Mario Montenegro, the Brown Adonis of the ‘50s, shed his debonair looks in the Sampaguita movie Alyas Sakay (1961), the story of a barber from Tondo who led a pocket rebellion in Laguna against the American colonizers. To the ordinary people, the long-haired Sakay was some kind of folk hero, but to the American authorities he was a bandit, a murderer, a thief out to be captured and killed.
Much earlier, in 1939, Lamberto Avellana directed Sakay for Filippine Films with Salvador Zaragoza in the title role and Leopoldo Salcedo as his comrade in arms. In the late ‘90s, Julio Diaz topbilled another filmbio.
Mario played other historical characters: Asedillo in Kilabot sa Makiling, Dagohoy, Ramon Magsaysay in Terrorize Panay and Andres Bonifdacio in Unang Alay. — RKC