O, to be young and a correspondent in Hollywood.

"Showbiz scheduling cover on Raquel Welch . . ." read the query to Jonathan Larsen in our Los Angeles bureau. And indeed, says Larsen, "when I told people that I was going to interview Raquel Welch, everybody conjured up this image of her in a plunging minidress, batting her long eyelashes at me in seductive silence over a candlelit dinner." Alas, it wasn't like that at all, reports Jon. "Our first interview took place in broad daylight, with Raquel in a voluminous caftan, drinking Gatorade and complaining nonstop about the problems of being a modern sex goddess." Despite that somewhat disappointing start, Larsen spent the better part of two weeks with Raquel, observing her on the set of Myra Breckinridge, interviewing her in her dressing room and back home. He found her refreshingly pleasant and outgoing. So did Mark Goodman, who wrote this week's story and recently flew out to Los Angeles to gather his own impressions over three days with Raquel and her husband and friends. "I was impressed by her brightness," says Goodman. "She is terribly concerned with her image--with the idea that she is only a screen personality and is not a bona fide person in people's minds." As a matter of fact, notes Goodman, it was curious to see that Raquel, for all her visibility, goes almost unrecognized by passers-by on the street.

The Cover: epoxy resin sculpture by Frank Gallo. Though Gallo's slender, sexy swingers grace many museums and private collections around the world, this is his first for TIME and first of a real, live girl. The others have all been imaginary. The sculpture took three weeks to complete, and Gallo personally brought it from Champaign, Ill., to New York--it sat beside him in a first-class Ozark Air Lines seat. At first the package was too bulky to get the seat belt around, so Gallo was obliged to unwrap it. That caused quite a stir on the plane. "The hostesses came on the intercom," says Gallo, "and announced that they were pleased to have Myra Breckinridge on the flight with them today."

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