Raquel Welch IS Domino ( or should have been...)

FROM RAQUEL WELCH WITH LOVE
December 1963, Elstree Studios. The newest Hollywood rage Raquel Welch has a surprises for me. Stretch marks and how she was almost Domino in Thunderball... Cubby Broccoli loved Julie Christie on TV in 1961 but she was too flat-chested for Cubby’s famous tit-test. So he went for the tits of the hour - and signed Raquel. 20th Century Fox was not happy.
“Next thing, the studio called me on a Saturday,” she told me. “Now in Hollywood, nobody calls anybody from the studio on a Saturday. I mean, the head of the studio just doesn’t go near a phone, any phone, on a Saturday. But he did. ‘We gotta picture for you - Fantastic Voyage,’ he said. ‘Well, I don’t wanna do it; I wanna do Thunderball.’ And he said: ‘Well, that’s tough, baby, because we have a deal going with those boys and we have cooled the whole issue.’
“As it turned out, they used four girls in Thunderball. I looked like three of ’em. We would have cancelled each other out. But in Fantastic Voyage, I’m the only girl... No chance of being mistaken for Stephen Boyd or Donald Pleasence!”
As she was an unknown, it was no big deal. Eon released her - “which may or may not have done her a favour,” pondered Cubby. Ironically, she had already tested for Fox’s Bond flick, Our Man Flint. And that did no one any favours.
Tony Crawley
Photos © 20th Century Fox, 1966
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