Yes, there was a definite Latina vibe.
Sophia comes close.
That’s true.
And a better actress.
But Sophia Loren seems almost a previous generation, probably because she was established when I became aware of her and not when Raquel Welch came onto the scene.
Well, her father was Bolivian.
Miss Tejada, later Mrs. Welch, brought it, for sure.
I’ve got Raquel Welch in the same mental folder I keep Ann-Margaret.
She was a decent actress but she was cast in sex symbol roles, not the kind of stuff the ‘serious’ leading ladies of the time were in. In a variety of movies she showed some acting ability here and there. Hard to say what would have happened if she’d had better parts and direction. I think she had more grounded roles in Mother, Jugs, and Speed, as well as Kansas City Bomber. She received some notice from The Three Musketeers and its sequel, but those were small parts, again focused on her sex appeal. Farewell Raquel. You were exceptionally beautiful.
Vivien Leigh? Olivia deHavilland? Ingrid Bergman? Jeanne Crain? Marilyn Monroe? Natalie Wood?
Monroe, yes. But she was dead by the time Welch first appeared on screen.
The others are all what I’d call a step below her spectacular transcendent beauty. So far, we’ve got Monroe and Loren, both of a previous generation.
All four great films!
Bergman was gorgeous in Casablanca, but absolutely breathtaking opposite Spencer Tracy in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
I was not aware of her Latin background. From the NYT article below (gift):
and
Also young Liz Taylor.
How did a music video come to be in 1970? I thought it was tied to A 2001 Space Odyssey but that came out 2 years earlier.
Forgot to mention, I heard on the news she had an IQ of 140.
Raquel! was an April 26, 1970 CBS television special starring Raquel Welch, Tom Jones, Bob Hope and John Wayne executive produced, directed and choreographed by David Winters. She used sites left over from the 1968 Mexico City Olympics to film a few other videos like this one. She also filmed this at the nearby Teotihuacán pyramids:
Oooookayyy… One can only imagine how much of that production budget was chemicals for ingestion. What a time that was.
Though Raquel GoGo-ing atop the Teotihaucan temple is something to see, can’t deny that.
…
(And from the 2023 perspective…
Holy Cultural Appropriation, Batman.
The past IS a foreign country.
Think anyone stopped to remember what was it the Mesoamericans did to people to ensure that the sun kept shining…?)
I wonder how fluent she was. Are there any clips of her speaking Spanish?
In the book the character is a smart shrewd woman pretending to be a sexy airhead to hide her involvement in court intrigue. I can’t remember how much of that translated to the film though.
Or that Moore wore multiple pairs of underpants to film that bedroom scene to avoid any potential embarrassment.
He should have said like: “something may or may not happen; either way I apologize”. I think that’s paraphrasing Michael Caine.