Raquel Welch once threatened father with fire poker during explosive argument: doc

Raquel Welch once came face-to-face with who her ex-husband called “a very violent man” – her father.

The Hollywood sex symbol, who passed away in 2023 at age 82, is the subject of a new CW documentary, “I Am Raquel Welch,” which explores her life and legacy. It features candid sit-downs with friends, co-stars and film experts, among others.

The documentary describes the actress and coveted pinup as a single mother of two who was living in between checks when she arrived in Hollywood. But she was also escaping a complicated relationship with her father, Carlos Armando Tejada.

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Luis I. Reyes, author of “Viva Hollywood,” detailed how an altercation between father and daughter forever impacted their relationship.

“When she was 16 years old, something happened at the dinner table,” Reyes explained. “Her father wasn’t happy. And he took a glass of milk and threw it in the face of Raquel’s mom. And Raquel could not believe it – that he would humiliate her mother like that in front of everyone.”

“Raquel stood up to him,” Reyes shared. “There was a fireplace, and she took a poker, and she threatened her father with the poker. Because she stood up to him, he never did that again. That was a defining moment for her.”

In an audio clip, Welch is heard saying, “I threatened his life, and he backed down. He backed away.”

Welch’s ex-husband, Richie Palmer, said he had heard stories “about the poker” as he teared up.

“He used a poker on her, too,” said Palmer. “Plain and simple – domestic violence. Nobody should have to go through that. It scarred her.”

“I’m going to walk softly on this,” Palmer said slowly. “She loved him, admired, respected, feared [this] terribly violent man.”

The “One Million Years B.C.” icon previously reflected on the incident in her 2010 memoir, “Beyond the Cleavage.”

“Every time Dad lashed out at my mother, I flinched — it might as well have been me!” Welch wrote, as quoted in an excerpt published by Oprah.com.

“I felt the need to vindicate her, but was helpless to do so,” wrote Welch. “I crossed that bridge when I finally confronted my dad in defense of my mother, and this time he had to back down. I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live. I was 16 . . . and had enough.”

According to Welch, it all started when her father complained about the casserole that her mother, Josephine Sarah Hall, had served for dinner. Suddenly, he picked up his glass of milk and threw it right in her mother’s face.

“It was the worst thing I could ever imagine, seeing her look of shock, watching her sit there with her face and hair drenched and dripping, humiliated,” Welch wrote. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. All this over something he didn’t like about the meal? My poor mother was reduced to a whimpering mess . . . defeated.”

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“That was it. Tears streaming, I jumped up from the table and went for the fireplace, as he came after me. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he demanded. ‘How could you? I screamed, picked up the poker from the fireplace, and turned toward him, gripping it with both hands.

“I was pitted against him now. ‘If you ever, ever do anything to hurt Mom again, I swear, I’ll kill you!’ I said, shaking with emotion. He glared at me and stood his ground. ‘Calm down,’ he said. I glared right back at him.”

“Thank God, he backed away,” said Welch. “I cannot believe I am telling this about someone I loved so much. Everything I did was to please him. But someone had to stand up to him. And as the oldest, that someone was me.”

The documentary showed an interview clip where Welch told Rona Barrett that her parents were opposites.

“I always thought my mother was almost an angel figure, a very gentle creature,” she said. “My father was extremely strict and rather tyrannical in a way. . . . Forgive me, Daddy.”

In a voiceover, Welch also shared that as a child, she had received “conditional love” from her father.

“I had to do something — I had to get the perfect grades. I had to do everything perfectly,” she said.

According to the documentary, the Bolivia-born Tejada refused to speak Spanish when Welch was growing up because he didn’t want his children to speak with an accent. Welch said that as a child, she felt that “a part of me was missing.”

“The part of me that was missing was the part of me that my father chose to just amputate out of our lives,” she said.

Brian Eugenio, a cultural historian at Princeton University, said in the documentary, “It was a paradox that she adored her father, and she wanted to please her father deeply, but he was a taskmaster. He was hard.”

In her memoir, Welch described her mother as being “under my father’s thumb” as the patriarch had “the upper hand.”

“. . . By observing my mother in her relationship with my father, I learned that women have different roles to play,” she wrote. “I think she was right about that part. However, after four husbands, I don’t think I’m a good candidate for wifedom. I like my independence too much.”

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“A life of female servitude doesn’t appeal to me mainly because I saw my mother being taken for granted,” said Welch. “I don’t have memories of any appreciation coming her way. Between my parents there was not the slightest gesture of fondness; no hand-holding or sitting close with arms around each other; and hardly ever a kiss.

“As the song goes, ‘Try a little tenderness.’ Where, oh where, was that tenderness? I wondered. Where was his appreciation for all she did as a wife, mother, and homemaker?”

The documentary revealed that Welch fell “madly in love” with her high school sweetheart, James Welch. They married in 1959 when she was 17. They welcomed a son that same year named Damon Welch. In 1961, their daughter Tahnee Welch was born.

“My mom was very young and innocent at 19,” said Damon in the documentary. “She was just a kid. When she had me, I think she was a proud mother right away.”

Still, Welch said she soon realized that her husband opposed her having a career. Their divorce was finalized in 1964.

Welch’s breakthrough came in the 1966 campy prehistoric flick “One Million Years B.C.,” despite having a total of three lines. Clad in a brown doeskin bikini, she successfully evaded pterodactyls but not the notice of the public.

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Her curves and beauty captured pop culture attention, with Playboy crowning her the “most desired woman” of the ‘70s, despite never being completely naked in the magazine.

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Though she would appear in exploitative films, she also surprised many in the industry with fine performances, including in Richard Lester’s “The Three Musketeers,” which earned her a Golden Globe, and opposite James Coco in “Wild Party.” 

She was also nominated for a Golden Globe in 1988 for the TV movie “Right to Die.” She played herself and mocked divas in an episode of “Seinfeld,” memorably attacking Elaine and rattling Kramer.

The documentary shared that Welch was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in her final years.

“She was always happy,” said Damon. “She never suffered.”

Back in 2017, Welch told Fox News Digital she initially turned down the role of “Loana the Fair One” in “One Million Years B.C.”

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“I told (Fox’s studio head) Dick Zanuck I didn’t think I was going to do it because it was a dinosaur movie and I didn’t want to be caught dead in a dinosaur movie,” Welch recalled. “And he was not sympathetic to that.

“He said, ‘No, you’re going to do it, Raquel. And listen, Raqui, you’re going to become a huge star!’ I said, ‘What? What am I even going to wear? What happened in dinosaur time? . . . He said, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll figure something out.’ And they sure did.”

Reluctantly, the then-26-year-old agreed to take on the role. Welch was sent far away from Hollywood, specifically the volcanic Canary Islands.

Welch, who was filmed wearing the skimpy costume during severe weather conditions, developed tonsillitis on set that she insisted became worse with time.

“I already had so much penicillin when I was wearing the fur bikini that I almost died,” she said. ” . . . I had to rush, turn my car around and head right back to the doctor’s office, just run upstairs, jump in the elevator and all that.

“And I barely got there. They had to shoot me with an antidote. Otherwise, I would have died. It was a really rough shoot, man. Really rough. And then I came to London, and everybody knew who I was.”