Raquel Welch, star of screen and stage, has passed.
Let's be candid. In sixth grade, my science teacher took a rare break from biology, electricity and all the other things we studied that year and showed us Fantastic Voyage, because it's actually a really cool way to discuss the human body and what we knew about it at the time of filming. And, of course, the movie co-starred Raquel Welch who seared herself into my budding consciousness as a wildly attractive woman of great intelligence, which is just the killer formula for making a lifelong fan of a kid.
I recall reading an interview where Welch mostly thought of herself as a working actor trying to make a living as a single mom when she found stardom, and while she was fighting blood cells with lasers, or fighting dinosaurs, she was thinking about making sure her kids had shoes. That certainly skewed my perspective on her as a performer.
Fortunately, Welch went on to fame and fortune, only really retiring about five or six years ago. IMDB credits her with 73 roles, a producer on 2 projects and a writer on 1. She had more or less walked away from the spotlight since and hadn't conducted interviews in a few years.
A few years ago, I had opportunity to review a newly released BluRay of One Million Years B.C., and found it absolutely terrific. And I feel I did a fair job of giving Welch her due in a movie with no spoken lines.
Because Welch never lost her beauty or glamour, I suppose I didn't realize she was aging like the rest of humanity. I'm very sorry to hear she's gone on.
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