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Early life
Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in Chicago, Illinois, to Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo (1911–1976), an aeronautical engineer from La Paz, Bolivia, and Josephine Sarah née Hall (1909–2000), daughter of architect Emery Stanford Hall and wife Clara Louise Adams.[1][2][3][4][5]
As a young girl Raquel wanted to perform. She studied ballet from age seven to seventeen but gave it up after her instructor told her that she didn't have the right figure.[6] Her parents divorced after moving to California.[7] At age 14 she won abeauty title as Miss Photogenic, Miss Coutour,[8] While attending La Jolla High School she won the title of Miss Fairest of the Fair at the San Diego County Fair, .[9]
Welch graduated from high school in 1957 and a year later, after becoming pregnant[7], married her high-school sweetheart, James Welch on May 8, 1959.[7] They had two children, Damon (born 6 November 1959) and Latanne Welch (born 26 December 61), but they separated in 1961 and divorced in 1964.[8] She married producer Patrick Curtis in 1966 and divorced him in 1972. In 1980 she began a 10-year marriage to André Weinfeld. Welch wed Richard Palmer in 1999 but then separated from him in 2008. Welch says she doesn't intend to marry again.[10]
Professional career
Seeking an acting career, Welch won a scholarship in drama[7] and took classes at San Diego State College and won several parts in local theater productions.[8] In 1959 she played the title role in The Ramona Pageant, a yearly outdoor play at Hemet, California, which is based on the novelRamona by Helen Hunt Jackson and Bob Biloe.
She got a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. Due to her demanding work schedule, she quit school. After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she made a "precarious living" as a model for Neiman Marcus and a cocktail waitress.[8]
She initially intended to move to New York City from there, but moved back to Los Angeles in 1963[8] and started applying for roles with the movie studios. During this period of time she met former child star and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager.[7] They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol.[8] To avoid typecasting as a Latino, he convinced her to use her husband's last name[8]. He also persuaded her to get plastic surgery to reduce the profile of her nose.[7]
She was cast in small parts in two films and landed small roles in the television shows Bewitched, McHale's Navy, and The Virginian. She also got work on the weekly variety series The Hollywood Palace as a billboard girl and presenter. She was one of many women who auditioned for the role of Mary Ann Summers on the television series Gilligan's Island.
Welch's first featured role was in beach film A Swingin' Summer (1965). That same year she won the Deb Star and was noticed by the wife of producer Saul David, who recommended her to 20th Century Fox, where with the help of Curtis she landed a contract.[8] She agreed to seven-year nonexclusive contract, 5 pictures over the next five years and two floater.[7] She was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (1966), in which she portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of a injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a star.[8] She was the last star to be created under the studio system
One Million Years B.C.
Fox Studio loaned Welch to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in a remake of One Million Years B.C. (1966). Her only costume was a two-piece deer skin bikini. She was described as "wearing mankind's first bikini" and the fur bikini was described as a "definitive look of the 1960s".[11][12] 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".[8] A publicity still of her in the bikini became a best-selling poster and turned her into an instant pin-up girl.[13] The film raised Welch's stature as a leading sex symbol of the era.[14]
Later roles
After her appearance as lust incarnate in the hit Bedazzled, she returned to the United States and appeared in the Western film Bandolero!, with J
Raquel Welch
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