Only one star could wear that bikini like a cavewoman. Raquel Welch died on Wednesday at the age of 82. She was known around the world as a sex symbol because she wore almost nothing in a prehistoric blockbuster, but she also had an interesting filmography.
The actress got her start in Hollywood in the mid-1960s. She even worked with Elvis Presley in the musical “Roustabout.” She had a long career that lasted into the 2010s, with both main roles (like in the roller-derby drama “Kansas City Bomber” from the 1970s) and cameos (like when she played herself in “Naked Gun 3313: The Final Insult” from 1994).
Here are the five most important roles Welch has played and where you can see them:
Before tight leather and spandex were popular in superhero movies, Welch wore a skin-tight diving suit in this Cold War sci-fi story. She is part of a submarine crew that gets small enough to be injected into a scientist’s body to fix a blood clot in his brain and save his life after an attempt on his life.
“One Million Years B.C.” was made in 1966.
“One Million Years B.C.” by Raquel Welch and her cavewoman bikini took the music world by storm.
Welch played a fisherwoman who falls in love with a man (John Richardson) who was kicked out of his own tribe. The fantasy adventure was full of dinosaurs, cave people, and erupting volcanoes. Even though she only had a few lines, she and her prehistoric lingerie became a pop culture hit. Her pinup poster was on the walls of many bedrooms in the 1960s, and a key scene from “The Shawshank Redemption” was based on her.
“Myra Breckinridge’ (1970)”
In the 1970 comedy “Myra Breckinridge,” Raquel Welch played the main character.
The controversial comedy, which was based on a Gore Vidal book and also starred Mae West and John Huston, bombed in every way, but it became one of Welch’s best-known leading roles and probably won’t ever be remade. She plays a transgender woman who claims part ownership of her uncle’s acting school and decides to teach a class on “femdom.”
“1973’s ‘The Three Musketeers'”
Welch won a Golden Globe for her work in this version of “A Hard Day’s Night” by Alexandre Dumas by director Richard Lester. As the dressmaker for the queen of Austria, Constance Bonacieux, the bombshell showed off her physical comedy skills in a food fight with Faye Dunaway while Michael York (as the swashbuckling d’Artagnan) tried to win her heart.
