R.I.P. Raquel Welch

[Sonic Youth]

Looks to me like she is still in costume as Victoria.

I mean… the issue was her 37 inch bust being an impediment from convincing us she’s playing a man playing a woman. And the clip is her playing a man playing a woman, with alterations in her dress to de-emphasize her bust. The last 30 seconds is her (clumsily) removing her wig, so you can see if she pulls off the female to male transformation. I’m going to bail out now since this is getting to be like arguing about when the first year of the new millennium is.

[Big Magilla]

Looks to me like she is still in costume as Victoria.

Anyway, I just happened to be reading The Book of Broadway Musical Debates, Disputes, and Disagreements by Peter Filichia last night when I came across Who in a Musical Was the Most Miscast (pages 156-158.

The four selections were Caucasian Larry Blyden as an Asian-American in Flower Drum Song, lightweight Sammy Davis Jr. as a heavyweight boxer in Golden Boy, Yiddish Theatre actor Irving Jacobson with his heavy Lower East Side Accent as Spaniard Sancho Panza in Man of La Mancha, and Raquel Welch as Victor/Victoria who must connivingly play a man when she playing Victor but whose 37-inch bust got in the way. Peter Marks in his N.Y. Times review is quoted as saying "Oh, come on!" Not sure if that was his entire review. I tried to find it in the Times Machine but couldn't.

[Sonic Youth]

The issue, as I thought you presented it, was that her so-called physical endowments would make any attempt to pass herself off as a man impossible. She's dressed in a tuxedo in the first clip. Yes, she's singing as Victoria. But she's dressed as Victor, a little dissheveled at first, but she closes the topcoat and you get a bit of an idea.

The second clip was a mistake. I meant to link to a different clip. I'll fix it, although since it's Victor-as-Victoria I don't know if you'll be satisfied with that one either.

ETA: Fixed. I don't find her convincing, but I never found Julie Andrews looked convincing as a man either. But with the movie, I'm at least able to suspend my disbelief, even if it takes effort while watching.

[Big Magilla]

The clips are of her as Victoria, not as Victor which was the issue.

[Sonic Youth]

She was a big name well into the 90s.

She was Julie Andrews' replacement in Broadway's Victor/Victoria at the end of its run in 1997, although her casting met with ridicule. Her 37-inch bust made it unlikely that anyone would take her for a man.

There are some clips of the show online. You can all see for yourselves whether she's convincing or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STcGNHePGc0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNZo9_Dht6w

[Big Magilla]

She was a big name well into the 90s.

She was Julie Andrews' replacement in Broadway's Victor/Victoria at the end of its run in 1997, although her casting met with ridicule. Her 37-inch bust made it unlikely that anyone would take her for a man.

Her last role was in a 2017 TV series called Date My Dad in which she was second billed in all 10 episodes as star Barry Watson's mother-in-law.

[OscarGuy]

I think perhaps you underestimate the length of her celebrity. I grew up in the 80s and even I knew who Raquel Welch and her ubiquity. I would guess that this did not pass on to those growing up in the 1990s, but Sabin's about the only one I suspect who would have insight in that.

[danfrank]

She was indeed extremely famous. As a kid growing up in the 60s her name and image were bandied about by latency age boys as THE prototype of who you were supposed to be attracted to.

[Mister Tee]

This is a tough one to know what to say about.

If you're on the youngish side, you may not even be aware that she was, at one time, extremely famous. For, essentially, having big boobs, and flaunting them (without ever showing them). This was enough to get her what seemed an annual spot on the Oscars (sometimes high-profile: she stood alongside Gene Hackman giving out best actress to Liza Minnelli). Her star faded as the 80s arrived, though she did score a personal triumph onstage, replacing Lauren Bacall in Woman of the Year, and actually getting solid reviews.

I never saw One Million Years B.C., but I saw her in about half a dozen movies in that late 60's/early 70s period -- Fantastic Voyage, Bedazzled, The Last of Sheila, the Richard Lester Three/Four Musketeers. (In the latter, there was widespread belief Lester cast her specifically for that climactic moment when she was bopped in the face, knowing audiences would enjoy seeing it.) I caught up with the bizarre Myra Breckenridge on TCM in recent years. I've never succumbed to watching Mother, Jugs and Speed. (Quick guess which part she played.)

No one ever accused her of being an impressive actress. But a lot of people thought she was the ultimate sex bomb. I have to confess she was just never my type, even in my profligate youth. (If you'd ask me my sex goddess in that era, Julie Christie would have won hands down, followed by Dyan Cannon.) So her entire career is just kind of a puzzlement to me.

But her departure is yet another reminder that all things pass...so, in the spirit of No Man is an Island, I offer my small salute as she moves on.

[Big Magilla]

A bit of a shock, this one.

I saw her name in the headlines, but I thought she was selling something or another.

Less than a month after Gina Lollobrigida died. The year is not starting out well for the sex symbols of yesteryear.

[Reza]

She was the first sex symbol I saw on screen and in one of the first films I ever saw - One Million Years B.C.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.tmz.co ... d-dies-82/