Word: raquel
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...Showbiz scheduling cover on Raquel Welch . . ." read the query to Jonathan Larsen in our Los Angeles bureau. And indeed, says Larsen, "when I told people that I was going to interview Raquel Welch, everybody conjured up this image of her in a plunging minidress, batting her long eyelashes at me in seductive silence over a candlelit dinner." Alas, it wasn't like that at all, reports Jon. "Our first interview took place in broad daylight, with Raquel in a voluminous caftan, drinking Gatorade and complaining nonstop about the problems of being a modern sex goddess." Despite that somewhat disappointing...
...Raquel Tejada Welch bears no resemblance to frail, delicate Fay Wray from any angle. Her attack on the male world is based on calculated carnality, on the woman as animal. The parallels between her and Vidal's carnivorous heroine are remarkable. Says Raquel, "I understand Myra thoroughly. I've always identified with her." Now she is bringing her sense of identification to the screen in the title role of 20th Century-Fox's forthcoming film version of Myra. Not since Cleopatra has a movie provoked so much gossip, speculation, expectation?and guerrilla war?even before going into production...
...Rock. Wonder Woman. The Plastic Sheena. Whatever unladylike sobriquets attach to Raquel, there is no denying her box-office attraction. Clad mainly in animal hides and bikinis, brandishing her publicity photos like the jawbone of an ass, Raquel set about five years ago to hold off the entire critical elite of cinema and conquer mankind through Hollywood. Now only 29, she has enjoyed extraordinary success. Her brooding, aquiline face and brimming, arabesque body (37-22-35) have launched thousands of picture spreads. The mere mention of her name (or the sight of it, in endless Laugh-In balloon gags...
That may be partly true, but Raquel is unique among sex queens in another respect. Harlow had her seamy affairs; Hayworth her prince; Monroe her outfielder and her playwright; Taylor her high-rolling entrepreneur, Debbie's crooner and Sybil's Welsh actor. By contrast, Raquel has two children by a former marriage to her high school sweetheart, and is presently wed to an inoffensive uncelebrity named Patrick Curtis. She does not flounce around studio sets in see-through blouses by day or boogaloo at the Factory by night. She does not smoke. She does not drink. She rarely entertains. Says...
...Raquel has a shy Puritan heart, she also has the kind of forthright Puritan mind that in early America could probably have reconciled Scripture with slaving and rum-running. On-screen she may be the ultimate prehistoric predator, but in real life she is a carefully pre-fabricated commodity, a paradigm of the harddriving, self-made New Woman who just happened to choose acting as a career. "I'll admit I'm extremely strong-minded," says Raquel. "I don't know any other...