Here's to the ladies this March

March is women’s month and I am now reminded of the great ladies who gave significant contributions to local show business. The artistry and dedication they lent to the entertainment profession should always be acknowledged and appreciated.

The highest form of honor for performers in the industry is being conferred National Artist. For the longest time, followers of Nora Aunor had been pushing for the superstar to get this award. Maybe that will not happen very soon since no one knows when Nora plans to return to the Philippines.

And if Nora is hailed National Artist, the supporters of Vilma Santos will also insist that the same honor be given to the actress-governor. Truthfully, Vilma deserves it. She may have lagged behind Nora in the beginning as a film icon, but she caught up eventually and may now be declared a legend in terms of career longevity.

As an actress, she starred in some of the finest Filipino films ever made and had won acting awards for these classics. As a member of the movie profession, I only found out a few years ago how she had been a great benefactress to some industry-related projects. I stumbled upon this when she was made to present the Natatanging Gawad Urian to Ricardo Lee, who couldn’t resist (surely out of gratitude) telling the audience how Vilma had been contributing to his writing workshops. For sure she has other charities, but she will never be comfortable discussing these.

Rosa Rosal could also be National Artist, except that if you measure strictly the time she spent as a humanitarian that would eclipse her length of service as a movie actress — and she will always be the greatest. Blame her for being selfless and for dedicating more of her time to charity than to her own career, but how to categorize her would be confusing to whoever is manning the National Awards committee.

Actually, Ms. Rosal can thumb her nose up at the National Artist honors since she already has a Ramon Magsaysay award — Asia’s version of the Nobel Prize — as a humanitarian. She got a huge cash prize for that — not a cent of which she touched since the amount is still being used to send poor, but deserving students to college.

Lea Salonga may also be a candidate as National Artist, except that she is too young for that at this point. Award-giving bodies are rather wary of giving lifetime achievement honors to those 50 and below since the folly of youth can still make them go wayward and become an embarrassment to the field of arts or society in general. But wouldn’t it be interesting to see Lea Salonga misbehave? Oh, do it only once and I will close my eyes and promise not to tell.

Now that we are in the subject of honoring women in the arts, I feel sad that there is one member from popular entertainment whose contributions — so I feel — had not been sufficiently recognized. She is singer-actress Celeste Legaspi.

Maybe you’d ask where this idea is coming from. To tell you honestly, it just hit me some months back. I don’t know where Celeste is and what she is doing. Perhaps playing granny to her children’s kids, if she already has some — I am clueless. The last time I saw her was when she plugged a show in Startalk 11 years ago.

However, if you analyze it carefully, I believe that Celeste had been ignored by most awards organizations. I’m not sure if she got a TOWNS (Ten Outstanding Women of the New Society) since this body was very active at the prime of her career.

But Celeste definitely deserves recognition for her artistry and contributions to Philippine music. She was among the early exponents of original Pinoy music and was the first head of the OPM — Organisasyon ng Pilipinong Mang-aawit.

Was she also an OPM in the negative sense — as in Oh, promise me (one who is not true to her word of fulfilling a pledge to give this and that), as they say in the very materialistic world of show business? That I don’t know — ask Boy Abunda, who handled her PR for many, many years. Besides, that is immaterial and I’m just trying to be cute.

Seriously, Celeste will always be known as one of the best singers in the country (she was a fine actress, too, and was Lino Brocka-trained). As an artist-entrepreneur, she mounted some of the most creative live musical shows in the concert scene. She pushed for anything and everything Pinoy — the best that Philippine artistry could offer.

Toward the late ‘80s, she had great visions for Philippine musical theater and began by producing Katy that starred Mitch Valdes as the vaudeville great Katy de la Cruz. That was very expensive to produce. I don’t know if she earned anything from that. Maybe not because there was no follow-up project that was as gargantuan in scale after that. But heaven knows she tried. Unfortunately, government never really gave enough support to the arts and Celeste couldn’t have done it alone.

Celeste, however, should have been given an A for effort for that project alone. Katy will always be one of the greatest — and most entertaining — local musicales ever staged in the Philippines.

As a political activist, she was also among the local artists to actively fight the Marcos regime after the assassination of Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. During the four days of EDSA I, she even put up a soup kitchen as part of her contribution to People Power.

I am not insisting that she be named National Artist — like her father Cesar Legaspi was for the visual arts — but as an observer of local entertainment I am just reminding awards organizations that maybe we had been ignoring Celeste.

She may not get that recognition, but in my heart she will always be one of the greatest women in the popular arts.