Raquel Welch has died at the age of 82 after a short illness. Hollywood is mourning the loss of a screen icon who has been photographed in a bikini by photographers far more often than has acted in films. Her reputation as a sex symbol amused Welch — and she balanced it with a large dose of elegance and humor.
Aside from growing up with Raquel Welch in a fur costume for a generation, the actress is best known to younger audiences as a poster character in the fan-favorite The Condemned (now the legendary #1 on Imdb).
In the prison film, Andy Dusfrene (Tim Robbins) requests a movie poster of the “lovely Rita Hayworth” from his prison pal Red (Morgan Freeman), who is in charge of smuggling, after seeing a movie starring the “lovely Rita Hayworth.” He gets it – and uses it in his cell for a purpose that viewers only find out towards the end of the film and that has to do with the amazing and touching ending.
If you’re one of the tens of millions who have seen The Condemned, you’re probably smiling now. Everyone else should stop reading now, because a spoiler follows that might spoil your enjoyment of the film. The main thing is that viewers have been discussing the Raquel Welch poster intensively for years.
How could the poster hold up so well?
Did Frank Darabont, the director of the emotional Stephen King film adaptation, which garnered little attention in cinemas before becoming a hit in the home video market, made a complicated logic error here?
After a sensational action, Andy manages to get the prison administration on his side, in which the former banker uses little tricks to bring them tax breaks. He quickly becomes the secret bookkeeper for criminal activities and is allowed to do things that other inmates are denied to compensate. So at some point he begins to work out small stone figures with a chisel. It will become the tool with which he regains his freedom. And finally, Raquel Welch will cover his masterpiece.
And now the poster comes into play: night after night, Andy weaves a tunnel into the apparently brittle rock of the prison wall. Finally, the Raquel Welch poster is hung above it. So what is it that fans of the film are discussing?
Many question that the poster might not stick perfectly to the wall after Andy escaped through the hole leading to the sewer. As a result, it is almost impossible to stick over all corners of the poster from the other side of the wall that is opened by the hole.
Some at least countered that the scene briefly shows the poster that seems to be stuck to the top corners, explaining Andy’s possible escape by pulling out the poster by one of its corners while the others remain stuck to the wall.
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There are also some other wild theories about how this could work, which we will spare you here. But the fact is that only Andy and the director know how he was able to manage his daring escape.
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