Among the most famous bikinis in cinema, many are wet and associated with the beach (Ursula Andress in James Bond 007 versus Dr No, all the cast of Spring Breakers), but only one is at the same time in fur, prehistoric and equipped with its own Wikipedia page: that of Raquel Welch in One million years BC (1966). What already distinguish the actress, who died at the age of 82 following a “brief illness”, as an original “sex symbol” of the big screen from its emergence to today. Beyond the neckline (title of his autobiography published in 2010), there is Jo Raquel Tejada; born to a Bolivian father and an American mother in Chicago on September 5, 1940. As a teenager, she garnered the titles of beauty queens before she and her husband and agent Patrick Curtis built a career plan for the propel into sexy icon.
Roller derby
Its specificity was to break with the clichés of blondes (Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield), to play on Latin exoticism without fully claiming it (she will keep the name of her first husband James Welch). And if Raquel Welch debuts in the foreground in the film of carefree young beachgoers A Swingin’Summer (1965), she brings her own grain as a genre film heroine: from the future, in a tight jumpsuit in fantastic trip (1966), where she is a member of a crew of miniaturized doctors inside a patient to be saved; of the past (sort of), in the famous bikini, therefore, ofa million years… where she only has a brushing and three lines of dialogue, but which will decorate the walls of the rooms of many American teenagers (before being unhooked for the benefit of Farrah Fawcett at the end of the 70s).
In 1968, Welch established his own production company to vary the roles provided for in his contract with the major Fox. Skydiver in A girl named Fathom (1967), “priestess of the whip” flagellant in The Magic Christian (1969) or revolutionary western in the hundred guns (1969), she seeks to permanently break her image in the controversial Myra Breckinridge (1970), in which she plays a trans woman. “The only good thing about the movie is the costumes,” she will say of this adaptation of a novel by Gore Vidal, marked by the animosity on the set between Welch and the legend Mae West as well as the seal of “worst movie of all time”. The “most desired woman of the 70s” according Playboy (for whom she will pose, but never completely naked) will toughen up more in the western Hannie Caulder – in French One colt for three bastards – (1971), where she takes revenge on her rapists, and the curious Kansas City Bomber (1972), where she plays a cantankerous roller derby skater (rollerball, but without death).
Crucified
She will even have a little French tropism while playing Constance Bonacieux in the Three Musketeers (1973) and with Belmondo in l’Animal (1977). 40s being a tough border in Hollywood, the 80s and later decades would see more of it in TV movies, Jane Fonda-style fitness videos and series appearances. (Seinfeld, Spin City) – and we would have been curious to see her in the role of the bitchy Alexis in Dynasty, which escaped him in favor of Joan Collins. Above all, she paid the price for an independence displayed in real life, when she attacked the MGM studio for an abusive breach of contract for the film. Sardine Street (1982). The photo by Terry O’Neill where she is crucified, still wearing the famous furry bikini, was all the more prescient. “I felt that my presence in the world of cinema had a different meaning than that of Meryl Streep”, she said, philosopher.