Remembering Raquel Welch

One of the biggest stars of the 1960s and 70s, Raquel Welch has died at the age of 82. Cinema Paradiso looks back on the career of an actress who changed Hollywood notions of glamour, while also showing that women were capable to taking action roles.

Although she always features near the top of laddish 'sexiest stars' lists, Raquel Welch didn't dwell on her looks. She once jokingly dubbed herself 'the Rodney Dangerfield of sex symbols' and cursed Jennifer Aniston for stealing her crown as Hollywood's No.1 pin-up. But she found it frustrating that she was best known for her physique.

'I was not brought up to be a sex symbol,' she told one interviewer, 'nor is it in my nature to be one. The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous, and fortunate misunderstanding.' However, Welch was well aware that she could exploit her stature in order to play powerful women who were more than just the romantic interest for the male lead. Yet it often proved to be an uphill battle because so many studio executives found it hard 'to accept a brain and a very strong, wilful personality in the shape of a beautiful and sensual woman'.

'I felt like there was always a struggle,' she explained. 'There was this perception of “Oh, she's just a sexpot. She's just a body. She probably can't walk and chew gum at the same time.” In my first couple of movies, I had no dialogue. It was frustrating. And then I started to realize that it came with the territory. Look at somebody like Marilyn Monroe. I always wondered why she seemed so unhappy. Everybody worshipped her and she was so extraordinary and hypnotic on screen. But they never nominated her for any of her musicals or comedies, as good as she was. Because for some reason, somebody with her sex appeal, her indescribable attraction, is rarely taken seriously. Hollywood doesn't honour comedy and it doesn't honour sex appeal. And they definitely don't give awards to either of them. So you always feel a little insecure.'

Despite the odds being stacked against her in a monstrously chauvinistic industry, Welch broke the mould by showing that blondes weren't the only ones capable of having fun. Moreover, she did it all on her own terms, famously refusing frequent requests to do nude scenes. She also made it very clear where the lines were drawn. 'What I do on the screen is not to be equated with what I do in my private life,' she insisted. 'Privately, I am understated and dislike any hoopla.'

She's a Jolla Good Fellow

Jo Raquel Tejada was born in Chicago, Illinois on 5 September 1940. She was the first child of Armando Tejada, an aeronautical engineer from the Bolivian capital, La Paz, and Josephine Hall, whose ancestors had lived near Manchester before sailing to the New World on the Mayflower. Through her mother, Welch was related to President John Quincy Adams [who was not the near-namesake played by Paul Giamatti in Tom Hooper's acclaimed mini-series, John Adams, (2008), while her cousin, Lidia Gueiler Tejada, became the first female President of Bolivia in 1979. However, Armando insisted on English being spoken at home and Welch didn't learn Spanish until she was in her sixties.

When Raquel was two, Armando accepted a wartime commission to design planes for General Dynamics in San Diego, California. Despite the fact she was joined by siblings James and Gayle, Raquel was aware of the tensions between her parents, who had met at the University of Illinois. In her 2010 memoir, Beyond the Cleavage, she wrote, 'There was no cuddling or lovey-dovey stuff happening, even between Mom and Dad. I don't recall ever seeing him kiss her or hold her hand. I was left hungry for a taste of tenderness and romance from an early age.'

Armando had a temper and would lash out at Josephine. Raquel could calm him down by singing along to the radio and she often accompanied her father on trips to the cinema, where she remembered being impressed by the costumes in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948) and Henry King's Prince of Foxes (1949). The film that made the deepest impression, however, was Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948), as she took ballet lessons for a decade before an instructor informed her that she didn't have a dancer's body.

Fortunately, Raquel had also been bitten by the acting bug and started staging shows for the neighbours in the family garage, using blue bedsheets for curtains. When she was seven, Raquel joined the San Diego Junior Theater and was upset at being cast as a boy in her first play. She also acted at La Jolla High School, although she focussed more on beauty contests after winning the titles Miss Photogenic and Miss Contour when she was 14. Having been crowned Miss La Jolla, she was proclaimed 'Miss San Diego, the Fairest of the Fair' at the San Diego County Fair before going on to become the Maid of California.

In 1959, Raquel took the title role in the annual Ramona Pageant, which took its inspiration from the much-filmed novel by Helen Hunt Jackson. She had accepted a scholarship to study theatre arts at San Diego State College. But, after a year, the 19 year-old dropped out to marry school sweetheart James Welch in Las Vegas. Taking his surname, she landed a job as a weather girl on the local TV station, KFMB. However, she was keen to start a family, even though caring for Damon and Tahnee left no time for her studies.

Determined to follow her dream, Raquel left James in 1963 and took her children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a cocktail waitress between modelling assignments for Neiman Marcus. She made plans to relocate to New York to try her luck on Broadway. But she opted to move to Los Angeles and started making the rounds of the film and television studios.

Bewitched, Bond and Bikinis

Welch's first job saw her carrying billboards on the weekly variety show, The Hollywood Palace (1964-65). This got her noticed and bit parts followed in such popular shows as The Virginian, McHale's Navy, and Bewitched, in which she played a stewardess in the 'Witch or Wife' episode. She also made her feature bow, as a call girl in Russel Rouse's loose adaptation of madam Polly Adler's autobiography, A House Is Not a Home. Despite not being credited, she also got to appear with Elvis Presley, as a college girl in John Rich's Roustabout (both 1964).

Around this time, Welch met former child star Patrick Curtis, who had become an agent and had excellent contacts across Hollywood. He envisaged Welch as a sex goddess and insisted on her keeping her marital name to prevent her from being typecast as a Latina. Curtis got her an audition for the role of Mary Ann Summers in the new sitcom, Gilligan's Island, but the part went to Dawn Wells. Having made a fleeting appearance as a woman in the lobby in Ralph Levy's Doris Day comedy, Do Not Disturb, however, Welch landed her first lead, as the bikiki-clad know-all Jeri in Robert Sparr's beach romp, A Swingin' Summer (both 1965).

Her big break came with an article in Life magazine entitled 'The End of the Great Girl Drought!' It was seen by producer Cubby Broccoli, who invited Welch to do a screen test for his forthcoming James Bond adventure, Thunderball (1965), which was to be directed by Terence Young. Unfortunately, Welch missed out because she couldn't change her schedule. But the wife of producer Saul David had also noticed the Life spread and her husband recommended Welch to 20th Century-Fox. They wanted to change her first name to 'Debbie', but she held out and Raquel Welch became one of the studio's last contracted stars when she signed a five-year deal.

She was passed over after doing a screen test to team with James Coburn in Daniel Mann's 007 spoof, Our Man Flint. But Richard Fleischer recognised that Welch would make quite an impact in a skin-tight white scuba suit in Fantastic Voyage (both 1966). Few seemed to notice that Cora Peterson was a scientist whose medical expertise had led to her being chosen for miniaturisation so that she could join the crew of a micro-submarine that was going to be injected into the bloodstream of a seriously wounded boffin.

Welch had an allergic reaction to the rubber suit, but she soldiered on and was rewarded with some respectable reviews, as the film won Academy Awards for its art direction and visual effects. Welch was on her way, but her route to the top would involve a detour to Europe.

Poster Girl For a Generation

Portmanteau pictures were all the rage on the continent following the nouvelle vague. In 1966, Welch was invited to Italy to play Elena in Mauro Bolognini's contribution to the saucy comedy, Sex Quartet. It was her second trip to the country after playing Tania Montini opposite Marcello Mastroianni in Eduardo De Filippo's Shoot Loud, Louder...I Don't Understand (both 1966), which was made as a runaway production by Joseph H. Levine. Neither film was widely seen in the United States and the same was true of The Oldest Profession (1967), another anthology in which Welch was the sole American star, as Nini in Michael Pfleghar's episode, 'The Gay Nineties'.

While these items looked good on Welch's CV, one film from 1966 overshadowed the rest. Despite having worked for Hammer on Robert Day's adaptation of H. Rider Haggard's She (1965), Ursula Andress decided not to return to Bray Studios for Don Chaffey's One Million Years B.C. This remake of Hal Roach's monochrome curio, One Million B.C. (1940), boasted dinosaurs created by the world's greatest stop-motion animator, Ray Harryhausen. However, they couldn't compete with Welch as Loana, a cavewoman who only uttered three lines in the entire picture. But she wore a doe-skin bikini designed by Carl Toms that redefined the word 'skimpy'.

Fans of Frank Darabont's take on Stephen King's The Shawshank Redemption (1995) will remember that Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) had three pin-ups on his wall, depicting Rita Hayworth in Charles Vidor's Gilda (1946), Marilyn Monroe in Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (1955), and Raquel Welch in her fur bikini. But, while Hayworth and Monroe had each redefined sex appeal on screen, neither had been hailed as a feminist icon. Welch was, however, as cultural critic Camille Paglia declared that Welch's depiction on the film poster was 'the indelible image of a woman as queen of nature'. Later in the article, Paglia described the 26 year-old as 'a lioness - fierce, passionate and dangerously physical'. The New York Times purred that 'nothing could look more alive and lasting than Miss Welch', who had emerged as 'a marvelous breathing monument to womankind'.

Half a century later, Welch looked back in her autobiography with quiet pride at having become 'every male's fantasy'. But the shoot also taught her a harsh lesson about the realities of working in a notoriously chauvinistic industry. On the first day on set, she had approached her director and said, 'Listen, Don, I've been studying the script and I was thinking…' Before she could finish, Chaffey snapped, 'You were thinking? Don't.' In other accounts, he supposedly continued, 'Just run from this rock to that rock - that's all we need from you.'

Without Welch, One Million Years B.C. would have been another failed bid to move Hammer away from the classic Dracula and Frankenstein horrors with which it had become synonymous. Instead, it became a box-office hit, while sales of the poster shattered all known records. Four years after the tragic death of Marilyn Monroe, America had a new dream girl. And she wasn't a blonde bombshell.

Keen to seize control of her bankability, Welch and Curtis (who married in 1967) formed their own Curtwel production company. Such was her growing sense of self-worth that she asked Fox to cast her as Neely O'Hara in Mark Robson's adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls (1967). When the front office opted for Patty Duke, Welch turned down the part of Jennifer North, which made a star of Sharon Tate, who was played with such élan by Margot Robbie in Quentin Tarantino's knowing recreation of this period in showbiz history, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019).

Undaunted, Welch made for Swinging London to cameo as Lilian Lust in Stanley Donen's Bedazzled (1967), a paean to the Seven Deadly Sins that starred Dudley Moore as the lovesick cook selling his soul to Peter Cook's prank-playing Satan for a date with waitress Eleanor Bron. When Harold Ramis remade this Faustian farce in 2000, Elizabeth Hurley took on the devilish role to torment Brendan Fraser.

As the new pin-up of forces fighting in Vietnam, Welch accompanied Bob Hope on couple of USO tours. She also returned to Italy to play Juliana in Ken Annakiin's heist caper, The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968), alongside Edward G. Robinson, who followed ungallant remarks about her physique by opining, 'She has been the product of a good publicity campaign. I hope she lives up to it because a body will only take you so far.'

It next took her into Gordon Douglas's Lady in Cement (1968), a sequel to Tony Rome (1967) that saw Frank Sinatra return as the suave private eye. Welch admitted to having been starstruck by her co-star and becoming smitten with him. Perhaps this explains why she only realised when watching the film on television years later that her character, socialite Kit Forrester, had been an alcoholic. In a damning review, critic Roger Ebert patronisingly sneered that Welch 'exhibits her body and mouths lines by rote as we have come to expect. She can't act; it's cruel to force her.'

As the decade drew to a close, Welch played go-go dancer Michele in James Neilson's thriller, Flareup. She also returned to London for another cameo as the Priestess of the Whip in Joseph McGrath's The Magic Christian (both 1969), an adaptation of Terry Southern's cult novel that teamed Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, hence the former's appearance at Twickenham Studios during a decidedly awkward sequence in Peter Jackson's The Beatles: Get Back (2022).

Despite its zeitgeistiness, this absurdist satire failed to find favour. But it escaped the mauling meted out to Michael Sarne's ill-conceived take on Gore Vidal's scurrilous black comedy, Myra Breckinridge (1970). The producers were negotiating with Anne Bancroft to take the title role of a gay film critic named Myron, who fakes his death, has a sex change, and claims to be his own widow. However, they changed tack when Welch approached them with the argument that if a man was going to become a woman, he would want to become the most beautiful woman in the world. He would, she concluded, become Raquel Welch.

Having admired the book, Welch hoped that the film would help establish her as a respected actress. However, she was disappointed with the screenplay, which had been shorn of Vidal's waspish wit and readiness to shock. 'I couldn't control that the script wasn't coming together,' she later revealed. 'Each rewrite got further and further from making any sense.' She also found Sarne's direction unfocussed and drifted into a feud with veteran co-star Mae West over a black dress that became so toxic they refused to share scenes together.

Regular readers will know that Cinema Paradiso has a soft spot for infamous flops. This one hardly deserves to be spoken of in the same sentence as Sally Potter's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1992). But it does offer fascinating insights into how LGBTQ+ issues were viewed in a supposedly permissive period. Welch stood by her controversial decision to play a transgender character, however, telling GQ in 2012 that 'Myra Breckinridge is the antithesis of sex symbol. She's revolutionary. She's a warrior.' Click on the link to order now and make up your own mind.

From Barbie to Clint

Suddenly Hollywood's hottest property, Welch was rushed into her first starring vehicle, Leslie H. Martinson's Fathom (1967). Filmed in Spain, it was a spy thriller that envisaged Fathom Harvill as a variation on the comic-strip character that Monica Vitti had played in Joseph Losey's Modesty Blaise (1966). However, Welch felt like 'a blown up Barbie doll' in the role. But she wasn't her own worst critic. The review that appeared in the Los Angeles Times averred: 'Each new Raquel Welch picture brings further proof that when Maria Montez died they didn't break the mould. Like Maria, Raquel can't act from here to there, but both ladies seem to have been born to be photographed.'

Welch begged to differ. She believed she had consigned the 'soft blonde queen of the boudoir' to the Hollywood history books by having the potential to become the 'female Clint Eastwood'. To prove her point, she took herself off to the Alamo Village in Texas to make Andrew V. McLagen's Bandolero! (1968), a Western in which she plays frontier widow Maria Stoner, who proves quite capable of taking care of herself, despite the support proffered by James Stewart and Dean Martin. It was standard fare, but Welch was grateful not to be 'Miss Sexpot running around half naked all the time.'

Director Tom Gries hired her for exactly that reason for 100 Rifles (1969). In particular, he wanted Welch to go topless in a scene in which Native American revolutionary Sarita showers under a water tower to distract some soldiers on a train. She refused and the atmosphere on the paella Western set at Almería in Spain scarcely improved when Welch also declined to run naked through the desert brandishing a pump-action shotgun. However, she was astute enough to know that she would rack up the column inches by consenting to a love scene with Jim Brown, the African American co-star who had been building a steady reputation as an action man since calling time on his American Football career. He would later be played by Kevin Daniels in Regina King's One Night in Miami... (2020), while Welch would feature in Spike Lee's documentary, Jim Brown: All-American (2002). See Cinema Paradiso's articles on American Football films and One Night in Miami... for more details.

Two years later, Welch returned to Almería for Burt Kennedy's Hannie Caulder (1971), another Western, in which she learns how to be a gunfighter to pursue the men who had murdered her husband. Robert Culp and Ernest Borgnine co-star, but the focus was firmly on Welch in a picture that was co-produced by her own Curtwell company and the British horror outfit, Tigon. Actresses had headlined Westerns before, notably Marlene Dietrich in Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious (1952) and Joan Crawford in Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954). But Welch insisted on being a ruthless avenger and Quentin Tarantino cited her performance as one of the inspirations for Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003).

She ventured West for a final time in Mel Damski's adaptation of Colin Stuart's book, The Legend of Walks Far Woman (1982). Once again made for her own company, this fact-based teleplay was notable for the majority of the cast being Hispanic or Native American, as it recounted the travails of a 19th-century Pikuni Blackfoot woman, who is banished by the Sioux after killing her abusive husband in self-defence.

Such was Welch's celebrity during this period that she was given her own television special, Raquel!, in early 1970. She also presented the award for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars and left the stage with the golden statuette because Goldie Hawn wasn't present to accept after winning Best Supporting Actress for Gene Saks's Cactus Flower (1969).

Moreover, Welch continued to flex her muscles as a producer by arranging for George P. Cosmatos's The Beloved (aka Sin, 1971) to be filmed in Cyprus. She played Elena in this steamy tale of adultery and murder. But the fallout from Myra Breckinridge prompted Welch to take stock before she returned defiantly as Eileen McHenry, a cop who agrees to act as bait to catch a rapist in Richard A. Colla's crime comedy, Fuzz (1972), which reunited her with 100 Rifles co-star, Burt Reynolds.

More significantly, 1972 saw Welch tackle a gritty dramatic part for the first time, as she played K.C. Carr, a single mom who dreams of fame and fortune as a roller derby star. It proved an arduous shoot, as Welch did her own stunts and the picture had to close down for six weeks after she broke her wrist. However, she enjoyed working with Jodie Foster as her daughter and recognised that Kansas City Bomber made a powerful statement about women's rights. 'You have all those women out there,' Welch recalled later, 'but the men in the front office are really running it. Which I thought was a really nice metaphor for the way a lot of women felt about their lives at that time.'

Following a trip to Budapest to cameo as Magdalena opposite Richard Burton in Edward Dmytryk's Bluebeard (1972), Welch joined the all-star cast of Herbert Ross's The Last of Sheila (1973). Written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, this teasing mystery really should be better known, if only because Welch is so funny as Alice Wood, a low-wattage Hollywood starlet whom Perkins has assured her was based on Ann-Margaret rather than herself.

Few directors made the most of Welch's gift for comedy. But Richard Lester asked her to be both demure and amusing as Constance Bonacieux in his knockabout reworking of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers (1973). She had love scenes with Michael York's D'Artagnan, but also got to catfight in the palace banqueting hall with Faye Dunaway's Milady de Winter and proved so delightfully unassuming that she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.

She reprised the role of the royal seamstress in The Four Musketeer (1974), in which Constance is kidnapped by Milady and the Count De Rochefort (Christopher Lee). However, she wasn't involved in Lester's The Return of the Musketeers (1989), which was overshadowed by the accidental death during the shoot of Roy Kinnear. Welch did, however, re-team with Oliver Reed (who had played Athos) in Richard Fleischer's The Prince and the Pauper (aka Crossed Swords, 1976), a retelling of Mark Twain's comedy of errors invoving Edward VI and a street urchin, which saw Welch cast as Lady Edith, the sweetheart of Miles Hendon (Oliver Reed) who marries his brother, Hugh (David Hemmings).

Carrying the Can

At the close of the decade, Raquel Welch was declared the 'Most Desired Woman' of the 1970s by Playboy. Although she has posed for the magazine, she had remaining partially clothed and been praised for her classical sensuality by Hugh Hefner. However, her refusal to do nudity led to a heated conversation with director James Ivory on the set of The Wild Party (1975). Exploring the decadence that had tarnished the image of 1920s Hollywood, this Merchant-Ivory drama cast Welch as a fading screen comedian named Queenie. The script called for her to be naked during a three-minute bedroom sequence, but Ivory could not persuade his star to disrobe. The making of the film features in Humphrey Dixon's documentary, The Wandering Company (1984).

Welch felt she had performed well in the picture, but confided in a journalist that 'being good in a bad movie doesn't do anything for your career'. She hoped finally to lose what she called 'the sex symbol stigma' by playing Jennifer Jurgens alongside Harvey Keitel and Bill Cosby in Peter Yates's ambulance dramedy, Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), as her character overcomes prejudice in the work place by threatening a sexual discrimination suit in order to be promoted from dispatcher to emergency medical technician.

Welch was proud of the picture and flew to Europe in good spirits to play Jane Gardiner opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in Claude Zidi's L'Animal (aka Stuntwoman, 1977). Little did she know that this would prove to be her last theatrical feature for 17 years. It was the end of an era and Welch would later reflect on her decade in the spotlight: 'I have exploited being a sex symbol and I have been exploited as one. I wasn't unhappy with the sex goddess label. I was unhappy with the way some people tried to diminish, demean and trivialise anything I did professionally. But I didn't feel that from the public.'

Deciding to explore new avenues, Welch took a leaf out of Frank Sinatra's book and worked up a nightclub act. She made her debut at the Las Vegas Hilton in December 1972, on the same bill as Elvis Presley. She also duetted with Cher on 'I'm a Woman' on the singer's TV show and hosted Saturday Night Live in between her own specials, Really, Raquel (1974) and From Raquel With Love (1980). Seven years later, she reached No.29 on Billboard's dance chart with 'This Girl's Back In Town'.

Following a 1978 guest appearance on The Muppet Show, Welch cropped up as alien bounty hunter Captain Nirvana in the 'Mork vs the Necrotons' episode of the hit sitcom, Mork & Mindy, in which she comes to Earth to capture Robin Williams. She also found herself on the shortlist to play Alexis Carrington in the glitzy soap opera, Dynasty (1981-88). Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren were also considered before the part went to Joan Collins, who very much made it her own.

Shortly after her 40th birthday, Welch was cast as Suzy DeSoto alongside Nick Nolte in David S. Ward's adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. A few weeks into a troubled production, however, she was sacked by MGM and replaced by Debra Winger. The studio claimed that Welch had breached her contract by refusing to attend early morning rehearsals. However, she insisted that she had been fired as a scapegoat to deflect from the project's budgetary problems and she sued for $25 million for wrongful termination and reputational damage.

By replacing her with a younger actress, Welch claimed that MGM had implied that she was too old to play major movie leads. Many actresses had experienced similar discrimination down the decades and most probably cheered when Welch won her case in 1986, although the compensation was reduced to $10.8 million. However, they also knew that the studio chiefs rallied round each other in such times of adversity and had a long reach. Thus, despite protesting that she 'just wanted to clear my reputation and get back to my work, my work in movies', Welch found herself blackballed by film industries worldwide.

Rebuilding the Brand

As was often the case, as one door closed on Raquel Welch, another couple opened. In 1981, she made her Broadway debut while filling in for a holidaying Lauren Bacall in Woman of the Year. The role of media personality Tess Harding had been played by Katharine Hepburn in the 1942 George Stevens screwball that had paired her for the first time with Spencer Tracy. 'The first minute I stepped out on that stage and the people began applauding,' Welch informed a journalist, 'I just knew I'd beaten every bad rap that people had hung on me.'

Although she enjoyed another six months later in the run, Welch was hardly viewed as the next big thing on the Great White Way, as 14 years were to pass before she returned to play Epifania Ognisanti di Parega in George Bernard Shaw's The Millionairess, the role that Sophia Loren had played opposite Peter Sellers in Anthony Asquith's 1960 screen version. Two years later, Welch was asked to stand in for Julie Andrews while she underwent surgery on her voice. She enjoyed herself cross-dressing between Victoria Grant and Victor Grazinski in Victor/Victoria, but this seven-week engagement would be her last stage gig.

In imitation of Jane Fonda, Welch added another string to her bow in 1984 by launching The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program. She wrote the book herself, with photographs by Frenchman André Weinfeld, who also directed her in the accompanying fitness and yoga videos. The pair had married in 1980, but they would divorce a decade later. In 1999, pizzeria owner Richard Palmer became Husband No.3, only for them to separate four years later. Undaunted, Welch launched skincare and jewellery lines. She also had a considerable success with her HAIRuWEAR wig collection.

Welch also set out to reinvent herself as a small-screen actress. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance as Emily Bauer in Paul Wendkos's teleplay, Right to Die (1987), in which a woman suffering with Motor Neuron Disease claims the right to end her own life. Unfortunately, TV-movies rarely make it to disc, so it's not possible to offer this drama or Anthony Page's Scandal in a Small Town (1988), Di Drew's Trouble in Paradise (1989), Matthew Patrick's Tainted Blood (1993), or Michael Miller's Torch Song (1994).

Welch also started taking guest slots in primetime series and proved equally at home in melodramas and sitcoms. For example, she stole the 'Top Copy' episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1995), as TV news reporter Diana Stride, who is intent on exposing the true identity of the Man of Steel. Having revisited her bikini moment in Ted Newson's documentary, Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994), she also revelled in playing eccentric Aunt Vesta alongside Melissa Joan Hart in the 'Third Aunt From the Sun' episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (1996). The same year saw her become a season regular as Dianna Brock opposite Lauren Hutton in Central Park West.

Such was Welch's success as a temperamental variation on herself giving Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) and Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) a torrid time in the 'Summer of George' of Seinfeld (1997) that she landed a three-show stay as Abby Lassiter on the Michael J. Fox comedy, Spin City (1997-2000). Having been included in Frank Martin's documentary, Sex and the Silver Screen (1996) and Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein's acclaimed profile of producer Robert Evans, The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002), she also took the recurring role of Mexican American Edward James Olmos's dotty sister, Dora, in the inaugural season of American Family (2002), the Emmy-nominated PBS show that made television history by being the first drama series with a predominantly Latino cast.

In 1994, Welch made a blink-and-miss-her return to movies, as she clashed with Leslie Nielsen's Frank Drebin in the Oscar sequence of Peter Segal's Naked Gun 33: The Final Insult. However, she hit a career low in being nominated for Worst Supporting Actress at the Golden Raspberry Awards for her performance as Grace Kosik in Alex Zamm's Carrot Top farce, Chairman of the Board (1998). She was also barely seen later the same year as Jacqueline in Jérôme Cornuau's What I Did For Love before she ended the decade as an interviewee in Get Bruce (1999), Andrew J. Kuehn's documentary about celebrity bon mot writer, Bruce Vilanch.

Welch bounced back in customarily fine style as Mrs Windham Vandermark, a murder victim's wealthy and far from mournful ex-wife alongside Reese Witherspoon in Robert Luketic's Legally Blonde. Indeed, she proved such a hit that she was persuaded to reprise the role in Dean Hamilton's Blonde and Blonder (2007). Also in 2001, Welch canoodled wittily with Hector Elisondo as Hortenia in Tortilla Soup, Maria Rispoll's Latino reboot of Ang Lee's Taiwanese classic, Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). Five years later, Welch once again demonstrated her deft comic touch, as Christine DeLee in B.J. Davis's Forget About It (2006). But, despite co-starring old pal Burt Reynolds, this witness protection caper failed to make much impact and Welch had to wait 11 years for what would be her silver screen swan song.

In the meantime, she returned to television to become a series regular as Charlene Van Ark in Welcome to The Captain (2008). She also received some of the best notices of her career for her hissable display as crime boss Vina Navarro in the 'Rest in Pieces' episode of CSI: Miami (2012). 'She's a really wicked woman,' Welch enthused to one interviewer. 'She's a murderous nogoodnik. She has no redeeming qualities whatsoever about her. I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever played a villainess.'

It wasn't, but her delight in the role is evident in every scene. Yet no one in Hollywood's casting departments seemed to notice that the 72 year-old was in such fine form. Consequently, she had to settle for the roles of Aunt Lucia in Sara Sugarman's House of Versace (2013) and Miss Sally May Anderson in Joanne Hock's The Ultimate Legacy (2015). These teleplays respectively aired on Lifetime and Hallmark and provided further proof that the American entertainment industry in an era obsessed with youth has little idea of what to do with performers once they reach a certain age.

Having featured in Alex Gibney's Frank Sinatra: All or Nothing At All (2015), Welch joined Rob Lowe and Salma Hayek in Ken Marino's romantic comedy, How to Be a Latin Lover (2017). She is knowingly outré as Celeste Birch, the unattached billionaire grandmother who is targeted by ageing gigolo Eugenio Derbez. And she also drew plenty of laughs as Rosa, the disapproving Mexican ex-mother-in-law, in the sitcom, Date My Dad (2017), in which widower Barry Watson's three kids try to find him a new wife. But this would be her last role before her death on 15 February 2023. It's an oft-used phrase, but it's particularly true in the case of Raquel Welch because things have changed so much in Hollywood since she first burst on to the scene that we really won't see her like again.