Neonita Bona: Once a starlet...

MANILA, Philippines - I could have been a big star, like Gloria Romero, if only I had not…

Thoughts like this occasionally flit through Neonita Bona, a Premiere Productions and Sampaguita Pictures starlet during the early and mid-‘50s, hailed as a “star for tomorrow” by the movie press then. “Panahon pa ni Mahoma,” she giggles. She never became a star, and she never married. But there are no regrets. She is happy in the bosom of her family, specifically siblings, nephews and nieces.

Neonita (Nitz or Tita Nitz to friends, relatives and former choir colleagues) was born 77 years ago in the scenic and now famous town of Caramoan, Camarines Sur, to Quintin Bona, a provincial treasurer of Spanish descent, and his wife Felicidad Mendoza. She was the sixth of eight children, four boys and four girls.

When Neonita was a teenager, the family settled down in Manila, where she became a big movie fan. Her idols were Pancho Magalona, Tita Duran, Oscar Moreno, Fred Montilla, Tessie Quintana, et al. She would collect and cut out their pictures, “at tuwang-tuwa ako pag nakikita ko sila.”

It was the comedian Lopito who “discovered” her, and she became a bit player in the movies of Premiere Productions and Sampaguita Pictures. Her first picture was Umaga na, Giliw starring Pancho and Tita, Alicia Vergel and Cesar Ramirez. She remembers with amusement her role as a Biblical dancer, with veils and all, a la Salome, in Pagsilang ng Mesias, with Fernando Poe Jr. as a shepherd boy and Tirso Cruz III as the baby Jesus!

The matriarch of Sampaguita, Doña Loleng Vera, asked her to undergo a screen test which she passed. And Doc Perez, according to her, offered to build her up alongside Gloria Romero. But then, she was “introduced” in Premiere’s Dyesebel “and once you are introduced, para bang may contract ka na.”

Neonita was first asked to be one of the sirena friends of Dyesebel, but would you believe she had to bare her breasts for this (at least that is how she recalls it) and she refused. So instead she played the mother of the baby Dyesebel. Other roles were in Pandora, starring Leile Moreno, Unang Halik (she was the friend of Corazon Rivas), and Lalo Kitang Mamahalin, in which she played a nurse. Based on a Liwayway novel, this starred Pempe Padilla and Corazon Rivas, and was directed by Artemio Marquez.

Edna Luna and Rivas, for some reason, didn’t like her, according to Neonita, and during a dubbing session she cried over this. There were no managers then, and she was paid P250 at week’s end even if she wasn’t doing a picture. She remembers that Pempe Padilla, a star, was paid P10,000 per film.

Soon she began to be noticed by the movie press, and there were many write-ups (which she collected and shows to visitors today upon request). In an October 1953 article by Nena Srait, the Literary Song-Movie Magazine hailed her as a “star for tomorrow” along with Barbara Perez, Susan Roces and Amalia Fuentes.

The blurb declared that “Neonita Bona has a winning smile, winsome beauty, whistle-bait figure, and a flair for dramatics…”

There were even intrigues. One reporter of Kislap speculated that Neonita was a “burlesque queen” of Astor Theater. It turned out that it was only a Japanese dancer who looked like Neonita.

All this came to a sudden end when it was discovered she had pleurisy, a disease of the lungs which may have dire consequences if one is not careful: “Hindi ka pwedeng magutom, maulanan, mapagod… kung hindi mamatay ka. Dapat rest.” So her father ordered her to stop working and she returned to an early love — music.

Neonita, a fine soprano, had a voice teacher, Naty Tañyawa, and they would sing at weddings, wakes, and other occasions. She joined the Andres Bonifacio Concert Choir, led by eminent composer Jerry Dadap, participated in Dadap’s landmark musical Andres Bonifacio: Ang Dakilang Anak Pawis, and stayed with the choir until she retired, feeling she was getting along in years.

Today Neonita lives a quiet life, taking care of her nieces and nephews and, in turn, being taken care of by them. She divides her time between the family homes in T. Morato, Quezon City and New Jersey. A devout Catholic, religion is one of her comforts. And from time to time, sense of humor ever present, she reminisces about the old days when she was a starlet on the brink of stardom.