Raquel Welch
270 videos • 147,121 views • by SindeeLoohoo Jo Raquel Tejada (born September 5, 1940), better known as Raquel Welch, is an American actress and sex symbol. Welch came to attention as a new star on the 20th Century Fox lot in the mid-1960s. She posed iconically in an animal skin bikini for the British-release One Million Years B.C. (1966), for which she may be best known. She later starred in Bedazzled (1967), Bandolero! (1968), 100 Rifles (1969) and Myra Breckinridge (1970). She made several television variety specials, and today, Welch is a noticeable face in commercials for Foster Grant sunglasses and reading glasses. Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago, the older sister to brother James and sister Gayle. She is the daughter of Josephine Sarah (née Hall; 1909--2000), of English ancestry, and Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo (1911--1976), of Bolivian descent. Her father, an aeronautical engineer, emigrated from La Paz, Bolivia at age 17; her mother was American, the daughter of architect Emery Stanford Hall and wife Clara Louise Adams. As a young girl, she wanted to be a performer. Her first love and ambition was ballet, which she studied from ages seven to seventeen. She gave up ballet after her instructor told her that she did not have the proper body. While a student at La Jolla High School in 1958, she won the Fairest of the Fair beauty pageant at the San Diego County Fair. She changed her surname to that of her first husband, James Welch, in 1959. That year, she played the title role in The Ramona Pageant, a yearly outdoor play at Hemet, California which is based on the novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson and Bob Biloe. She reported the weather at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. Because of her heavy schedule at the time, she decided to leave her studies at San Diego State University (then known as San Diego State College). Her first marriage broke up and she moved with her two children, Damon and Latanne, to Dallas, Texas, where she modeled for Neiman Marcus and worked as a cocktail hostess, intending to move on to New York City from there. Instead, Welch moved back to California, found a place in Los Angeles, California, and started making the rounds of the movie studios. She was cast in small parts in two films and in the television shows Bewitched, McHale's Navy, and The Virginian, as well as on the weekly variety series The Hollywood Palace as a billboard girl and presenter of acts. She was one of many women who auditioned for the role of Mary Ann Summers on Gilligan's Island. Welch's first featured role came in the beach film A Swingin' Summer, which led to a contract with 20th Century Fox. She was subsequently cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (1966), which was a hit and made her a star. She was the last star to be created under the studio system.[citation needed] Welch in the noted fur bikini and boots, in smoky rocky surroundings, tensed as if seeing a threat in the distance. Raquel Welch in her famous pin-up photo from 1966's One Million Years B.C. Welch, laughing, onstage with Radner as Emily Litella. Saturday Night Live, 1976, with Gilda Radner On loan out to Hammer Studios in Britain, Welch starred in the remake of One Million Years B.C. striking an iconic pose in a prehistoric animal-skin bikini. She was described as "wearing mankind's first bikini" and the fur bikini was described as a "definitive look of the 1960s". One author said, "although she had only three lines in the film, her luscious figure in a fur bikini made her a star and the dream girl of millions of young moviegoers." Her publicity still for the film became a bestselling poster, and helped her be seen as one of the leading sex symbols of the 1960s and 1970s. After her appearance as lust incarnate in the hit Bedazzled, she returned to the U.S. and appeared in the Western film Bandolero!, with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement with Frank Sinatra. Her looks and fame led Playboy to dub her the "Most Desired Woman" of the 1970s. Welch presented at the Academy Award ceremony several times during the 1970s due to her popularity, and accepted the Best Supporting Actress Oscar on behalf of fellow actress Goldie Hawn when she couldn't be there to accept it. Welch's most controversial role came in the notorious Myra Breckinridge. She took the part as the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress, but the movie turned out to be a failure. Welch in blue scarf and high-collared gray jacket, with polka-dot feathered cap. Welch at the premiere of Bette Midler's movie, The Rose, 1979 Welch starred in the movie, 100 Rifles, a 1969 western directed by Tom Gries. The film also starred Jim Brown, Burt Reynolds, and Fernando Lamas. The original music score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith. 100 Rifles was one of the first films to feature an interracial sex scene between Jim Brown and Raquel Welch.