SHE WILL BE MISSED BY THOSE WHO REMEMBER HER
The Legend That Is Raquel Welch
She traveled through the bloodstream of a Soviet defector and was a badass roller derby queen
I told two younger friends that I was writing about Raquel Welch. Neither of them knew who she was.
“You’re kidding, right?” I said.
Raquel Welch was the pin-up girl of the 1960s and 70s — sexy — but there was more to her. She could act and sing. Over the years, she played a variety of characters. Welch had hoped to get increasingly complex female roles as her career developed.
The film industry had different plans for the young, sensuous. woman.
The first film Welch starred in was “Fantastic Voyage.” She played a science technician onboard a miniaturized submarine introduced into the body of a Soviet scientist. While escaping to the U.S., the Soviet scientist was attacked, resulting in a brain injury.
The film depicts the dangers the miniaturized crew of scientists and technicians encounter as their sub travels through the Russian scientist’s body so they can operate on his brain, saving him and America. The crew had one hour to fix the Soviet man and exit his body before the miniaturization wore off, at which…
