Been A While……

The Dolphy I Got to Know

I wish a lot of Filipinos below the age of 30 got to see performances from Dolphy like the following:

One of the great things I experienced growing up in the 1970s was that I got to see a lot of old Filipino movies in the afternoons through TV channels GMA-7 and RPN-9.  For me, it was a daily trip back in time for  I was able to see a lot of classic Filipino actors and actresses in their prime.  One of them was Dolphy and I counted his old movies among my all-time favorites. 

The above clip is from a 1953 movie called “Sa Isang Sulyap Mo, Tita”, released by an old Filipino movie studio called Sampaguita Pictures.  The clip shows why I believe Dolphy ranks as truly one of our greatest and most talented screen artists.  His old movies showed a man who was not only a gifted comedian and actor but also a great dancer.   At the height of his career, few could match the grace and fluidity of movement he showed on the dance floor.  Dancing with him in the video clip are fellow comedians Aruray and the late Teroy De Guzman.  Though the latter two became known to younger generations of Filipino moviegoers for playing supporting roles in comedy films, like Dolphy, they perfected their acting, singing and dancing skills in places like the Manila Grand Opera House years before they broke into the movies.

The clip above also reminded me of one of my favorite Dolphy dance sequences and it involved the late Nida Blanca, another great actress and dancer.  In a 1967 movie the title of which I unfortunately could not recall, Dolphy’s broken-hearted character drank himself to sleep after having a nasty argument with his sweetheart played by Nida Blanca.  As his character fell into a deep sleep, the movie transitioned to a dream sequence where Dolphy met Nida’s character at the Luneta (Rizal Park) one lovely evening.  The dance they subsequently performed (with the instrumental version of “Hey There” playing in the background) show why they rank among the best, if not the best, dancers in Filipino movies.

I’m starting to see a good number of old Filipino movies show up on YouTube.  A very good number of them date back to the 1940s and 1950s.  Kudos to the individuals who are posting them on YouTube for by doing so, they’re helping reintroduce Filipino acting legends and old movies to younger generations of Filipinos who never got to see such performances.  It’s unfortunate that the passage of time has left some lasting damage to the video and audio qualities of those films.  However, in spite of those imperfections, I just hope that the youth will take the time and effort to watch those clips and if they do, I hope that they develop a deeper appreciation for the accomplishments of previous generations of Filipino movie artists.

A Sad, Bad End

I can’t really say that I’m surprised about the reported suicide of former Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes.  Deep down, I guess he was relatively decent guy who fell in with the wrong company which in this case unfortunately is the corrupt upper echelons of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). 

It just goes to show how deeply embedded the culture of corruption has grown in Philippine life.  If corruption is so widespread that even former PMA graduates are no longer immune to them, then who in government is left for us to trust?  No wonder that the average Filipino remains so pessimistic about the country’s future even when presented with very good economic data.  Virtually every government institution has been tainted with corruption, even the Supreme Court.

Being in the military is like being in a fraternity.  To get ahead, one must conform to the culture.  Unfortunately, that culture has grown to become so corrupt too.  To be able to rise to the very top, it has become almost impossible for an individual to avoid getting involved in the corruption there.  It’s hard to walk through a rainstorm without getting wet.

I am no longer sure if I’ll ever see the day when corrupt big-time Filipino politicians and government officials are herded off to jail to serve serious jail times.  I am highly doubtful of that ever happening.  Whenever I talk to Filipino friends about the situation in the Philippines, one thing always frustrates me.  To a person, they all long for that PURE and HONEST politician who will rise and change the Philippines for all of us.  And yet, I haven’t heard any of them say that they’ve ever paid the right amount of tax to the Philippine government.  They won’t even commit themselves to doing  it.  They all try to rationalize their distorted view by saying “Why should I bother paying the correct amount of taxes when the government will steal the money anyway?”  Guess what?  Tax evasion is corruption as well.  By denying the government the funds it needs to properly operate, a tax evader helps grow and worsen the country’s culture of corruption.  Meaningful change has to come from somewhere and it has to come from within us. 

We ought to stop wishing for a corruption-free Philippines if we’re not willing to be corruption-free ourselves.

“Buhat”

This post and the following video clip from a pre-war Filipino movie are lovingly dedicated to the memory of my dear grandmother.

The clip above is from a 1939 Filipino movie called “Tunay na Ina” (“Real Mother”) and the two artists you see on the clip are the film’s lead stars:  Rudy Concepcion (1912-1940) and Rosario Moreno (1916-1945).  Both were popular stars of the time and were famous for both their acting and singing talents.

The clip also brought back memories of my dear grandmother.  This month will mark the 41st death anniversary of my dear “Nanay”, my paternal grandmother.  I was a few months shy of my 4th birthday when she passed away on February 15, 1970 from stomach cancer.  At the time, my parents and I lived in a three-unit apartment-style dwelling in Manila that a late uncle had built in 1967 for his own family and for my grandmother and his siblings.  My uncle and his family lived in one unit, my parents and I lived in the middle unit, while my grandmother and my unmarried uncles and aunts lived in the third.

My parents both worked during my first three years and thus, they left me in the care of Nanay and a relative named May, my father’s second cousin.  Needless to say that I ended up spending a lot of time with my grandmother and became close to her.  I remember my Nanay singing me some lullabies to get me to sleep at night and once I had fallen asleep, my father would come to my Nanay’s room to pick me up and take me back to our apartment.

Two memories stand out from the time my grandmother passed away.  The first one was at the Metropolitan Hospital in downtown Manila.  I remember my parents, my uncles and aunts, and some cousins standing around a hospital bed.  My grandmother was on the bed with her eyes closed.  She looked to me as if she was asleep.  But what I found different was that almost everyone around the bed was crying.  My mother was crying while my father looked quietly at my grandmother.  As a child, that was my first encounter with the passing of a loved one.

I don’t remember much from her wake except that we had it at home.  She was buried at our family plot at Manila’s North Cemetery.  I remember the moment when her casket was being interred.  I didn’t know what exactly was going on.  I was simply too young to understand what Death was and thus at that moment, it never occurred to me that I will no longer see her.

My grandmother was born on July 24, 1910 in the town of Angono, Rizal.  She was quite a pretty, fair complexioned lass judging from the ONE picture our family has of her that was taken when she was in her early teens.   She attended the same high school in Manila as my grandfather and they were married sometime in late 1925 or early 1926 when she was all of 15, and he was 16.

Typical of the women of her time, she settled into the life of a housewife to raise 12 children while my grandfather handled (or mishandled) the family business.  Though they stayed together, life with my grandfather must have been tough for her.  My grandfather, typical of the attitudes of men of his time, ruled the home and his word was law.  He handled the family business but also mishandled it through his vices namely, women and gambling.  My grandmother was quite subservient to her husband and had to silently suffer through all that.

The decade of the 1930s was a period of feast and famine for the family.  The decade started off with my grandfather growing a business that my great grandmother helped him start.  He operated a gas station and eventually grew the business to four gas stations by the middle part of the decade.  The family enjoyed a certain degree of prosperity which was evident from the family pictures taken from that time.  The family owned cars at a time when very few Filipino families could even afford one.  I was told that my grandfather and his brothers even socialized regularly with people who came from prominent families.  The family enjoyed a prosperous life until about 1938 or 1939.  As was mentioned earlier, my grandfather had his vices and his failure to control them eventually led to the loss of all gas stations by the end of the decade.  It is a material loss that our family has never fully recovered from to this day.

By the time my father (he was the 8th of 12 children) was born in 1939, life had become quite hard for the family.  The war years (1941-1945) didn’t help with the family’s struggles either.  Though he tried to go back into business, my grandfather got sick along the way and was never able to recover what he had lost.  He eventually passed away in 1957 at the relatively young age of 48.  His passing left my grandmother with the difficult job of raising a large family.

Unlike his older siblings, my father had to work from a very young age in order to help support the family.  The loss of the family business actually became a blessing in the end because the tough years strengthened the love and bond among my father’s siblings.  A couple of my uncles helped support all their younger siblings through college.  In the decades that followed, they also helped send a number of their nephews and nieces to college.  Though the brood of 12 is now down to just six, the surviving siblings remain very supportive of each other.

My grandmother’s life attained a certain level of comfort in the 1960s, a decade that turned out to be the last of her life.  By then, a number of her sons were gainfully employed and were earning enough to adequately support the rest of the family.  She now had several grandchildren to happily deal with.  I count myself fortunate for being born in that decade because it gave me a few years to feel and enjoy her love and affection.

Now a few more words about the video clip.

The song “Buhat” was penned by Miguel “Mike” Velarde, Jr., the same composer who wrote “Dahil Sa Iyo“.  The song enjoyed a revival and wide popularity during the mid-1970s when another great Filipino singer, Rico J. Puno, recorded a version of it.

As for the movie’s two lead actors, both suffered sad and untimely deaths.  Rudy Concepcion died from peptic ulcers in 1940, the year after the movie above was released.  He was only 28 at the time of his death.  He came from a gifted family in Manila and a close relative, Roberto Concepcion (1903-1987), served with distinction as a champion of civil and individual liberties when he served as Chief Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court from 1966 to 1973.

The movie’s lead actress, Rosario Moreno died in the last days of the Second World War in Manila in 1945 at the age of 29.  She died when her house in Sampaloc, Manila took a direct hit from a Japanese bombing.

Biographical information on Mr. Concepcion and Ms. Moreno courtesy of Video48.