Nowadays it may be hard for people to know how iconic Raquel Welch, who it was announced today died at the age of 82, was.

There are various articles available regarding her passing, including this one by Patrick Ryan and Edward Segarra and posted on usatoday.com…

Raquel Welch dead: ‘One Million Years B.C.’ sex symbol dies at 82 (usatoday.com)

To say she was a “sex symbol” seems wildly reductive yet also is very accurate. In her most famous and productive years on the big and small screen and, frankly, even more recently, Raquel Welch was nothing short of a breathtaking woman.

Here she is in one of her earliest/first successes, the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage…

She had already appeared in various TV shows by the time this movie premiered and in the same year, 1966, she would appear in a film that presented an iconic portrait of her, One Million Years B.C.

Those who weren’t in/around that time don’t realize how ever present the iconic image of Ms. Welch in her cavewoman bikini was back then. Seemed you’d find it everywhere and, yes, I even made my own version of the famous pose…

She would appear in many other works, including two with Burt Reynolds: 100 Rifles (1969)…

…and Fuzz (1972).

Apparently, Ms. Welch and Mr. Reynolds didn’t get along all that well and after 100 Rifles and while co-starring together in Fuzz, the film proved notable in that there isn’t a single sequence in it in which they share any screen time together.

Whatever her feelings were at the time regarding Mr. Reynolds, when the actor passed Ms. Welch let bygones be bygones and wrote a very nice tribute to him (portions of which can be found here).

In 1973 Ms. Welch starred in the ensemble film The Last of Shiela, which director/writer Rian Johnson has acknowledged as one of the big influences on his Knives Out movies…

Later on, Ms. Welch would play herself in one of the funnier sequences in Naked Gun: 33 & 1/3…

I’ve noted before one of the sad things about aging is that many of the people who you know and admire eventually grow old and pass away.

And so it is we reach that point with Raquel Welch, one of the most iconic -and sexy!- women ever to grace the silver screen.

You will be missed.