LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Raquel Welch: Million Years
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After appearing as Lust incarnate in Stanley Donen's seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled, Welch finally returned to the U.S. Fox used her judiciously in pictures like the 1968 James Stewart Western Bandolero! and the Frank Sinatra mystery Lady in Cement. Following in 1969 was 100 Rifles, a controversial Western which paired Welch with Jim Brown, and a year later she earned her first real starring role in the disastrous Myra Breckenridge. Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies -- neither 1971's Hannie Caulder nor the following year's Fuzz did anything to alter the dilemma, and when the 1973 roller-derby melodrama Kansas City Bomber ... tanked at the box office, Welch divorced Curtis and returned to Europe to appear in Bluebeard. While both 1973's The Three Musketeers and its sequel The Four Musketeers were well received, she earned little credit for their success, and when the 1976 black comedy Mother, Jugs and Speed failed, Hollywood largely washed their hands of her.
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Off camera, the woman with measurements 37D-26-36 (at age 43 in 1985, source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine), Welch once had a well-publicized backstage feud with the sex bombshell of the 1930s, Mae West, on the set of Myra Breckinridge (1970). Ten years later, she again made headlines with a lawsuit against MGM Studio over her dismissal from the film Cannery Row, which she finally won a $14 million judgment in her favor. The controversial actress, who some time ago became the TV spokesperson for Equal sweetener, was named the 18th “Sexiest Stars in Film History” in the 1995 issue of Empire magazine. The next year, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Welch was due to star in the 1982 adaptation of Cannery Row, but was fired by the producers only a few days into production (allegedly, she was taking too long to get ready each day). She was replaced with Debra Winger. Welch successfully sued, collecting a multi-million dollar award, but this effectively ended her film acting career until the mid-1990s. Her television appearances include the series The Hollywood Palace, the made for TV movies The Legend of Walks Far Woman and Right to Die, in which she turned in a stirring performance as a woman with Lou Gehrig's disease, and in the PBS series American Family, about a Mexican American family in East Los Angeles. She has ... appeared in the night time soap opera Central Park West and made infomercials and exercise videos. While she never appeared on the show, her name was frequently used as an all-purpose answer on the game show Match Game.
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It was 1966 when Racquel Welch first aroused a worldwide stir, bursting on the scene in a now-infamous fur bikini in One Million Years B.C. Thirty-five years later, Welch proves she still knows how to own the room. Sitting for an interview at her palatial Mediterranean-style home nestled in the Hollywood Hills, Welch is dressed in snakeskin-tight leather pants and a white stretch T-shirt. She radiates an energy so palpable, you could probably wipe out California's electricity crisis by simply hooking her up to the West Coast power grid. Sporting a healthy golden-brown tan, tousled auburn hair and a dazzlingly white smile, there's simply no mistaking that the bombshell gods broke the mold after they created Raquel Welch.
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Raquel divored Curtis soon after and went to Europe to shoot Bluebeard with Richard Burton. She ... was part a huge international cast for back to back shootings of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, playing Constance, a clumsy but good-hearted girl. Once again, she was awarded for outstanding work, receiving a Golden Globe Award for this supporting part. In 1975, Raquel got another of her best roles for The Wild Party. The following year, she plays Jugs in Mother, Jugs & Speed, parodying her own image. It would be her last Hollywood movie for quite some time.
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Welch met French screenwriter Andre Weinfeld in 1977 and, after a three-year relationship, they wed. Meanwhile, she began headlining her own nightclub act, playing to sold-out crowds from Vegas to Atlantic City, and in concert halls from London and Paris to Rio de Janeiro and Toronto. She ... continued making films in Europe, including 1977's The Prince and the Pauper and L'Animal, costarring Jean-Paul Belmondo.
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