Raquel Welch, Hollywood Sex Symbol, Dead at 82

The Golden Globe winner died Wednesday morning following a short illness

Raquel Welch, the award-winning actress and reluctant sex symbol, has died at the age of 82. Her manager confirmed the news to Variety. She was 82.

In a statement to People Magazine, her manager added that Welch “passed away peacefully early this morning after a brief illness.”

In 1966, after a couple of years playing bit parts on TV shows like “Stewardess” on Bewitched, Welch’s fame skyrocketed when she appeared in One Million Years B.C. in a fur bikini. She also starred in Fantastic Voyage that same year, solidifying herself as a Hollywood starlet. In fact, public interest in her became so rampant at the time that when she married her manager, Patrick Curtis, in Paris the next year, the couple had to delay the ceremony by 15 minutes while police cleared around 100 paparazzi.

Continuing her string of success, Welch won a Golden Globe for playing Constance, the love interest in filmmaker Richard Lester’s 1973 adaptation of The Three Musketeers; she was nominated for another for appearing in the made-for-TV movie Right to Die, appearing against type as a woman with A.L.S. who wishes for euthanasia. In 1996, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

For her entire career, Welch — who was born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940, in Chicago to a Bolivian-born engineer and his American wife — shouldered the immense burden of being a sex symbol. Even The New York Times in ’66 reported her height and measurements in an article titled “OK, OK, but Can She Act?” In 1975, she told talk show host Geraldo that she originally embraced her sexuality onscreen in defiance of her father, who was strict and preferred her to study Shakespeare. She also parsed the “sex goddess” description: “When you have a label, the problem is not changing the label … it’s trying to move left, right, up, or down from it, that’s all,” she said. “It’s like a leash. You want a little more rein to play with. I’m not trying to say, ‘Hey, I’m a real person …’ All I do know is that I’m an actress. I love my work. I take it seriously when I’m working but the rest of the time I really have a kind of a kick being me.”

Over the years, Welch appeared in box-office hits (Fantastic Voyage, Legally Blonde), spoofs (Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult) and TV series (a memorable cameo playing herself on Seinfeld, and her final role, playing Rosa on Date My Dad). She even performed her own stunts playing a roller derby star in Kansas City Bomber, appeared in Westerns like Hannie Caulder, and enjoyed roles on Broadway, including replacing Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria. Out of the spotlight, Welch led what she considered a normal enough life. By the time she was famous, she was a divorcee (her marriage to James Welch ended in ’64) and a mother of two. After Curtis, she married twice more and divorced her last husband, Richard Palmer, in 2004.

This 1986 interview with Raquel Welch talks about feminity and being intimidated by her own looks.

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Recommended Raquel Welch movies to watch

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

Welch plays one of a handful of scientists who are miniaturized to enter the bloodstream of a dying man. Of course, Welch is there for cheesecake value, which she more than fulfills, but she holds her own, and it’s still an exciting and imaginative sci-fi/Cold War thriller.

Bandolero! (1968)

This is the first of Raquel’s three timeless Westerns. Get a load of this cast: Jimmy Stewart, Dean Martin, George Kennedy, Will Geer, Denver Pyle, Perry Lopez and Harry Carey Jr.  Dean Martin’s no-good outlaw takes Welch hostage as they try to outrun a posse.

This is a tough, underrated, and exciting Western.

100 Rifles (1969)

Welch’s second classic Western co-stars NFL legend Jim Brown and future superstar Burt Reynolds. Great action scenes, great stars, a couple of terrific love scenes, Reynolds’ charm, Brown’s stoic machismo, and Welch’s va va voom make this as entertaining as movies come.

Hannie Caulder (1971)

By this time, Welch was not only a full-fledged movie star but also an accomplished actress. The movie opens with the murder of Hannie’s (Welch) husband and her gang rape at the hands of three pigs, memorably played by Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, and Strother Martin. Hannie wants revenge, and thanks to Rober Culp’s philosophical gunfighter and Christoper Lee’s civilized gunsmith, she will have it.

Not just Welch’s best movie but one of the best Westerns of that era.

Kansas City Bomber (1972)

Most of the gritty and detailed cinematic character studies from this era were of men, which makes this entry a rarity. Kansas City Bomber was sold as a rock ‘em-sock ‘em exploitation film — The Hotterst Thing on Wheels! — but it’s so much more. Welch plays K.C. Carr, a single mother and roller derby queen who takes us on a tour of this then-popular and rather tawdry subculture. This isn’t Slap Shot or The Bad News Bears. Bomber is much closer in spirit to Requiem for a Heavyweight, North Dallas Forty, and The Wrestler. Welch is simply outstanding as an isolated woman with few options who’s kind of trapped in this world but also attracted to it.

Why this isn’t on Bluray is a crime.

The Three Musketeers (1973)

Welch’s most magnificent Movie Star Turn, won her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. Welch is sexy, funny, tough, charming, conniving, clutzy, and delightful from A to Z — and “Z” ends with The Four Musketeers (1974), which was shot at the same time.

Also recommended: Mother Jugs & Speed (1976), The Last of Sheila (1973), Lady in Cement (1968), Bedazzled (1967), and One Million Years B.C. (1965).

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