Raquel Welch - 80 today!

[Keebleman]

And not looking too bad on it.



Mind you, not 100% sure that's a recent photo.

[Blumf]

Hummm...



Can't blame her really. She's no Cowell at least.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Enjoyed seeing her tear around in her pants in 10,000 years BC

[bgmnts]

Considering she's been around since 1,000,000 BC, she has aged spectacularly.

[Captain Z]

She was already beginning to look a bit aged when she was in Coronation Street.

[Keebleman]

Considering her fame was built entirely around her face and - in particular - her figure, she didn't do too badly.  By all accounts she wasn't a particularly nice or intelligent person but she was clearly willing to take on jobs that required a lot of hard work on her part - anyone seen Kansas City Bomber? - and committed herself fully to them.  She even got good notices on Broadway when she took over from Lauren Bacall of all people (ironically another actress whose big break was entirely down to looks) in Woman of the Year.

And she never posed nude or even topless.  (Believe me, I've checked.)  Gilbert Gottfried is often ranting about this on his podcast.  He considers it a dereliction of duty.

[Shit Good Nose]

anyone seen Kansas City Bomber?

One of the biggest missed opportunities in film history.  Absolutely begging to have been a feminist proto Slapshot.

[Keebleman]

One of the biggest missed opportunities in film history.  Absolutely begging to have been a feminist proto Slapshot.

Isn't it a bit like that though?  Albeit as a drama rather than a comedy.  It's decades since I watched it but I seem to remember that it treats roller derby as a being a more or less genuine sport.  And there's a scene where she and her main rival have a full on fistfight on a railway track and a train is bearing down on them like in a Victorian melodrama.

[Shit Good Nose]

Isn't it a bit like that though?  Albeit as a drama rather than a comedy.  It's decades since I watched it but I seem to remember that it treats roller derby as a being a more or less genuine sport.  And there's a scene where she and her main rival have a full on fistfight on a railway track and a train is bearing down on them like in a Victorian melodrama.

It's a diet version with, as you say, no laughs, no endless and uncharacteristic foul-mouthery from its star, mostly forgettable underwritten characters and poorly directed.  It's not a very good film.

[Keebleman]

Here's Clive James from 1978 reviewing a Bob Hope special. 

Raquel Welch was also among Hope's guests. She is the exception to the rule I have just outlined [that in the final stages of fame you no longer have to do very much of whatever it was that made you famous in the first place]. By now she is famous enough to do nothing. Instead, she gives us her all.

Raquel was involved in a lengthy comic routine which required that she should pretend to sing and dance very badly. This she accomplished with ease. The trouble started when she reappeared in propria persona and tried to convince us that she can sing and dance very well.  Thousand of pounds' worth of feathers, each plume plucked from the fundament of a fleeing flamingo, could not disguise the fact that she sings like a duck. As for her beautiful body, she has taught it to move in time, but the whole strenuous effort has been a triumph of determination over an invisible pair of diving boots. Hope looked on proudly. He had got what he came for, whatever that is.

[Sin Agog]

I liked her in those Musketeer movies in which she played Spike Milligan's missus, but my main memory of her is at the Oscars where Brando tried to shine some light on the Amerindian plight, to which she replied, "I hope the next winner doesn't have a cause."  Oooh, causes!

[Keebleman]

Clive James again, from 1980, talking about a made for TV movie called The Legend of Walks Far Woman in which RW had the title role.

The only way you could be sure Raquel was a Red Woman was by her make up.  Not a very good singer or dancer, she is not a very good actress either.  But she takes a lot of trouble to set up a serious project and deserves a measure of applause for it.  Her chief failing is to introduce an element of decolletage into whatever costume she happens to be wearing. This sartorial quirk was particularly inappropriate in Fantastic Voyage where the costume was a pressure suit, but it didn't look quite right for Walks Far Woman either.  She looked like Sticks Out Woman.

Raquel also turned up as a guest star in the latest episode of Mork and Mindy, a slick imported American comedy series in which the one-line gags pile up in struggling heaps.  Raquel wasn't quite fast enough for the regulars, but she made up for it with her figure.  Playing a ruthless invader from space, she was particularly ruthless with the top buttons of her uniform, which had evidently cracked under the strain.

In the first scene of the Elvis Presley movie Roustabout, Raquel, then at the start of her career, was briefly visible as a teenage walk-on.  She didn't say her line particularly well, but her face registered.  The best thing she ever did was her small part in Bedazzled where clever direction made it look as if that extraordinary shape of hers were light on its feet.  Actually she has to march into position and set up camp for the night.  She is Walks Awkwardly Woman.  But there is something nice about her.

[Twonty Gostelow]

She ruined Peter Osgood's sliding tackle.

On the [nb]aforementioned[/nb] Gilbert Gottfried podcast, director Howard Storm said her behaviour on the [nb]aforementioned[/nb] Mork and Mindy set was so bitchy and difficult that even Pam Dawber - the world's nicest woman - would pull a face and raise a fist behind Welch's back to amuse the long-suffering crew. Welch also suggested the other two sexy alien ladies in the episode should wear muzzles and be on a leash on all fours so she could pull them around the set - she didn't want them to upstage her.

[Keebleman]

Yep, I listened to that episode.  Didn't she behave badly at the read-through too?  Something like demanding casting approval for her two henchwomen.  When told that they had already been cast she said, "Well where are they?"  It was pointed out that they were the two women who had been sat next to her all day and whom she had completely ignored.

[Twonty Gostelow]

Never underestimate the power of great bazonkas.

I need to get Storm's book - it's supposed to be a cracking read.

[Keebleman]

I thought Storm sounded semi-senile on the podcast though.  Not uncommon for that show, considering the average age of the guests is over 70, but it was frustrating because the wonderful Steve Stoliar was on with him at the same time and had to take a back seat.  The episode where Stoliar appeared for the first time is one of my favorites.  His stories are magnificent and his Groucho impersonation is perfect.

[Twonty Gostelow]

I thought Storm sounded semi-senile on the podcast though.  Not uncommon for that show, considering the average age of the guests is over 70, but it was frustrating because the wonderful Steve Stoliar was on with him at the same time and had to take a back seat.  The episode where Stoliar appeared for the same time is one of my favorites.  His stories are magnificent and his Groucho impersonation is perfect.

I don't think I heard the Stoliar one, so I'll check it out later, ta. I think Stoliar was there just as Storm's minder and prompt, to corral him into recounting specific stories. The book has good blurbs from Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Richard Lewis et al[nb]Franken[/nb].

Agree with you about his Groucho impression, indistinguishable from the real thing. Unlike Gottfried's.

[Blumf]

Welch also suggested the other two sexy alien ladies in the episode should wear muzzles and be on a leash on all fours so she could pull them around the set

I see nothing wrong with this.

[jamiefairlie]

Hummm...



Can't blame her really. She's no Cowell at least.

Might be showing my 'post punk rock against racism' activist bias here but I think people who are role models in the public eye do have a responsibility not to pander to superficial standards of beauty that leads to society accepting that this is the face of an older women. It's yet more pressure on people to conform and compete in a ridiculous and damaging arms race (or face race perhaps).

[Brundle-Fly]

Clive James again, from 1980, talking about a made for TV movie called The Legend of Walks Far Woman in which RW had the title role.

Clive James doesn't come over particularly pleasant there.

[Keebleman]

Clive James doesn't come over particularly pleasant there.

It's certainly not his best writing, but I think he's more generous towards her than most people would have been prepared to be, both at the time and now.

[gilbertharding]

Best known as the punchline to a joke if you'd already made a reference to Dolly Parton's tits for some reason.

Fairly sure the only think I've seen her in was the one with the dinosaurs, which I watched more than 40 years ago, so I can't comment further.

[gilbertharding]

It's certainly not his best writing, but I think he's more generous towards her than most people would have been prepared to be, both at the time and now.

It's damning with faint praise.

[Dr Rock]

When I was younger I could not decide who was prettier, her or Sofia Loren.



Still not sure. Maybe Sofia.



Bah, I can't choose.

[Dr Rock]

They both have John Buscema faces

[bgmnts]

Gotta be Sofia Loren for me. She looks like a vampire.

[Brundle-Fly]

It's certainly not his best writing, but I think he's more generous towards her than most people would have been prepared to be, both at the time and now.

Welch said that making One Million Years B.C (1966) was hell for her. She described how her and the actresses were treated like pieces of meat throughout the whole shoot and has no fond memories of the experience.  You can understand why these women became so hardened in that industry.

I had an actor mate who worked with her in a cast understudy capacity in 1995 on this production.
http://www.chaseside.org.uk/theatre_casts/19945/million.html

He told me she was actually quite nice to everybody in the company and crew. "Oh, I'm just a goofy little dink" was her words to him when he drunkenly remarked to Raquel one night in the theatre bar that he was expecting her to be a diva.