From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
At 33 Raquel Welch is getting disturbingly old for an already endangered species—the Hollywood sex symbol. For nine years and about as many execrable film roles, almost no moviegoers have peered past the Pleistocene-pelt costumes or the straining bikinis to look into Raquel's head or hopes or, if they did, seen anything there but a Ticketron computer. But as she fades into Phase II of her career and the inevitable I-want-to-be-taken-seriously syndrome, Raquel is doing so with at least some sensible self-perspective and even a sense of humor. The first step is to escape what she calls "this American fetish with my mammary glands." And with a pique in her voice that cannot be acting, she smarts: "I've heard all the rumors. Raquel Welch is silicone from the knees up. Listen, my darlin', if I had done what people said I have done, don't you think I'd have made 'em a lot bigger?"

She may never be an actress of distinction, but this month Raquel is having a rather encouraging rebirth as a singer and, especially, as a comedienne. Her second one-woman CBS special, aired earlier this month, was modestly successful and certainly a quantum advance over the debacle of her 1970 TV debut. She burlesqued the campy movies she had made, socked out a few stale Raquel jokes to prove she was a good sport, publicly anyway, and even mentioned her grown-up kids at home. The show's credits included the line "Miss Welch's voice by Raquel Welch," an inside aside putting down those critics who accuse Raquel of reviving Rita Hayworth's dubbed musical mortifications.

Later this month Raquel will be seen as one of the stars of Richard Lester's new version of The Three Musketeers, which cannot help but be reviewed as her happiest casting and most intentionally hilarious role. "This is undoubtedly the best film I've been in, I mean with a first-rate director," Raquel beams, adding, "I'm surprised they asked me." Raquel plays the queen's confidante complete with vaudeville pratfalls and a wild fisticuffs scene with villainess Faye Dunaway.

Summing up, the girl who always put her best part forward states, "All I can say is my career started ass-backwards. I felt at times I had disappeared except for the image—I was without a self. Slowly I realized you can't carry around your own background music, your own klieg lights and live camouflaged under a ton of makeup. I felt victimized most of my career."

Raquel Tejada (her father was Bolivian) got her start winning all the beauty contests and a husband in La Jolla, Calif. high school. Two children, a divorce, and a few restless years later, she fell into cahoots with her second husband, ex-child actor Patrick (Leave It to Beaver) Curtis, who masterminded an avalanche of cheesecake publicity from Europe. Those stills made her the most famous pinup girl of the 1960s almost before she had been seen in a film. Even before that, Curtis had helped her land a 20th Century-Fox contract which eventually indentured her to such embarrassments as Fantastic Voyage, 100 Rifles, Fathom and One Million Years B.C. "I hate for people to think that I selected all that crappy material. I simply had no control. It was frightening, a huge botch-up even though it made me some kind of household word. Everyone thought I should go around in a bikini even if it happened to be snowing outside."

The end of her subservience and what she writes off as "this sophomoric boob stuff" came about two years ago when Raquel launched her own production company with Kansas City Bomber, an attempt at a pseudo-documentary about the roller-skating circuit. It offered a no-makeup, gritty performance in which, if nothing else, she emerged as "a normal person for a change and not an Amazonian queen who pulls the door hinges off entering a room. I guess some people were disappointed and some just relieved that I didn't come on cracking whips." The real breakthrough was that the film helped Raquel become financially independent. She was now in charge, and any further crappy properties will be her own choice.

Her perennial problems with colleagues on location may be less solvable. About earlier wars she noted, "When you're in something with Jim Brown or Burt Reynolds, who is going to approach that as a serious acting situation?" And even her 1973 film, the mystery The Last of Sheila, led her into more contretemps, threatened litigation and a brief desertion of the Cannes set in mid-production.

By then Raquel was having trouble on the home front too, and ended her marriage to Curtis, but on friendly terms. For almost two years Raquel has been attached to Ron Talsky, who designed her costumes for Kansas City Bomber and is now a producer. They maintain separate homes, although she explains that the relationship is totally serious. "After all," she says, "I don't cat around with several men at the same time. When I love someone, I love only him. But though I love Ron, I'm probably going to be a single lady for a long time."

Unlike the stars of old, Raquel is an adoring, public mother who admits, "I like my children better each year. We can talk about things together now. Tahnee is 12 and Damon is 14, and in a few years they are going to start giving me grandchildren and that will be great." She laughs at the thought, then continues: "You see, if I'm a sex symbol, I'm a modern one. Some of those ladies, Marilyn, Harlow, never had the advantages of having children. They really denied themselves. I have stability and responsibility that they never had. I'm hard driving and I have tremendous energy. If I were to go down the drain, my children would pay the penalty. So I'm never going to hit the bottle or attempt suicide, or any of those other things people think about when you mention Hollywood's sex symbols. There may be smears and smirks about me forever, but that's not my problem."