Raquel Welch

Jo Raquel Welch, born Jo Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois, was an American actress whose career spanned film, television, and Broadway. She died on February 15, 2023. Her family relocated to San Diego, California, when she was two years old. Her mother, Josephine Sarah Hall, was of English descent with ancestral ties to the Mayflower, and her father, Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, was a Bolivian-born aeronautical engineer of Spanish descent. She had a younger brother, James, and a younger sister, Gayle. Her cousin, Lidia Gueiler Tejada, served as the first female president of Bolivia and the second female non-royal head of state in the Americas.

Welch began studying ballet at age seven and continued for ten years before leaving the discipline at seventeen after her instructor told her she lacked the body type required by professional ballet companies. During her teenage years in San Diego, she won the beauty titles of Miss Photogenic, Miss Contour, Miss La Jolla, and Miss San Diego – the Fairest of the Fair – at the San Diego County Fair, ultimately earning the state title of Maid of California. She graduated with honors from high school in 1958 and enrolled at San Diego State College on a theater arts scholarship. The following year she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch, with whom she had two children, and she retained his surname throughout her life. In 1960, she worked as a weather presenter at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. After separating from James Welch, she moved with her children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress.

She relocated to Los Angeles in 1963 and began pursuing film roles, during which time she met Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis, who became her personal and business manager. She appeared in small roles in A House Is Not a Home and the Elvis Presley musical Roustabout, both released in 1964, as well as minor parts on the television series Bewitched, McHale's Navy, and The Virginian. Her first featured film role came in the beach film A Swingin' Summer in 1965. That same year, a photo layout in Life magazine titled "The End of the Great Girl Drought!" generated significant industry attention. After screen testing for Our Man Flint, she was cast in a leading role in the science fiction film Fantastic Voyage (1966), portraying a member of a medical team miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured scientist. The film's success established her as a star, after which 20th Century Fox, which had signed her to a seven-year non-exclusive contract, loaned her to the British studio Hammer Film Productions.

At Hammer, Welch starred in One Million Years B.C. (1966), a remake of the 1940 Hal Roach film. Despite having only three lines of dialogue, her appearance in a deerskin bikini produced a bestselling publicity poster that transformed her into an international sex symbol. Time magazine later included the bikini in its 2011 list of the "Top Ten Bikinis in Pop Culture." Her subsequent film credits included Bedazzled (1967), Bandolero! (1968), 100 Rifles (1969), Myra Breckinridge (1970), Hannie Caulder (1971), Kansas City Bomber (1972), The Last of Sheila (1973), The Wild Party (1975), and Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976). Her love scene with Jim Brown in 100 Rifles was noted for its portrayal of interracial intimacy. She also made several television variety specials throughout this period.

Welch won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical or Comedy in 1974 for her performance as Constance Bonacieux in The Three Musketeers (1973), reprising the role in the film's sequel the following year. She received an additional Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Television Film for her work in Right to Die (1987). Her final film appearance was in How to Be a Latin Lover (2017). In 1995, Empire magazine named her one of the "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History," and Playboy ranked her third on their "100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century" list.

Alongside her screen career, Welch performed on Broadway between 1981 and 1995, appearing in Woman of the Year and Victor/Victoria. Her stage work extended a career that had made her a prominent figure in American entertainment across multiple decades.