My brush with greatness

(Conclusion)

Eddie Romero’s very first work as a scriptwriter was called Ang Maestra. Produced by RDR Films, it cast Rosa del Rosario as a city-bred schoolteacher who had to adjust to the rural way of life after having been assigned to the province. The film was directed by Romero’s "discoverer," Gerry de Leon. It also starred Rogelio de la Rosa as del Rosario’s leading man. A blockbuster hit, Ang Maestra was released in 1941 and was the inaugural feature of Life Theater in Quiapo.

His next script was Anong Ganda Mo which had to be shelved temporarily because of the outbreak of the Pacific War. Also directed by De Leon, the film is a slapstick comedy about the Philippine Revolution. It was eventually finished and shown in 1942 at the height of the Japanese Occupation.

Eddie Romero was actually already on his way to becoming a film director (very young at 18), except that the war years intervened and his supposed first directorial project, Margarita had to be shelved for good. After the Liberation, Romero went into print and edited a magazine called Manila Events Mirror, which sadly had to cease publication after only less than a year.

He returned to the movies – once more as a screenwriter – and again, upon the invitation of Gerry de Leon, who asked him to do the screenplay for So Long America which starred Angel Esmeralda (the late Jay Ilagan’s father) and Fely Vallejo, the grandmother of Janno Gibbs.

The following year, he wrote the script again (for De Leon) for Isumpa Mo, Giliw a melodrama that topbilled Carmen Rosales. Shortly after, he became associate director of Mameng, Iniibig Kita, which he practically finished since De Leon by then was moving out of Sampaguita to move to another film studio.

Then, finally, he got the chance to do his first solo directorial assignment when he did Ang Kamay ng Diyos in 1947 – still for Sampaguita which had become his home studio. (He was so well-loved by the Vera-Perezes that they even gave his surname to then newcomer, Gloria Galla, who eventually became the beloved movie queen Gloria Romero.)

He directed other films for the studio, one of which was Hindi Kita Malimot, which starred Rosales, Leopoldo Salcedo and Linda Esrella.

In 1950, his father was appointed ambassador to the Court of St. James and Eddie Romero decided to join his family in London.

A year later, he returned to the Philippines and resumed his interrupted carrer as a film director and even won the Best Director award (for Ang Prinsesa at ang Pulubi) in the first Maria Clara awards. He also did a lot of Pancho Magalona-Tita Duran box-office hits.

One Pancho-Tita film he made was Ang Ating Pag-ibig (where Romero’s directorial credit appears as Enrique Moreno), which I only saw the other year on videotape. It’s the story of two doctors – actually twins – one debonair, the other with a disfigured face which was the result of an accident. They meet a blind patient (Tita Duran) and the one with the disfigured face successfully restores her eyesight. When the patient’s bandage is renowned, however, she mistakes the good-looking one as the doctor who did her successful operation and promptly falls in love with him almost breaking the heart of the other one who is also in love with her.

Set in Baguio, the story and direction of Ang Ating Pag-ibig is very impressive. It was another indication that Eddie Romero was always been ahead of his time.

In 1953, he did Maldita which launched Rita Gomez to full stardom. Very effective as a soap opera, it featured over-the-top scenes and dialogues. Remember the scene in Insiang where Hilda Koronel threatens to burn the face of her mother (Mona Lisa) with a hot flat iron? Rita Gomez in Maldita also did this (to Etang Discher, her employer) but made good her threat in retaliation. Discher later throws a pan with boiling cooking oil at the face of Gomez’s mother (played by Rosa Mia).

By the mid-‘50s Romero left Sampaguita to work for other film companies until he began to make B-movies for Hollywood with Gerry de Leon. Their first foreign project was The Day of the Trumpet.

Eventually, he set up Hemisphere Productions and continued making co-production ventures: The Walls of Hell, The Brides of Blood Island, Mad Doctor of Blood Island, etc.

In the mid-’70s, Philippine cinema was entering a second Golden Age (began by Tinimbang Ka Nguni’t Kulang and Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag) and this prompted Romero (who was by then based in the US) to return to Manila and resume his directorial career here. It was during this period when he worked on Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon, hailed by the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino in 1976 as the Best Picture of the year and, later, one of the best 10 films of the ‘70s and, in 2002, as one of the best movies of the past 30 years.

Eddie Romero made several other outstanding film products after that: Sinong Kapiling, Sinong Kasiping and that monumental movie project, Aguila, again in 1980.

Early this week, Eddie Romero was declared National Artist – a fitting tribute to a genius who has devoted his life to making films, some of which are undeniably among the greatest in the roster of Filipino movies.