Raquel Welch talks Hispanic pride, refusal to change her name

Raquel Welch talks Hispanic pride, refusal to change her name

LOS ANGELES

Jo-Raquel Tejada remembers one of the first times that she had to take a stand for her identity.

She came home from school one day, tired of being called Jo. She didn’t like that name and felt more comfortable with Raquel.

The next day, the girl’s white mother, Josephine, who had named her Jo after herself, went to the school and asked that her daughter’s name be changed to simply Raquel.

Unknowingly, the girl had won a key battle about her Hispanic heritage, an issue she largely ignored after taking her first husband’s last name and becoming a sex symbol known as Raquel Welch.

Even though she doesn’t speak much Spanish, the 74-year-old actress says now that her Latino background is indeed part of who she is.

“I think language is very important to your identity and not having that ... I sometimes feel isolated from that part of me,” said Welch in a recent interview. “Yet I still feel very, very Hispanic. The essence of who I am is a Latina.”

The actress, who once stood up to Hollywood to keep her first name, was to be honored Saturday with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Association of Latino Independent Producers.

Fallon’s injured hand shelves ‘Tonight’ show

NEW YORK

“Tonight” show host Jimmy Fallon is on the shelf after a hand injury that required minor surgery Friday and forced NBC to cancel a taping of late-night TV’s most-popular program.

Fallon tweeted Friday that he tripped and when he caught his fall, his ring caught on the side of a table and “almost ripped my finger off.”

“I’m doing well and thanks for good wishes everyone,” he tweeted.

He has some built-in recovery time since the show was scheduled to be on hiatus for the next two weeks anyway.

Illusionist Criss Angel rescues escape artist after rehearsal accident

MASHANTUCKET, Conn.

Criss Angel’s rescue of an escape artist trapped in a water-filled box was no illusion.

Angel and Spencer Horsman were rehearsing for opening night of the illusionist’s show at a Connecticut casino when Horsman became trapped in the box dangling above the stage, and Angel came to his aid.

The Las Vegas Sun reports that Horsman was recovering from the Wednesday accident.

President and CEO Felix Rappaport of Foxwoods Resort Casino said in a statement that the show will go on.

Rappaport said opening night of “The Supernaturalists” was rescheduled to Friday because the safety of the cast and crew is the priority.

Grateful Dead to bid faithful ‘Fare Thee Well’ in California

SANTA CLARA, Calif.

The four surviving members of the Grateful Dead were launching their farewell mini-tour Saturday in Northern California, where the legendary jam band got its start 50 years ago.

The first of the Dead’s five “Fare Thee Well” shows was scheduled to take place at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, not far from the pizzeria where a five-man blues-rock band called The Warlocks played its first gig in May 1965.

The group changed its name to the Grateful Dead seven months later and shortly after moved to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, the counterculture hub with which the Dead still are identified.

They will perform a second two-set show in Santa Clara today before heading to Chicago for three shows at Soldier Field on Friday, Saturday and next Sunday.

Soldier Field is where the Grateful Dead last played as a group before the death of lead guitarist-songwriter Jerry Garcia in August 1995.

The band’s so-called “core four” —– rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh and percussionists Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann – insist that next Sunday will be their last concert together.

They have recruited Phish front man Trey Anastasio as Garcia’s stand-in on guitar and vocals.

Keyboardists Bruce Hornsby and Jeff Chimenti, best known for his work with Weir’s band RatDog, will round out the lineup.

Associated Press