CHICAGO — Raquel Welch died Wednesday at the age of 82. From her teenage pageant years onward, her career was defined and in many ways confined by a gilded cage of marketable, exploitable beauty, sold primarily to men who couldn’t quite believe their eyes.
She was also a lot more interesting and versatile and ambitious than what those men, women and children saw in 1966. That was the year of her star-making turn as Loana, a coastal tribeswoman in a deerskin bikini in the schlocktastic fantasy “One Million Years B.C.”
It was a modeling job more than an acting job, with more screams than lines. Her one line was, in fact: “Me Loana … you Tumak.” But it launched a highly visible career, even if rarely led to roles she prized.
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