Raquel Welch’s most cherished items are hitting the auction block
Julien’s Auctions, the industry-leading Hollywood auction house, will celebrate the legendary beauty and style of the Golden Globe Award-winning trailblazer, whom the New York Times hailed as “a marvelous, breathing monument to womankind” with “BOMBSHELL: THE RAQUEL WELCH COLLECTION” taking place Friday, April 12th live in Los Angeles and online at Julien’s Auctions.
Raquel Welch burst onto the movie scene in 1966 with her role as a scientist’s assistant in the Oscar-winning sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage and later that year with the release of One Million Years B.C. Her appearance as a scantily clad cavewoman in the pre-historic epic catapulted her to international stardom and made her one of the era’s biggest sex symbols, with the film’s publicity poster of a larger-than-life image of Welch wearing her iconic fur & hide bikini becoming a cultural phenomenon and one of the biggest pinup posters of all time.
Throughout her six decade career, Welch turned in a diverse range of strong female character portrayals that departed from her traditional sex symbol persona and earned her acclaim with lead roles in 1971’s Hannie Clauder, one of the first westerns which depicted a female warrior character and inspired films such as The Quick and the Dead and Kill Bill; 1972’s Kansas City Bomber in which she played a single mother turned roller derby queen; and in 1974’s The Three Musketeers as Constance Bonacieux, which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical, and further acclaim in the film’s sequel The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge. At the height of her fame and box office success, Welch played the title character Myra Breckinridge in the 1970 film adaptation of Gore Vidal’s novel about a transgender woman who undergoes a sex-change operation. The film, which has since gone onto become a cult classic, was released in a storm of controversy, landing Welch on the cover of Time Magazine for her revolutionary role.
On television, she produced her own variety specials, 1970’s Raquel! with guest stars Tom Jones, Bob Hope and John Wayne, 1974’s Really, Raquel, and 1980’s From Raquel With Love (photo right: Myra Breckinridge style red, white and blue star-spangled swimsuit worn in her Really, Raquel special. Estimate US$: 500 – 700) She earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Television Film in her role as a psychologist diagnosed with ALS in 1987’s Right to Die. On Broadway, she replaced Lauren Bacall in the starring role of Tess Harding in the hit musical Woman of the Year in the early ’80s. In 2010, Welch published her autobiography, Beyond the Cleavage, her personal account of her life in Hollywood that offered her beauty regimen and tips for women to live their best lives with dignity and self-respect. In 2018, Vogue ranked Raquel Welch as one of “the most sensational hourglass bodies of all time.”
