If a picture is said to paint a thousand words, imagine how many thousands of words a thousand pictures can paint?
Scan the pictures in the just-released book, Carmen Rosales, Ang Tangi Kong Pag-Ibig, and you will know what I mean. The pictures tell the whole story.
Published by STAR columnist Danny Dolor (Remember When?) who provided the pictures from his rare collections, designed by Cesar Hernando and written by US-based Manny Fernandez, a walking Carmen Rosales encyclopedia, the “Tribute to the Movie Queen†is a celebration of the golden days of Philippine Cinema when the Big Three (Premiere, LVN and Sampaguita Pictures) came up with movies that extolled the Filipino custom (as an LVN movie put it, “Filipino Custom, No Touchâ€) and painted “the good, the true and the beautiful†predating former First Lady Imelda Marcos’ New Society mantra.
The article by Fernandez (who came home with his wife Aida purposely for the book’s launch) sums up the essence of Carmen Rosales, the local counterpart of Greta Garbo who quietly slipped into anonymity when she thought that her reign was over — although it was never really over because the Carmen Rosales legend lives on and on and on in songs that will never die…Maalaala Mo Kaya? (immortalized in Charo Santos’ long-running TV drama series) and Ang Tangi Kong Pag-Ibig sung by the love-struck, young and old alike.
Credit should also go to the book editor, Tempo columnist Ronald Constantino, who made Fernandez’s story more crispy, like sugar-free cookies munched straight from the oven.
Carmen was paired with that era’s top leading men in movies produced separately by the Big Three, the likes of Rogelio de la Rosa, Jaime de la Rosa, Oscar Moreno, Jose Padilla Jr., Pancho Magalona and Leopoldo Salcedo.
Buy a copy. It’s worth more than the price (P900 each, available at the CCP and, soon, at the National Bookstores.)
(E-mail reactions at entphilstar@yahoo.com.)