The actress, born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago, died this Wednesday at the age of 82
In a time that today can no longer be understood in the same way, Raquel Welch was baptized as El Cuerpo. His presence in ‘A million years ago’ (1966), a curious adventure and erotic film in prehistoric times, had a lot to do with it. The actress, born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago, passed away this Wednesday at the age of 82. He made his film debut in 1964 in ‘A house is not a home’, a film that featured a beautiful main song, ‘A house is not a home’, composed by the also recently deceased Burt Bacharach.
Two years later, after a few television appearances, Welch became one of the ‘sex symbols’ of the 60s with the aforementioned ‘A million years ago’. Almost at the same time, he shot another of his mythical films, ‘Amazing Journey’, also an adventure, this time medical and miniaturized: Welch is one of the members of a medical team reduced in size and introduced into the body of a patient to reduce him cancer.
He lavished himself on some characteristic European and erotic co-productions of the time, such as ‘The oldest profession in the world’ and ‘The four witches’, and such It was her repercussion that one of her films was released in Spain using her first name, ‘Raquel y sus bribones’ (1968), a comedy of robberies whose original title was quite different, ‘The biggest booty in the world’. Neither did she lag behind ‘Fathom’ (1967), a spy comedy set in Malaga that here had a title that seemed like a tribute to the actress: ‘Pretty, intrepid and spy’.
He starred in other minor milestones such as ‘100 rifles’ (1969), a western as lubricious as it was racial, and, above all, ‘Myra Breckinridge’ (1970), an impertinent trans nonsense based on a novel by Gore Vidal about the machismo of American society, which brought together two of the great sexual myths of Hollywood, that of the past tense, Mae West, and the one from the 60s, Welch.
RIP RACHEL WELCH (1940-2023) ?
Here she is at her dazzling best in 1975 singing I’M A WOMAN with CHER. pic.twitter.com/v0Nr69EPF8
—James Leighton (@JamesL1927) February 15, 2023
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The following decade was not as productive, with ambitious but unsuccessful titles such as ‘Barba Azul’ (1972), in which Richard Burton played the murderer of women and Welch, Virna Lisi, Nathalie Delon and Marilú Toló formed his court of lovers and victims. . She had one last moment of splendor playing Constance, the queen’s servant, in the diptych ‘The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers’ (1973-1974)committed for which he won a Golden Globe, and in ‘Wild Party’ (1975), the James Ivory film about the orgies of silent Hollywood, a clear precedent for the recent ‘Babylon’.
It was followed by many telefilms, series and the participation in the film by María Ripoll ‘Tortilla soup’ (2001), a gastronomic comedy ‘tex mex’.