Curtain-raisers:
• Love comes from the most unexpected places and it can be consummated in so many unexpected ways, to wit:
• Showbiz sweethearts did an “emergency” in a uppity hospital where the actress was confined. Imagine how shocked the night-shift nurse was when she opened the door (usually unlocked in hospitals) and found the two in a compromising situation! (Postscript: They are now happily married.)...And what about a then young actor who woke up in his hospital bed and found (not to his horror but to his great pleasure) his actress-girlfriend giving him an oral examination. (Postscript: They broke up not long after he was released from the hospital.)
• There was this couple whose intimate moments were rudely interrupted by the wife’s spirituality. Before the main event, the Born-Again wife would first consult the Bible and pray over themselves. Of course, the actor(-comedian) would lose interest after his wife was done with her “ritual.” (Postscript: They have long been separated. She has remarried and he has remained fancy-free.)
• A colorful actress who has a flair for the dramatic made her foreigner husband feel so insecure by down-grading his bedroom peformance compared, as she would bluntly told him, to that of her politician-lover who, as the song goes, had a way of making her “fly (me) to the moon and let her play among the stars.” After she junked him during their honeymoon in Europe, the poor guy sobbed on the shoulder of his friend-journalist, “What did I not know?” (Postscript: The marriage lasted no longer than two months. She got married again, to a younger non-showbiz guy and he, his compatriot.)
* * *
The crowd blinked and when they looked again, they broke into a laughter as they recognized who the “intruder” was — Jon Santos doing an Imelda Marcos, that’s who!
It’s showtime, folks!
Dressed casually in a red-black striped T-shirt, a visibly sun burned Bongbong came with his wife, the brilliant lawyer Liza Araneta, and their three sons, Sandro (16), Simon (14) and Vincent (12), all in flaming red, on a break from Worth Abbey in Sussex, England, where they continued their schooling from Ilocos Norte where they got their early education (that’s why they speak more fluent Ilocano than Tagalog).
“The Marcoses don’t know how to make daughters,” joked Bongbong. All the Marcos grandchildren are boys: Imee has two and Irene has three. “So we call the boys the Marcos Monsters because they were magulo and makulit when they were young, running around the house like horses.”
Bongbong has showbiz in his blood.
In the ’50s, Imelda passed a screen test at Sampaguita Pictures in a movie starring Fred Montilla (the very first “FM” in her life) but her showbiz career was nipped in the bud when Ferdinand Marcos swept her off to the altar after a whirlwind courtship.
“I didn’t know that,” said Bongbong, well aware, however, of her mom being a patroness of the arts who has groomed Filipino artists (Cecile Licad, etc.) to international stardom.
And what many people probably didn’t know is that Bongbong played himself in Iginuhit ng Tadhana, produced by Sampaguita Pictures as a campaign pitch for Ferdinand when he first run for president in 1965, with Gloria Romero as Imelda, Luis Gonzales as Ferdinand, (now reelectionist Batangas Gov.) Vilma Santos as Imee and Gina Alajar as Irene (now Mrs. Greggy Araneta).
A few years later, a sequel, titled Pinagbuklod ng Langit, was produced also by Sampaguita, directed by Eddie Garcia, with Gloria, Luis, Vilma and Gina reprising their roles and Jose “Jonjie” Aranda (first husband of Bongbong’s fellow Nacionalista, reelectionist Sen. Loren Legarda; their marriage was annulled in 1986) playing Bongbong.
Like his sisters exposed to the limelight since he was a three-year-old toddler, Bongbong the public persona is an open book (that includes glimpses from his love life to the wild rumor that he was killed and taken over by a “clone”...funny that one, wasn’t it?)
Away from the maddening crowd, Bongbong relaxes by being with his family whom he entertains with soothing music on his flute (he also plays the saxophone), a talent he has shown on TV guestings. He enjoys listening to the music of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Ella Fitzgerald, Wynton Marsalis, Eric Clapton, Pepe Smith and Cecile Licad.
How is Bongbong as a father and a husband?
“As a father,” said Liza (who is related to the Aranetas, one of them Mar Roxas [running mate of Liberal Party standard bearer Noynoy Aquino] whose mom, Judy Araneta-Roxas, is her ninang), “he’s hands-on. He would help change the diapers of our kids when they were babies.” Liza and Bongbong met and matched in New York. “As a husband, well, he’s the best.”
Asked if he would allow any or all of his kids (whom Tempo’s Ronald Constantino described as “artistahin”) to join showbiz, Bongbong said, “If that’s what they want, I won’t stop them.”
After all, as I’ve been saying, showbiz runs in the family. It was Imee who spearheaded the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines in the early ’80s and who produced the TV kiddie show Kaluskos Musmos (where Quezon City mayoral candidate, incumbent Vice Mayor Herbert Bautista, started his acting career).
Asked to give a one-word description of their father, the boys smiled.
Sandro: “Hardworking!”
Simon: “Unique!”
Vincent: “Persistent!”
The Imelda Marcos “clone” would have given a kilometric description had she not come late, “uninvited.” Hehehehehe!
(E-mail reactions at rickylo@philstar.net.ph or at entphilstar@yahoo.com)