Raquel Welch as soon as got here face-to-face with who her ex-husband known as “a very violent man” – her father.
The Hollywood intercourse image, who handed away in 2023 at age 82, is the topic of a brand new CW documentary, “I Am Raquel Welch,” which explores her life and legacy.
It options candid sit-downs with associates, co-stars and movie specialists, amongst others.
The documentary describes the actress and coveted pinup as a single mom of two who was residing in between checks when she arrived in Hollywood.
However she was additionally escaping a sophisticated relationship along with her father, Carlos Armando Tejada.
Luis I. Reyes, creator of “Viva Hollywood,” detailed how an altercation between father and daughter eternally impacted their relationship.
“When she was 16 years old, something happened at the dinner table,” Reyes defined. “Her father wasn’t happy. And he took a glass of milk and threw it in the face of Raquel’s mom. And Raquel could not believe it – that he would humiliate her mother like that in front of everyone.”
“Raquel stood up to him,” Reyes shared. “There was a fireplace, and she took a poker, and she threatened her father with the poker. Because she stood up to him, he never did that again. That was a defining moment for her.”
In an audio clip, Welch is heard saying, “I threatened his life, and he backed down. He backed away.”
Welch’s ex-husband, Richie Palmer, stated he had heard tales “about the poker” as he teared up.
“He used a poker on her, too,” stated Palmer. “Plain and simple – domestic violence. Nobody should have to go through that. It scarred her.”
“I’m going to walk softly on this,” Palmer stated slowly. “She loved him, admired, respected, feared [this] terribly violent man.”
The “One Million Years B.C.” icon beforehand mirrored on the incident in her 2010 memoir, “Beyond the Cleavage.”
“Every time Dad lashed out at my mother, I flinched — it might as well have been me!” Welch wrote, as quoted in an excerpt printed by Oprah.com.
“I felt the need to vindicate her, but was helpless to do so,” wrote Welch. “I crossed that bridge when I finally confronted my dad in defense of my mother, and this time he had to back down. I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live. I was 16 . . . and had enough.”
In accordance with Welch, it began when her father complained in regards to the casserole that her mom, Josephine Sarah Corridor, had served for dinner. All of the sudden, he picked up his glass of milk and threw it proper in her mom’s face.
“It was the worst thing I could ever imagine, seeing her look of shock, watching her sit there with her face and hair drenched and dripping, humiliated,” Welch wrote. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. All this over something he didn’t like about the meal? My poor mother was reduced to a whimpering mess . . . defeated.”
“That was it. Tears streaming, I jumped up from the desk and went for the fireside, as he got here after me. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded. ‘How might you? I screamed, picked up the poker from the fireside, and turned towards him, gripping it with each fingers.
“I was pitted against him now. ‘If you ever, ever do anything to hurt Mom again, I swear, I’ll kill you!’ I said, shaking with emotion. He glared at me and stood his ground. ‘Calm down,’ he said. I glared right back at him.”
“Thank God, he backed away,” stated Welch. “I cannot believe I am telling this about someone I loved so much. Everything I did was to please him. But someone had to stand up to him. And as the oldest, that someone was me.”
The documentary confirmed an interview clip the place Welch advised Rona Barrett that her mother and father have been opposites.
“I always thought my mother was almost an angel figure, a very gentle creature,” she stated. “My father was extremely strict and rather tyrannical in a way. . . . Forgive me, Daddy.”
In a voiceover, Welch additionally shared that as a baby, she had acquired “conditional love” from her father.
“I had to do something — I had to get the perfect grades. I had to do everything perfectly,” she stated.
In accordance with the documentary, the Bolivia-born Tejada refused to talk Spanish when Welch was rising up as a result of he didn’t need his kids to talk with an accent. Welch stated that as a baby, she felt that “a part of me was missing.”
“The part of me that was missing was the part of me that my father chose to just amputate out of our lives,” she stated.
Brian Eugenio, a cultural historian at Princeton College, stated within the documentary, “It was a paradox that she adored her father, and she wanted to please her father deeply, but he was a taskmaster. He was hard.”
In her memoir, Welch described her mom as being “under my father’s thumb” because the patriarch had “the upper hand.”
“. . . By observing my mother in her relationship with my father, I learned that women have different roles to play,” she wrote. “I think she was right about that part. However, after four husbands, I don’t think I’m a good candidate for wifedom. I like my independence too much.”
“A life of female servitude doesn’t appeal to me mainly because I saw my mother being taken for granted,” stated Welch. “I don’t have recollections of any appreciation coming her approach. Between my mother and father there was not the slightest gesture of fondness; no hand-holding or sitting shut with arms round one another; and hardly a kiss.
“As the song goes, ‘Try a little tenderness.’ Where, oh where, was that tenderness? I wondered. Where was his appreciation for all she did as a wife, mother, and homemaker?”
The documentary revealed that Welch fell “madly in love” along with her highschool sweetheart, James Welch. They married in 1959 when she was 17. They welcomed a son that very same 12 months named Damon Welch. In 1961, their daughter Tahnee Welch was born.
“My mom was very young and innocent at 19,” stated Damon within the documentary. “She was just a kid. When she had me, I think she was a proud mother right away.”
Nonetheless, Welch stated she quickly realized that her husband opposed her having a profession. Their divorce was finalized in 1964.
Welch’s breakthrough got here within the 1966 campy prehistoric flick “One Million Years B.C.,” regardless of having a complete of three traces. Clad in a brown doeskin bikini, she efficiently evaded pterodactyls however not the discover of the general public.
Her curves and sweetness captured popular culture consideration, with Playboy crowning her the “most desired woman” of the ‘70s, regardless of by no means being utterly bare within the journal.
Although she would seem in exploitative movies, she additionally shocked many within the trade with advantageous performances, together with in Richard Lester’s “The Three Musketeers,” which earned her a Golden Globe, and reverse James Coco in “Wild Party.”
She was additionally nominated for a Golden Globe in 1988 for the TV film “Right to Die.” She performed herself and mocked divas in an episode of “Seinfeld,” memorably attacking Elaine and rattling Kramer.
The documentary shared that Welch was recognized with Alzheimer’s illness in her closing years.
“She was always happy,” stated Damon. “She never suffered.”
Again in 2017, Welch advised Fox Information Digital she initially turned down the position of “Loana the Fair One” in “One Million Years B.C.”
“I told (Fox’s studio head) Dick Zanuck I didn’t think I was going to do it because it was a dinosaur movie and I didn’t want to be caught dead in a dinosaur movie,” Welch recalled. “And he was not sympathetic to that.
“He said, ‘No, you’re going to do it, Raquel. And listen, Raqui, you’re going to become a huge star!’ I said, ‘What? What am I even going to wear? What happened in dinosaur time? . . . He said, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll figure something out.’ And they sure did.”
Reluctantly, the then-26-year-old agreed to tackle the position. Welch was despatched far-off from Hollywood, particularly the volcanic Canary Islands.
Welch, who was filmed carrying the skimpy costume throughout extreme climate circumstances, developed tonsillitis on set that she insisted turned worse with time.
“I already had so much penicillin when I was wearing the fur bikini that I almost died,” she stated. ” . . . I needed to rush, flip my automobile round and head proper again to the physician’s workplace, simply run upstairs, soar within the elevator and all that.
“And I barely got there. They had to shoot me with an antidote. Otherwise, I would have died. It was a really rough shoot, man. Really rough. And then I came to London, and everybody knew who I was.”
“I Am Raquel Welch” is streaming on the CW web site. The Related Press contributed to this report.
