June 25th, 1970. The Dick Cavitt show, New York City. Dick Cavitt sat between his guests and made a joke. They were, he said, all once roommates in college. On one side of the couch, Raquel Welch, the most photographed woman in America, the standard by which all female beauty in 1970 was being measured, perfect in every way the culture valued.

 On the other side, Janice Joplain, wild hair, frilly thrift store ensemble, feather boa, the standard by which absolutely nothing in 1970 was being measured because there was no standard for what she was. The press was ready for a catfight. Two women, maximum contrast, network television, 1970. The story wrote itself, except the story was wrong.

Raquel Welch remembered years later they related to each other like old girlfriends getting back together after a long absence. Kavitt said they would talk when the cameras weren’t rolling as if they had known each other for years. This is the story of that night and what it says about two women who were defined by everything they weren’t to each other.

To understand why this encounter mattered, you have to understand what each of them represented. In 1970, Raquel Welch was the most desired woman in America. She had appeared on the poster for 1 million years BC in 1966, a fur bikini prehistoric landscape. The image became one of the most reproduced photographs of the decade.

 She was also intelligent, politically engaged, and deeply insecure about whether she was taken seriously for anything beyond her appearance. She was more than the poster. She knew it. Nobody else seemed to. Janice Joplain was the anti-standard. She was the woman Newsweek had called a volatile vial of nitroglycerin that blew the rock world wide open.

 She was the woman who had been voted ugliest man on campus at UT Austin. She was the woman who made Port Arthur’s rules look small. But here is what they shared beneath the surface. Both of them were women who were defined entirely by how they looked. Raquel was defined by being beautiful enough. Janice was defined by not being beautiful enough.

 Both definitions came from outside. Both were incomplete. Both were wrong and both of them knew it. She’s not what they say she is. She’s not the poster. She’s sitting right here and she’s saying actual things and nobody is listening because they’re all looking at her. The same way nobody really listens to me because they’re all listening to whether I fit the category.

 We’re both trapped in the category they assigned us. She just has a prettier cage. The show had four guests. It became a conversation between two. Kavitt sat between Joplain and Welch with his joke about college roommates. They talked about their childhoods. Both had grown up feeling wrong. Welch, whose father was Bolivian and mother Irish, had grown up caught between two identities.

 Joplain had grown up in Port Arthur, being told she was too much of the wrong things, different wounds, the same register. Then the political conversation started. Cadet Huntley was introduced. The subject became the political polarization of 1970 America. Welch argued for compromise. Janice disagreed. She believed in active listening.

 Really hearing the other side before deciding anything. A genuine philosophical debate. Two different ideas about how change happens. Kavitt and Fairbanks and Huntley watched in silence. The show belonged to the two women. A viewer who described watching the episode wrote, “What’s touching is the way Janice patiently extracted meaning from Raquel’s overly ornate way of speaking.

” She listened harder than anyone in the room. She found what Raquel was trying to say before Raquel found it herself. Raquel Welch, the most photographed woman in America, was being listened to, actually listened to, by a woman in a thrift store outfit with a southern comfort cup and a feather boa.

 The press reported they went at each other. What actually happened? Two women found each other real. Then the subject of Tina Turner came up. Janice leaned forward, snapped her fingers. She’s a fantastic singer, a great dancer. A lot of people don’t know who she is. It’s too bad. She sings with the Ike and Tina Turner review.

 Ike is her husband and band leader, and Tina’s the show. Cavitt looked directly into the camera. Come by some night, Tina. That was Janice Joplain in 1970 using her platform to tell America about Tina Turner before almost anyone knew who Tina Turner was. They knew each other before the show. The opening party for Myra Breenidge, Raquel Welch’s new film.

 Janice walked over to Welch. She blew cigarette smoke directly into Raquel Welch’s perfectly teased hair. Then she said she’d been asked to be in an upcoming film. She said, “It won’t be a virgin. I’m not that good an actress.” Welch laughed, genuine, unguarded. Why did they seek each other out? If Raquel was everything a woman was supposed to be, Janice was not.

 Both of them lived inside that sentence, one as the standard, one as the deviation, and living inside opposite versions of the same sentence gave them something to talk about that nobody else in the room could follow. Welch later said, “Who was I?” Janice was letting it all hang out. the most glamorous woman in America asking who she was because someone with wild hair and a thrift store ensemble had walked into the room and made her ask.

 She sees me, not the poster, not the fur bikini. She sees me the way I see her as the person underneath what they made of us. She’s asking real things. She thinks I have real answers. I haven’t had anyone expect real answers in a long time. They were each other’s proof that the category was wrong. Raquel proved Janice wasn’t just the deviation.

 Janice proved Raquel wasn’t just the standard. Both more than what the camera said. 4 months after this episode, Janice Joplain was dead. October 4th, 1970. Raquel Welch heard the news. She said later, “It was a loss. A real one, not a celebrity loss, a person loss, the kind where you realize the conversation you were in the middle of is just over.

 The press decided what these two women were to each other before they had ever spoken. Rivals, opposites, the cat fight that had to happen. And they were right about the contrast. They just had no idea what two people do with contrast when they’re actual human beings rather than symbols. What they do is find each other interesting.

 What they do is ask real questions. What they do is blow smoke in each other’s hair and laugh. Raquel Welch lived until 2023. She was 82. For 53 years after Janice died, she carried the memory of that encounter. Who was I? Janice was letting it all hang out. That question asked by the most glamorous woman in America about the woman in the thrift store ensemble is the whole story.

 Is there someone in your life who you assumed you had nothing in common with and who turned out to be the person who saw you most clearly? Raquel Welch and Janice Joplain were assigned to opposite ends of everything in 1970. Beautiful enough, not beautiful enough. the standard, the deviation, and they found each other anyway in the smoke and the thrift store and the southern comfort and the active listening.

 They found each other real. Subscribe. The next story goes somewhere nobody has taken you