnate in the hit Bedazzled, she returned to the U.S. and appeared in the Western film Bandolero!, with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement with Frank Sinatra. Her looks and fame led Playboy to dub her the "Most Desired Woman" of the 1970s. Welch presented at the Academy Award ceremony several times during the 1970s due to her popularity, and accepted the Best Supporting Actress Oscar on behalf of fellow actress Goldie Hawn when she couldn't be there to accept it.
Welch's most controversial role came in the notorious Myra Breckinridge. She took the part as the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress, but the movie turned out to be a dismal failure.
Welch starred in the movie, 100 Rifles, a 1969 western directed by Tom Gries. The film also starred Jim Brown, Burt Reynolds, and Fernando Lamas. The original music score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith. 100 Rifles was one of the first films to feature an interracial sex scene between Jim Brown and Raquel Welch.
In 1970, Welch teamed up with Tom Jones and producer/choreographer David Winters of Winters-Rosen Productionsfor the TV special Raquel!, considered by some viewers to be a classic pairing together of 1970s pop-culture icons in their prime. The multi million-dollar TV song-and-dance extravaganza was filmed around the world, from Paris to Mexico. The show featured lavish production numbers of classic songs from the era, extravagant costumes, and notable guest performances, including John Wayne and Bob Hope in the Wild West.

The actress was due to star in an 1982 adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, but was fired by the producers a few days into production (they claimed that the 40 year old was too old to play the character). She was replaced with Debra Winger. Welch successfully sued, collecting an $11 million settlement.
In addition to her TV special, Raquel!, her television appearances include the TV movies The Legend of Walks Far Woman and Right to Die in which she turned in a stirring performance as a woman stricken with Lou Gehrig's disease, and in the PBS series American Family, about a Mexican American family in East Los Angeles. She has appeared in the night-time soap opera Central Park West and made infomercials and exercise videos.
In 1987, she flirted with a pop singing career, releasing the dance single "This Girl's Back In Town." She has performed in a one-woman nightclub musical act in Las Vegas and has starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year, receiving praise for following Lauren Bacall in the title role, and in Victor/Victoria, having less success following Julie Andrews and Liza Minnelli in the title roles.
In a 1997 episode of the comedy series Seinfeld entitled The Summer of George, Welch played a highly temperamental version of herself, assaulting series characters Kramer and Elaine, the former because he fired her from an acting job and the latter because Welch mistakenly thought that Elaine was mocking her. She also appeared as a guest on the American TV series Sabrina the Teenage Witch, as Sabrina's flamboyant Aunt Vesta.
In 2001, she had a supporting role in the hit film Legally Blonde opposite Reese Witherspoon. She also appeared in Welcome to the Captain, which premiered on CBS television on February 4, 2008.

IMDb : http://imdb.com/name/nm0000079/

[LarryO]

Clips, Stills and Promos from One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Originally Posted by span4f

Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. (1966)



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Originally Posted by span4f

2 more scenes with Raquel Welch from One Million Years B.C. (1966)



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Female fighting: Raquel Welch vs Martine Beswick



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Fantastic Voyage is a 1966 American submarine science fiction adventure film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby. The film is about a submarine crew who are shrunk to microscopic size and venture into the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain. Kleiner abandoned all but the concept of miniaturization and added a Cold War element. The film starred Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, and Arthur Kennedy.

Bantam Books obtained the rights for a paperback novelization based on the screenplay and approached Isaac Asimov to write it. Because the novelization was released six months before the movie, many people mistakenly believed that the film was based on Asimov's book.

The movie inspired an animated television series.

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Roustabout is a 1964 American musical feature film starring Elvis Presley as a singer who takes a job working with a struggling carnival. The film was produced by Hal Wallis and directed by John Rich from a screenplay by Anthony Lawrence and Allan Weiss. The screenplay was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award for best written American musical although Roustabout received a lukewarm review in Variety. The film's soundtrack album was one of Elvis Presley's most successful, reaching no. 1 on the Billboard Album Chart. It was filmed at Paramount Studios with location for carnival sequences shot in Thousand Oaks, California. Filming began in March 1964.

Uncredited actors :
... Raquel Welch as College Girl

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A House Is Not a Home is a 1964 drama film loosely based on the 1953 autobiography by madam Polly Adler. The film stars Shelley Winters, Robert Taylor, Cesar Romero, and Kaye Ballard. Raquel Welch made her film debut in a small role as a call girl. The song written for the film by Burt Bacharach and Hal David has become a standard.

Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hous...t_a_Home_(film)

IMDb : http://imdb.com/title/tt0058209/