The Philosopher and the Actress:
Wittgenstein & Raquel Welch
I.
According to the Google AI assistant, Ludwig Wittgenstein was an austere and reclusive Austro-British philosopher who did not know and never met the Hollywood sex symbol and actress Raquel Welch.
Not only did they move in completely different social and professional circles, but Wittgenstein died in Cambridge, in 1951, aged sixty-two, when Miss Welch would have been an eleven-year-old child living in California with her parents.
But even if they didn't cross paths in what passes for the actual world, perhaps their lives were entangled at some weird quantum level. At any rate, I can think of a parallel incident involving the same tool that allows us to make a connection between these two individuals ...
II.
Many younger readers, having grown up in a world of central heating, will probably never have warmed themselves before a real fire place; never watched smoke sucked up a chimney, never emptied an ashpan, never filled a coal scuttle, or handled the various other tools that one needs to maintain a good fire, such as a long metal poker, designed to safely adjust and break up the burning logs or red hot lumps of coal so as to improve airflow.
One person who did know how to handle a poker - though not always in the manner intended - was Herr Wittgenstein and even many non-philosophers will be familiar with the astonishing confrontation with Karl Popper at the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, in October 1946.
Arguing over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles, things grew increasingly heated when Wittgenstein began to wave a poker around to make his case, at one point thrusting it in Popper's direction and challenging him to give an example of a moral rule.
According to Popper, he calmly stood his ground and replied: 'One should not threaten visiting lecturers with a poker.' Infuriated by this mocking response, Wittgenstein - and again we rely on Popper's account of the incident - threw down the poker and stormed out of the room [1].
III.
Interestingly, Raquel Welch also knew how to handle a poker with violent intent ...
According to a recent documentary [2], Welch once threatened her father - an aeronautical engineer from La Paz, Bolivia, of Spanish descent - with said implement during a family argument around the dinner table in which he had thrown a glass of milk in the face of her mother.
She was sixteen at the time and sick of her father's tyrannical behaviour towards her and her mother and this incident - in which he backed down and backed away - changed their relationship forever as well as the dynamic of the household. Thus, it was a defining (and empowering) moment for her [3].
And whilst Popper may have a point - one should probably not threaten visiting professors with a poker - I feel that the young Miss Welch (or Raquel Tejada, as she was known at this time) was justified in standing up to a bully who had humiliated and sought to intimidate her mother on many occasions over many years.
In brief: violent and abusive husbands and fathers deserve to get their comeuppance.
Notes
[1] Whether Popper's account is strictly accurate - or is dramatised for comic effect - is debatable. The most comprehensive account of this confrontation can be found in the best-selling book by David Edmonds and John Eidenow; Wittgenstein's Poker: The story of a ten-minute argument between two great philosophers (Faber & Faber, 2001).
Readers might also like to know that an animated short film entitled Wittgenstein's Poker is currently in post-production, directed by Christian De Vita, written by Casey Cohen, David Edmonds and John Eidenow, starring Brian Cox (as Bertie Russell), Richard E. Grant (as Wittgenstein) and Karl Markovics (as Popper): click here for details, or to lend support via Kickstarter, click here.
[2] I Am Raquel Welch (dir. Olivia Cheng, 2025), is a feature documentary (produced by Network Entertainment) which explores her life and legacy. To watch a trailer on mubi.com, click here.
[3] Those wishing to know more should see Welch's 2010 memoir, Beyond the Cleavage (Weinstein Books), in which she provides an account of this incident with her father and a poker that she gripped with both hands.
