Word: raquel
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Little Raquel Tejada (the last name means, in Spanish, "Spears of Clay") was born in Chicago on Sept. 5, 1940 (not, as she claims, 1942). Her father, Armand, is a Bolivian-born structural-stress engineer; her mother, Josephine, is of English stock. When Raquel was two, the Tejadas moved to La Jolla, Calif., a pretty, plasticized, middle-class community just north of San Diego. Raquel grew up in an all-American ambience that would have been a natural for a California Norman Rockwell. The family, which included Raquel's younger brother and sister, lived in a one-story stucco house...
Armand decided early to bombard his brood with the self-improvement lessons that most children congenitally abhor. Not Raquel. She devoured them. She was particularly enthralled by the ballet lessons that Armand thought would give her poise. What they did was give her ideas, which she now sentimentalizes. "I saw The Red Shoes ten times," she recalls. "I decided then that I wanted to be a ballerina." She has plenty of aptitude for the dance, according to her former teacher, Irene Clark, but hardly the proper spirit. "There was no humility in her approach to art," remembers Miss Clark...
...adolescent Raquel could have borne a touch of humility. A high Latin ridge gave her nose an unattractive hook; she was affectionately known around school as "Birdlegs." Then she began to grow in all directions, and soon became an established figure on the beauty contest circuit. She won her first local contest at 15; later she was named Miss La Jolla, Miss San Diego, and finally Maid of California. Says Don Diego, who ran another contest she captured called the Fairest of the Fair Festival: "There were prettier girls around, but none had her figure or her drive. Most girls...
...classmate and boyfriend, James Welch, thought so. A year after she graduated in 1958, he married the Fairest of the Fair. They had two children, Damon and Tahnee. Raquel the housewife interspersed domestic chores with dramatics classes at San Diego State College, and soon grew restive. After three years, the Welches parted?"inevitably," Welch now feels. Raquel headed for Dallas, where she made enough money modeling for Neiman-Marcus and hustling cocktails to have her nose fixed before assaulting Hollywood...
...Raquel's screenland novitiate was typically rugged. She lived in a $70-a-month apartment with her children. She had no job, no car, and her only income was a meager allowance from Welch, who by that time was serving with the Green Berets in Southeast Asia. Raquel, ever resourceful, tied up with Agent Noel Marshall, who coached her in the fundamentals of studio saleswomanship. Every day she rose at 6 a.m., dropped her children at a day-care center and set off on her unappointed rounds of photographers. It was a dreary life, but she kept plugging, waiting...