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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Peter Bradshaw

Raquel Welch: a strong and powerful personality with a rarely-tapped gift for comedy

Raquel Welch in 100 Rifles in 1969
Raquel Welch in 100 Rifles in 1969. Photograph: Snap/Rex/Shutterstock

The term “sex symbol” reeks of a bygone age of smirking sexism, and very often female stars landed with this tag would be given some exotic outfit. Ursula Andress had her ivory-white bikini with chunky belt buckle in Dr No; Jane Fonda had her sleek one-piece with black stripes and thigh-length boots as the glam astronaut in Barbarella.

But the most outrageous piece of sex-symbol costuming of all time was given to Raquel Welch, who was called upon to rock a revealing doeskin two-piece in her role as Loana the Fair One in the 1966 dinosaur adventure One Million Years BC, featuring stop-motion dino action by Ray Harryhausen, and based on the less-than-scientific notion that humans and dinosaurs coexisted.

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