The Shreveport Journal from Shreveport, Louisiana • 54

-imilltapinonvoOltlispoggrommownroommorimer 4 i 11'W VIJEEN Shreveport Journal Fri May 28 1982 D-ONE 'Walks Far Woman' radical departure for Raquel Welch By GLENN COLLINS "The people in the press keep har -f0111- I' A 'i i Wt-I'--t The New York Times a -F back to the time I came on the scene -t 3 4 s' I V'' '-4- '''''0' 4-' -4 bikini" she said "When you have the 4:: '''')' A --N 4 -14 By GLENN COLLINS The New York Times "The people in the press keep back to the time I came on the scene bikini" she said "When you have the -34--- 'k- 14 4i4: 1 4 41 :04 1:::5: fI- -1 0'' P7 V4' 1 -'-r0W A -r 't A 11 '''s ii- A i tt'-- 'i' A' A l' '41 1:: t- 7 ---4-'- -1-4-----i -0 --s rls '1 1-- it 4 zit '4 1 2 --------v i' --4iti--- if -ii: k-4'--f-'4-47il''''l 12-t'ir4'-vi41 -4 ottei44- 1 4 1 4' 4 4''''' 2 4'''4'' 4 i i -k -0 '2: '7 Is 4 I i 14--------- harking in a sex-symbol image you can't hate it you can't love it it's just there like Mount Rushmore And it won't go away If you see Sophia Loren you can think she's a fine dramatic actress but your immediate reaction is that she's a beautiful and sexy woman "So to make a transition from that well not that many other sex symbols have been able to do it The heat of your bikini days is spent like a rocket and usually that's it They try to cut you off at the knees if you want to be anything else" Miss Welch is no stranger to television having labored for more than a decade in the garden of hour-long specials and guest appearances "Lots of them were 'girl performances' "she said "You know how it goes: 'Come right on out and show us all how wonderful you are'" Although she has been singing and daacing since the age of 5 Miss Welch said her first impulse to storm the supper-club stage came when she starred in "Lady in Cement" the 1968 sequel to Frank Sinatra's Tony Rome series of detective portrayals "While we were filming Frank was working at the Fontainebleau in Miami and it was a revelation to see him in front of an audience" she said "To completely hold an audience like Frank did is a remarkable thing I decided right there 'I'm going to keep that part of my talent alive' During the next decade she took her night-club act to Las Vegas and other stage-show meccas and built her television specials around singing and dancing Miss Welch and her husband have their own production company and she said they are working with lyricists composers and writers to develop a Broadway musical for her Although her commitment to "Woman of the Year" is for the next six months the actress plans to make a move eventually to the East Coast She explained that this is partly because she wants quality material and believes there is a growing community of talented filmmakers in New York "Also my husband is European and he can't stand Lotus Land anymore" she said of Weinfeld her third husband whom she met in France when she was making a film with Jean-Paul Belmondo "In Los Angeles you feel strangely isolated as if you don't feel part of the human race" "The Legend of Walks Far Woman" portrays Miss Welch primarily as mate and mother There is no Welch cheesecake in the role indeed Miss Welch breast-feeds a baby "Well I am a mother I have two grown children" she said "The people who saw me in 'One Million Years BC' back in 1967 didn't realize thati had two babies at home in diapers at the time" Son Damon 21 is at college in New York and daughter Tahnee 20 is studying photography and acting in Los Angeles They were the children of her teen-age marriage in 1959 to her high school sweetheart James Welch The couple were divorced in 1964 Miss Welch does 1 jt feel ashamed of any of the work she has done in her earlier movies "I'm proud of all of it And I didn't play Walks Far as a closet exercise I wanted people to see it and enjoy it and if it's not too pretentious to say to learn from it As Sam Goldwyn said 'Never preach'" NEW YORK I really wanted to sufficiently immerse myself in a character so that people wouldn't see me as Raquel Welch anymore" said Raquel Welch "That is to say the Raquel Welch they see on the Academy Awards presentations It was important for me to do that and I think I succeeded" Viewers can judge for themselves Sunday at 8 pm on KTAL Channel 6 (NBC) when Miss Welch will make what the network has termed her "first TV movie dramatic debut" starring in a two-and-ahalf-hour film "The Legend of Walks Far Woman" It is an adaptation of a novel about a 19th-century American Indian woman caught up in the maelstrom that was Montana in the era of the battle of the Little Big Horn "People might have some skepticism about me in such a role" the actress said of the part that has her wearing feathers and fringe birthing a baby and skinning a buffalo "because it's well a change of pace But I don't feel sensitive about that now really The recent reviews on Broadway have given me a kind of overnight legitimacy" The actress was sipping mint tea in the lounge of a midtown hotel on a recent afternoon She had just arrived from Los Angeles to begin rehearsals for her return to the starring role in "Woman of the Year" For Miss Welch at 41 it is a time of new beginnings Last December she made her first appearance on Broadway filling in as a two-week replacement for the vacationing Lauren Bacall in "Woman of the Year" The critics were enthusiastic audiences perhaps unaware that Miss Welch had spent more than a decade singing and dancing in nightclubs seemed to welcome her in a new incarnation So warm was the reception in fact that on June 29 Miss Welch will assume the role again this time for six months she will soon move to New York with her husband of nearly two years Andre Weinfeld a French film writer and producer In a sense Sunday night's television movie is "an Indian version of 'Miss Jane Pittman' "said Miss Welch "I think that was part of its appeal to me I like the idea of heroines who survive and struggle It's important to have your own principles to have dignity and follow your own code as Walks Far does I like a woman character with backbone" Miss Welch explained that she has always been interested in American Indians partly because her father was Bolivian and she has "some Indian blood" in her veins "We tried to be accurate in our portrayal of Indian life" she said "We wanted to show the strong influence of custom on tribal life At the same time we tried not to be over-reverent about it We didn't want it to be the old noble-savage portrayal If the film has a message then the most important thing it can say is that these people are human beings and they have the same foibles we have" 'As Walks Far Miss Welch plays a strong independent-minded Pikuni Blackfoot woman She rejects prospective husbands with impunity saves the life of a drowning chief enters a footrace and breaks a lucking bronco She marries gives birth loots dead cavalry troopers In a departure from the glamorous roles that made her famous Raquel Welch in her dramatic television movie debut portrays an American Indian woman who fights for her life and the survival of her people in "The Legend of Walks Far Woman" The world premiere drama airs Sunday at 8 pm on KTAL Channel 6 (NBC) stabs her husband and witnesses the demise of the free-roaming ways of the Sioux After more than 30 movies the character of Walks Far is a radical departure for Miss Welch "With all my other characters their problems were usually psychological" she said "But this role is completely different This woman is fighting for survival fleeing from her old tribe and trying to set up a new existence" The happy conjunction of serious television role and bright Broadway prospects comes only a year after a low point in Miss Welch's own 20-year struggle to win serious acceptance as an actress Her career nadir came in February 1981 when she was replaced at the last minute by Debra Winger as star of the movie "Cannery Row" Charging that she had been held up to "speculation and ridicule" Miss Welch sued M-G-M for $25 million in damages And although the film flopped the lawsuit drags on "After that I thought I was completely dead" she said "It stunned me I never want to feel that way again I'd rather die for real" But when she recovered she said she had a more venturesome attitude toward her career "If it hadn't been for the 'Cannery Row' experience I probably wouldn't have been predisposed to stick my neck out on 'Woman of the Year'" Why? "Well because I could have gotten creamed by the New York critics'! she said "I knew I could cut it the singing and dancing I've been doing that all my life But there's something about Raquel Welch setting foot for the first time on a Broadway stage Originally I think the producers thought it would be a cute idea to put me up there for two weeks But it was a big gamble I could have bombed" There was no thud "When we got the reviews the only way I can describe it is the phrase 'The thrill of a lifetime' "she said "I'm totally hooked I can't wait to get back "The reviews just turned things around for me" she continued "It was an acceptance for me as an actress and a performer An incredible change for me" It wasn't just the reviews however "The first minute I stepped out on that stage" she said "and the people began applauding I just knew I'd beaten every bad rap that people had hung on me" The bad rap was basically that she was a sex goddess the former Miss La Jolla Miss San Diego and Maid of California who appeared in a succession of 1960's heaving-bosom epics such as "A Swingin' Summer" "One Million Years BC" and "Fantastic Voyage" She was chased by paparazzi she feuded with Mae West on the set of "Myra Breckenridge" and with Jim Brown in "100 Rifles" played the first interracial love scene in a major movie 11111P -N1 0'd to -vS444 -1V 4 I.