RIP Raquel Welch

 

American actress and sex symbol Raquel Welch died in Los Angeles, California after a short illness on February 15, 2023. She was 82. Jo Raquel Tejada was born in Chicago, Illinois on September 5, 1940 to a mother who could trace her ancestry to the Mayflower and a father from Bolivia. The family moved to San Diego, where the young girl took ballet and acting lessons; as a teen she won beauty contests and did some professional modeling. She came onto the movie scene in 1966 with the sci-fi film “Fantastic Voyage” and the prehistoric adventure “One Million Years B.C.,” the latter of which established Welch as a sex symbol. The actor went on to appear in the controversial adaptation of Gore Vidal’s “Myra Beckrinridge,” “Kansas City Bomber” and Richard Lester’s delightful romps “The Three Musketeers” (1973), for which she won a Golden Globe, and “The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge” (1974). She was one of the first women to play the lead role — not the romantic interest — in a Western, 1971 revenge tale “Hannie Caulder” — an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” (2003), according to the director. Welch was married four times, the first to publicist and agent James Welch, her high school sweetheart, from 1959-64; the second to director-producer Patrick Curtis from 1967-72; the third to producer, director and journalist André Weinfeld from 1980-90; and the fourth to Richard Palmer. She is survived by a son, Damon Welch, and a daughter, actress Tahnee Welch. Welch starred in two Spaghetti westerns, the previously mentioned “Hannie Caulder” (1970) as Hannie co-starring with Robert Culp and Ernest Borgnine and 1969’s “100 Rifles” with Burt Reynolds and Jim Brown.