Raquel Welch: A Career In Photos

Raquel Welch had a 50-plus year career in film and television, starring opposite Marcello Mastroianni, Edward G. Robinson, Robin Williams, Jimmy Stewart, Faye Dunaway, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Farrah Fawcett, Jim Brown, Burt Reynolds, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn and many others.

Her breakout role came as Cora in the wild 1966 sci-fi pic Fantastic Voyage, opposite Stephen Boyd, Edmund O’Brien and Arthur Kennedy. Welch then starred as a cavewoman in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C. Her next major film was with Mae West and John Huston in the title role of Myra Breckinridge. She later starred opposite Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed and Michael York in 1973’s The Three Musketeers, for which she won a Golden Globe.

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While often celebrated for her appearance, Welch also essayed more serious roles such as the 1987 television drama Right to Die, for which she was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award. In 2012, the Film Society of Lincoln Center presented a special retrospective of the films of Welch at the Walter Reade Theater.

Much of Welch’s career leveraged her cultural stature. She hosted SNL in 1976, appeared on The Muppet Show, played a diva version of herself on Seinfeld and, as “Raquel Welch,” got into a wrestling match onstage at the Oscars with Leslie Nielsen’s Lt. Frank Drebin in Naked Gun 33 1/2: The Final Insult.

Of course, Welch also presented at the actual Oscar ceremony in 1970, 1974, 1975 and 1979. She famously accepted the Oscar for an absent Goldie Hawn in 1970.