To Absent Friends - Raquel Welch

Raquel Welch

1940 - 2023

The news arrives today that actress/sex symbol Raquel Welch has left us at the age of 82.  So tell me, if you were an adolescent/teenage boy, or maybe even older than that, in the 1960's and 1970's, how can you not be saddened by such news?

Welch made her first splash in mainstream show biz as the billboard girl on the old Hollywood Palace TV show, and then became famous with the bikini pinups and the B-grade movies that exploited her beauty and spectacular build.  In the end, though, she toughed it out, and eventually appeared on Broadway when're she was acclaimed for her skills as an actress.   She shows 73 acting credits in IMDB, and who can forget her in this memorable episode of "Seinfeld" ?

I can also remember the TCM host Robert Osborne commenting on the murder mystery movie "The Last of Sheila" wherein the movie's characters were thinly disguised caricatures of real Hollywood people, and he went on to give examples...The Dyan Cannon character is supposed to be so-and-so, the Richard Benjamin character is supposed to be so-and-so, and the Raquel Welch character is supposed to be Raquel Welch.

Every year on September 5, I would post a picture, either on this blog or on Facebook of Miss Welch and wish her a Happy Birthday.  It was silly and immature on my part, I suppose, but, as I said above, when you came of age in the era in which I did, Raquel Welch was and I suppose always will hold a place in your psyche.

RIP Raquel Welch.

Okay, now for the immature part.  I'll bet that you are surprised at the photo I chose to show at the top of this post.  Wanted to be mature about it, but in the end, I cannot resist posting this perhaps most famous pin up of Raquel Welch in her Sex Symbol Salad Days.

And just one more.  I think that I had this one taped on the inside of my locker door at Central.