Raquel Welch on Q Magazine | 07/27/2009 11:00 pm

Living Legend Raquel Welch, by Liz Smith

wOw’s Liz Smith shares a piece she wrote for Q, the Quest magazine quarterly, spotlighting the everlasting sex symbol Raquel Welch

By Liz Smith

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Q magazine

Editor’s Note: Liz Smith has an article on one of Hollywood’s most captivating stars, Raquel Welch, in Q, the Quest magazine quarterly. Here we present the full story as Liz wrote it. It differs slightly from the magazine version and contains new material. To see the article, as it appeared in Q, click here.

"I’ve had the strangest career! I was a sex symbol in the age of flower children. Nobody knew what to do with me. Of course I wanted to be Rosalind Russell. Listen, that’s why I did ‘Myra Breckinridge.’ I thought, ‘Ooooooh … I get a chance to be articulate and sharp in a movie.’ Obviously, infamously, it didn’t turn out as I’d hoped!"

That was Raquel Welch talking to me a few months back, full of merry laughter, piss and vinegar, making fun of herself, rolling her eyes at her image, and – as always – planning ahead, looking for whatever project amuses or intrigues her.

Nobody who has ever analyzed Raquel’s career and status as a sex symbol says it better than the lady herself. Her career has been strange! Quick, name three Raquel Welch movies. Unless you are a hard-core fan, it is likely only "One Million Years B.C." and the above-mentioned "Myra" pop right to mind. And perhaps her endearing comic turn in "The Three Musketeers." But she’s starred in about 35 feature films, appeared in dozens of TV movies, specials and (usually very funny) sitcom guest appearances. Yet despite a curiously elusive screen oeuvre she has endured as a figure of glamour, defying all laws of showbiz nature.

Today, well into her 60s, she is a more lustrous and iconic personage than at her moviemaking peak. She has not ossified into some eerily smooth resemblance of her former self. Raquel wisely allowed nature to take its course with her body, showing a somewhat fuller – if still enviable – figure in recent years. The face – almost too strongly structured in her youth, is softer and more appealing now. Raquel actually lives up to the old cliché: "She looks better than ever!"

But it is Raquel’s increasingly elevated status as a movie queen (who really doesn’t make movies anymore) that is the most startling aspect of her survival. It has happened because Raquel Welch gradually learned to relax and accept Sigmund Freud’s dictum, "Anatomy is destiny." She always knew she was much more than the sum of her sensational parts – as a person and as an actress – but it took many years and many hard knocks for this intelligent and once-wary woman to say, literally and figuratively, "Oh, what the hell!"

And when I asked her to what did she attribute her success, a career that has now spanned four decades plus, she paused and said. "Good fortune."

***

Raquel, one of the most exotic-looking movie stars of all time, was born in plain old Chicago, IL, to a Bolivian father, Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo (an aerospace engineer), and an Irish-American mother, Josephine Hall. The family – there were two other children – moved to San Diego when Raquel was two.

Raquel was a beauty right from the start. As a teenager she collected beauty queen titles such as "Miss Contour, "Miss San Diego," "Miss Fairest of the Fair." Obviously, she was not going to pursue a career in aerospace. Raquel studied dance and dramatics, but then took a surprising detour. She married her high school sweetheart, James Welch, and had two children Damon and Tahnee in quick succession. Childbearing did not alter Raquel’s figure in the least. Indeed, it seemed to improve! And her ambitions – she was, after all, "Miss Fairest of the Fair" – were still burning. Her marriage to Welch ended, for all intents, in 1961, though they would not divorce until four years later. Raquel moved herself and her kids to Dallas, TX, where she modeled, and then – but of course! – back to California, to Hollywood, where her jaw-dropping good looks were much appreciated.

Soon she was finding bit work here and there, most notably in 1965’s "A Swinging Summer," in which she danced, tossed her enormous mane of hair and sang a song that referenced her imposing measurements. (Welch’s rabidly discussed bosom has never varied much in size, despite rumors of enhancement. She was stacked as teenage "Miss Contour," and I’d venture that nature played a far bigger hand in shaping her body than anything you could purchase at the doctor’s office.)

38 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Dena that does’nt even compute correctly. I put 2009-1940 and it =69.

By Beth Cornell on 07/28/2009 12:21 pm

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Raquel, like Sophia Loren, is an ageless beauty, although I think Raquel has held up even better. Our paths crossed at various times through the years, I happened to witness her in 2 different car accidents, one off Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood and one in Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills. Made me wonder if I was bad luck for her or if she was just a bad driver. Another time I worked for an Interior Design firm and I was fortunate that she was my client, Other than a bed, she only needed odds and ends, we would load up her SUV, she would take "stuff" home to try, but return most of it. She was in the process of moving from one house to another and needed some "decorative accessories". Even in her baseball cap and jeans she was stunning, always pleasant, paid me nice compliments, and signed 2 photos fo rme, 1 from her personally and the other with Rex Reed from "Myra Breckenridge". She always said she would come in when she "looked better" and we could have a picture taken together, but she never did, before I left the firm. No picture with Raquel is my loss, but I sure there was no way she could have "looked better", no matter what she was wearing.

By Woody McBreairty on 07/28/2009 1:52 pm

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She is almost 70 and in a Foster Grant Sunglasses commercial and she looks 30. I know that so much of it is the camera lens and all of those tricks but it is still hard to believe her age. A year or so back, she promoted a modeling project for women over 65. Don’t know what happened to that. She is still stunning.

By Richard Bassett on 07/28/2009 2:32 pm

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I have always felt that Raquel Welch was one of the world’s most beautiful women. And as you said Liz, even well into her 60’s she is still beautiful. She reeks of sensuality, sexuality and confidence. What I love the most about her was her figure, she has what I consider to be a "true" feminine shape. Unlike the women of today who believe if they aren’t a size 0 they are fat, she epitomized a curvy and shapely figure that men once loved. You’d be hard pressed to find a man who would consider her figure flattering today. No…today she would be considered fat. Too hippy and curvy.

But to me and in my life, her physical beauty is something to be admired.

By Belinda Joy on 07/28/2009 4:19 pm

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Are you serious Belinda Joy?

“hard pressed to find a man who would consider her figure flattering today“

Considered fat ?

Too hippy ?

And curvy?

My God - What’s happened to the male of the species?

By Lauriate Roly on 07/28/2009 5:55 pm

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Not sure which men Belinda is talking about. I met Raquel twice in Gollywood in the early 70’s. We were both eating lunch at La Scala, a very hip Italian restaurant in BHills and were introduced by a mutual friend… She was gorgeous and very nice.

By Victoria J on 07/29/2009 1:48 pm

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Thanks Liz, great article! I so admire Raquel, I know we are all sensitive about something I wish she would just own up to her age.

By Tee Zee on 07/28/2009 6:10 pm

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Was never a fan, but saw Woman Of The Year,and Raquel was amazingly beautiful and very good in the part.

By mitzi morris on 07/28/2009 8:32 pm

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Yes, I agree with the reader who noted that Raquel Welch is not like Mae West, who did not get absurdly remade again and again by a plastic surgeon. Though it sounds as if Raquel was the beauty queen type early on, it is still true that she’s had more cosmetic surgery than even Cher. Years ago, I interviewed a young Raquel Welch for an entertainment magazine where I was on the editorial staff and our staff photographer took the photos we printed in our publication. SILICONE and BREAST IMPLANTS were not yet a household word, so the editors were a bit astonished to notice that, even when she posed lying down, the actress’s bosom was still upright and jutting forward like rockets about to launch. My MAE WEST blog has a photo of a young FARRAH FAWCETT in a scene with RAQUEL WELCH in the film "MYRA BRECKINRIDGE," which also starred MAE WEST.

Come up and see Mae … MaeWest.blogspot.com

By Mae Westside on 07/28/2009 9:25 pm

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One thing to be pointed out is that Raquel Welch obviously had something Mae West didn’t which Mae West knew and which Mae West felt threatened by. At the time it may not have seemed funny to Raquel Welch but everyone else was roaring over her being referred to as "Rachel Wooooosh" which indicated just a slight bit of envy as well as avarice. And it had nothing to do with her "rockets about to launch." It had to do with her being comfortable with herself. Which she obviously still is. She has aged gracefully. Mae West, in a way, did not. One of the greatest legacies of Marlene Dietrich was allowing us to remember her as she was. Something Mae West denied us with Myra Breckenridge although some of her lines were hilarious. The problem was she was just too old to be delivering them.

By Baby Snooks on 07/31/2009 7:06 pm

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Hubba Hubba

By Frannie Em on 07/29/2009 12:44 am

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I always admired Raquel Welch because she epitomized what a real women should be, confident and proud of her body. She projected intelligence and sexuality in the era of the vapid Twiggy types. Young girls today need more full figured role models like her. Maybe there would be less body anxiety if they realized that curves are a natural part of what we are as women.

By Chris Glass` on 07/29/2009 5:45 am

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I, too have always loved Ms. Welch. I wish I had gotten tickets, when I had the chance, to see Woman of the Year. She was always, and today is even more so….a very classy lady.

By John Dillon on 07/29/2009 3:22 pm

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My memory of Myra Breckenridge was how Mae West fought to be the only one allowed to wear white (her color) or black on the set of the color film: those two colors drawing the eye. Ms. Welch got around it by wearing light "as close to white" blue. Mae West’s apartment back then was all done in ivories and whites and full of monkey poo and oiled beach boys, ratty feather boas and her morning heated lemon water for a purge. Rather aged and smeary like the woman herself.

My favorite Raquel movies were Tortilla Soup and the Musketeer films. She had great comedic timing.

By Washington Cube on 07/30/2009 4:27 am

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I always thought Ms. Welch was a wonderful actress and a beautiful woman. I wish we saw more of her acting lately, although as Meryl Streep says, the parts for ‘older’ women are sparse. Sad!!

By Liz Coro on 07/30/2009 11:30 am