My Love for Raquel Welch

 I was a Black Catholic kid who grew up in South Central L.A. in the 1960s. Our house was on East 124th Street and Central Avenue. I attended a parochial, all-boys high school in Watts. The students were predominantly Black and Mexican-American. There was only one White guy in the entire Verbum Dei High School student body. By the time I was in high school, I was already a passionate fan of films -- old and new -- and I was enchanted by Raquel Welch. I loved her and I had a great respect for her talent. I felt that she was more than a gorgeous, shapely starlet who wore a fur bikini in a pre-historic dinosaur action movie. I did get a giddy guilty pleasure reading The Los Angeles Times entertainment section for updates on the reported feud between Raquel Welch and Mae West while making the 1970 movie MYRA BRECKINGRIDGE. West -- a playwright, screenwriter and actress -- had saved Paramount from bankruptcy in the early 1930s while becoming a truly iconic blonde sex symbol when she was in her 40s. Apparently she'd made changes in the MYRA BRECKINRIDGE script. Although Mae West had not been on the big screen since the early 1940s, she was still keeping a grip on her sex symbol image like a Jack Russell terrier with a favorite chew toy in its mouth. Based on the Gore Vidal novel of the same name, Raquel Welch played a transgender character in MYRA BRECKINGRIDGE. She had way more dialogue than she did in 1966's ONE MILLION YEARS, B.C. and a lot more outfits.

I knew that Welch's last name was really Tejada. Her father was Bolivian. Having grown up with Hispanic neighbors, family friends, classmates and teachers, I connected to her. Hers was a face of my diverse community. I sensed that she had to break through a certain racial barrier to get equal respect in Hollywood. It irked me to read gossip column reports that she was "difficult" on a set. Was she difficult or just standing up for herself in a way that, say, Ann-Margret didn't have to? 

Raquel Welch was the first movie star to answer a fan letter from me. I still have the 8x10 autographed glossy photo in an album. This was during my high school years. So was the day that marked my first ever visit onto a movie studio lot. I entered a contest on KMPC Radio and won tickets for me and family members to a special Saturday morning preview screening on the 20th Century Fox lot of a new 1966 sci-fi fantasy film called.... FANTASTIC VOYAGE. I loved it! The fantastic plot had a U.S. medical science team shrunken to molecule size and injected into the system of an injured important international figure to cure his head injury. I know it's a totally unbelievable plot but this movie was extremely significant to a South Central L.A. kid as I was. The Latina was a scientist on an extremely important secret mission, the only female scientist in the crew. THAT was great representation.

Welch moved up to show her acting skills with A-list scripts. There was the 1973 Hollywood insider murder mystery, THE LAST OF SHEILA, and 1974's THE THREE MUSKETEERS directed by Richard Lester. That one has my favorite Raquel Welch performance. She's wonderful as the klutzy and clueless but lovable Constance. Welch took inspiration from Stan Laurel of Laurel & Hardy fame to play Constance.

I read the novel FORREST GUMP by Winston Groom months before the film adaptation starring Tom Hanks was released. I knew the movie had been in production and I wondered if Raquel Welch would be in it or if someone would play her. Have you ever read FORREST GUMP? It's a fabulous book. I checked it out from a library and read the whole book in one weekend. It was that entertaining. The movie is quite different. The main characters are in it, but the screenplay took the vinegar out of the novel and replaced it with sweet tea. Remember how sweet Sally Field was as the devoted mother to Forrest? In the novel, the mother is an annoying, selfish old woman. Forrest is an idiot savant who says "Bein' an idiot is no box of chocolates." He's a football player. The way he's described, he looks more like a John Cena than a Tom Hanks. 

In the novel, Forrest has a series of episodic adventures. In one chapter, we follow his misadventures in Hollywood making a modestly budgeted sci-fi movie with a cranky starlet named Raquel Welch.

In 2000, ABC News hired me to be Entertainment Editor and weekly film critic on its Lifetime TV production, LIFETIME LIVE. I came up with the idea of recommending a classic film in which I'd focus on a lead female performance to complement the lead female performance in a new film I'd just reviewed. For instance, although the original script received no screen credit (which I mentioned), Tom Cruise's MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 was a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 classic, NOTORIOUS. I showed clips from both films and pointed out how Thandie Newton opposite Tom Cruise was an update of Ingrid Bergman opposite Cary Grant in NOTORIOUS.

I reviewed THE CELL, a 2000 sci-fi thriller starring Jennifer Lopez as a psychologist who has a radical new way of entering a man's mind. It involves experimental technology. I recommended also seeing FANTASTIC VOYAGE starring Raquel Welch as a scientist who enters a man's head to help remove a blood clot.

During my VH1 years in New York City, I had the opportunity to interview Raquel Welch. She'd made a music video. A few publicists warned me that she could be testy.

Raquel Welch arrived at our studio on time and looking glamorous. I greeted her and thanked her for answering my fan letter when I was a kid in South Central L.A. Raquel Welch could not have been lovelier, more gracious or more grateful. She was like a wonderful dream come true. I loved how she went out of her way to thank the floor crew for the good lighting.

Raquel Welch, the Latina who grew up San Diego, had class and talent before Hollywood fully realized it. I loved her.