How Raquel Welch earned $10m from a $250,000 contract: “What they did was use me”
Sometimes, you just get really unlucky in Hollywood, fucked over by studios simply because they think they have the power to do so.
Sure, they have enough money and power to mess actors around, but it doesn’t always work out in their favour. This was certainly the case for Raquel Welch when she managed to walk away with $10million after getting fired from a movie set to pay her $250,000.
The star had emerged as a sex symbol in the 1960s, making a mark on the general public with her bikini-clad appearance in One Million Years B.C. From here, Welch was a well-known figure of the newly sexually liberated decade, continuing her reign over the screen into the ‘70s, where she even won a Golden Globe.
However, by the end of the ‘70s, her film career started to go rapidly downhill. After appearing in the French film Animal alongside Breathless star Jean-Paul Belmondo, Welch didn’t land another role until 1981, when she was cast in an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. This wouldn’t last long, though, because the role was cruelly snatched from beneath her when she was replaced by an actor 15 years her junior.
When Welch discovered that she was being booted off the film in favour of Deborah Winger, she wasn’t pleased. The studio claimed that the actor’s resistance to doing her hair and makeup on set – she wanted to do it at home – was a major issue, which is a strange reason to fire someone, but to make things worse, they refused to offer her another movie instead. So, left without work, Welch decided to sue.
Talking to the Hollywood Reporter, Welch claimed, “What they did was use me to get financing for the movie, then they dumped me for Debra, which they’d been planning all along.”
Hollywood is certainly a deceptive place where such acts of betrayal run rampant, so no one would be surprised if this was the studio’s motive all along. “The really Machiavellian part of this is that Debra and I were represented by the same agency,” she added.
So, Winger took on the role opposite Nick Nolte, but the movie didn’t make much of an impact. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either, and when you’re adapting someone as magnificent as Steinbeck, you want it to be good.
When a trial took place, the judge ruled in favour of Welch, with MGM’s claims of her being a “temperamental actress” just not cutting it. In the end, the star walked away from the case with $10 million in her pocket, which isn’t too bad considering that she was only meant to be paid £250,000 – and she didn’t even have to appear in the film.
Still, the whole ordeal was pretty brutal for Welch, whose film career never really recovered. Her next film appearance was an uncredited role as herself in Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult in 1994, which she followed with a Razzie-nominated performance in Chairman of the Board. It doesn’t sound like Cannery Row would’ve been much more successful for her, but being treated decently by the studio is the least she expected.
