Actress Raquel Welch dies at 82
February 20, 2023 6:44 AM   Subscribe

Raquel Welch, an pop-culture icon who enjoyed film and TV stardom and pin-up status in the 1960s and 70s, has died at the age of 82.

After breakthrough roles in Fantastic Voyage and One Million Years B.C., Welch went on to star in dozens of films and TV projects in a career that spanned six decades, earning a Golden Globe for her role in the 1973 film adaptation of The Three Musketeers.

In 1980, Welch--then 40 years old--was fired from a starring role in a film adaptation of Steinbeck's Cannery Row, to be replaced by Debra Winger, 15 years her junior. In 1986 she was awarded a $10.8 million verdict for wrongful termination: a pyrrhic victory, as the incident (together with the Hollywood age discrimination that prompted the dispute in the first place) put her career permanently on ice.

Born Jo Raquel Tejada, the child of a Bolivian father and American mother who was born in Chicago and grew up in San Diego, Welch was advised to downplay her Latina background in order to appeal to a broader audience. In recent decades, she began to embrace that identity and champion Latino representation on screen and in public life, earning a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 from the Imagen Foundation for her positive portrayals of Latinos in the entertainment industry.
posted by drlith (41 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Kissinger outlives Raquel Welch too? The universe is deeply unfair.
posted by MengerSponge at 6:50 AM on February 20, 2023 [36 favorites]


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posted by Halloween Jack at 6:58 AM on February 20, 2023


Kissinger outlives Raquel Welch too?

Well, he is a vampire after all.
posted by y2karl at 7:46 AM on February 20, 2023 [3 favorites]


One of the celebrities I share a birthday (date, not year) with. :(

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posted by Archer25 at 7:49 AM on February 20, 2023


Hannie Caulder is her best film, and one of the best pulp Westerns ever. That's all I got. No, wait. Welch would have made a fantastic Co-star in any number of Clint Eastwood films. What a movie that could have been! OK, now that's really all I got.
posted by Beholder at 7:50 AM on February 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


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posted by JoeXIII007 at 7:54 AM on February 20, 2023


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posted by riruro at 7:58 AM on February 20, 2023


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posted by Gelatin at 8:25 AM on February 20, 2023


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posted by Phanx at 8:26 AM on February 20, 2023


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posted by jquinby at 8:56 AM on February 20, 2023


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posted by The Great Big Mulp at 9:02 AM on February 20, 2023


We just recently rewatched The Three Musketeers, she deserves a lot more credit for a terrific performance as the luscious yet bumbling Constance. Her fight with Lady DeWinter is a beautiful parody of all the swordfights ever.
posted by winesong at 9:11 AM on February 20, 2023 [8 favorites]


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posted by Joey Michaels at 9:17 AM on February 20, 2023


RIP. The Three Musketeers/Four Musketeers remains one of my favorite swashbuckling films (shut up, it is too one movie) and RW goes toe-to-toe with a huge A-List cast, more than holding her own.
posted by Ber at 9:38 AM on February 20, 2023 [6 favorites]


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posted by quazichimp at 9:53 AM on February 20, 2023


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posted by Ignorantsavage at 10:18 AM on February 20, 2023


When I was about 7 years old I was channel surfing one day on our old B&W TV. It's pretty easy to do when there's only 3 channels. A very different world back then, indeed.
Anyways, I came across a movie with dinosaurs. Dinosaurs!
The movie was One Million Years BC and it starred Raquel Welch.
While watching the movie my 7 years old self was soon as fascinated by Ms Welch as he was fascinated by the dinosaurs. That would be my oldest memory of crushing on a celebrity. It turned out she was much more talented and interesting than her image allowed but of course the glare of fame pretty much focused on her looks alone. Once again, a very different time and place.
I always retained a fondness for her because of that long, long ago crush.
RIP and thank you for all the fond memories.

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posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 10:27 AM on February 20, 2023 [9 favorites]


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posted by brachiopod at 10:36 AM on February 20, 2023


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posted by Tabitha Someday at 10:44 AM on February 20, 2023


I'm an old, and I have wound up watching re-runs of Johnny Carson and even Dick Cavett. There were a couple of Cavette reruns this week with Ms Welch about 10 years apart. In the earlier one, Cavette seemed a leering clown, but Welch just kept on with the interview, while she discussed her latest movie, Kansas City Bomber. She went to great lengths to give her appreciation and thanks to the women skaters of Roller Derby, giving out a long list of names of the women who helped her "learn the game".
The second interview, Cavett was much much more respectful.
posted by pthomas745 at 10:45 AM on February 20, 2023 [6 favorites]


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posted by adekllny at 11:37 AM on February 20, 2023


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posted by evilDoug at 11:48 AM on February 20, 2023


She seems like someone who would have been fascinating to hang out with. I briefly worked, in a very tangential way, on PBS' "American Family", which she was in. (I did not get to hang out.)
posted by maxwelton at 12:26 PM on February 20, 2023


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Not to be too dark, but something has been on my mind for the last few years. We are well in an era in which the Boomer celebrities that Gen X and Millennials grew up watching are not just getting old, but getting old in a "too old to actually work" phase, and dying of old age. This phase doesn't really have a start or stop point, but over the next decade (or more) there will be a lot of "Oh, no. So and so died." So if you haven't already, mentally prepare yourself.
posted by zardoz at 1:14 PM on February 20, 2023 [5 favorites]


I saw her on Broadway in Victor/Victoria a long time ago. She hadn't the voice of Julie Andrews of course, but she performed quite well. And she was surprisingly short in stature...
posted by Czjewel at 1:22 PM on February 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


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posted by detachd at 1:34 PM on February 20, 2023


We are well in an era in which the Boomer celebrities that Gen X and Millennials grew up watching are not just getting old, but getting old in a "too old to actually work" phase, and dying of old age.

I think of it as "the Muppet Show guest celebrities"era.
posted by tavella at 1:36 PM on February 20, 2023 [25 favorites]


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posted by Splunge at 2:04 PM on February 20, 2023


Rachel Welch was a talented actress with a great deal of warmth and subtlety, who also picked some interesting roles after the hits that made her famous.
posted by ovvl at 3:55 PM on February 20, 2023 [1 favorite]


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Welch and Cher - I'm a Woman (Lieber and Stoller), 1975
Welch and Piggy - I'm a Woman, 1978

(And because I spend far-too-much time imagining impossible what-could-have-beens-if-people-were-sharper, I really wish someone with money had been forward-thinking enough in the mid-sixties to have Leigh Brackett write a Wonder Woman script, and cast Sophia Loren as Hippolyta and Raquel Welch as Diana. Fighting Ray Harryhausen monsters. Dorothy Arzner directing?.)
posted by Mutant Lobsters from Riverhead at 3:57 PM on February 20, 2023 [6 favorites]


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posted by snuffleupagus at 4:38 PM on February 20, 2023


I will always appreciate all she did to help that wrongly convicted man out of prison.
posted by ckape at 6:34 PM on February 20, 2023 [4 favorites]


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posted by Fuchsoid at 6:43 PM on February 20, 2023


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posted by dannyboybell at 8:57 PM on February 20, 2023


During the summer of 1985 I was visiting relatives in Pakistan and we all went out to a movie. I got to choose and picked One Million Years BC because it had dinosaurs in it and I was a kid that loved dinosaurs. I don't remember anything about the movie so I guess it wasn't that good, or I was too young to appreciate what it had to offer. It is only now reading the obits that I have found out that the movie came out in 1966 and not 1985. I don't think the movie theatres in Karachi were that far behind the times so I guess it was just a reshowing of a classic but I don't think the cousins I went with would have remembered it so there isn't really a way for me to know.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:36 PM on February 21, 2023 [1 favorite]


My early memory of Raquel Welch was the episode of Mork & Mindy where she appeared as leader of the Necrotons. The Necrotons captured Mork to torture him, but the twist was that they were going to torture him with pleasure. That is, Raquel Welch was going to torture Mork by forcing him to strip and putting him in the hot tub with her two silver bikini henchwomen, Kama and Sutra. Mork does strip, but the gag is that he strips down to a ridiculous looking 19th century style men's bathing suit with really big stripes.

Anyhow, I looked up the air date for this episode & I calculated that I must have seen this when I was 7 years old. This blew my mind, because Mork & Mindy was heavily targeted toward kids & yet this episode is so ridiculously sexual I think I probably experienced early onset puberty.

For all that she did to spice up 1970s children's television (the Muppet show too!), I don't think I can forget.

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posted by jonp72 at 2:23 PM on February 21, 2023 [2 favorites]



posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:22 PM on February 21, 2023


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posted by sammyo at 8:01 PM on February 21, 2023


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posted by filtergik at 7:52 AM on February 22, 2023


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posted by luckynerd at 2:41 PM on February 22, 2023


For all that she did to spice up 1970s children's television (the Muppet show too!), I don't think I can forget.

This brought to mind a dialog between Rocky and Bullwinkle in Bullwinkle the Quarterback, wherein Rocky and Bullwinkle play a game of football for Wossamatta U against the mean and burly Mud City Manglers who are all disguised as coeds from an all girls school in Little Bo Peep dresses and matching blond curls:

Rocky: Bullwinkle, this is terrible!

Bullwinkle: It is?

Rocky: What kind of game can you play with girls?

Bullwinkle: Boy, this really is a kids' show isn't it? [*beat*] Parcheesi, of course!
posted by y2karl at 3:59 PM on February 22, 2023


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