Modern Living

Loving the Zippers

January 21, 2012 | 12:00am

Everyone’s all excited in the city. No, it’s not the circus at the Senate (a costume extravaganza — with robes and all — involving a Game of Thrones). It’s the filming of what surely will be a Hollywood blockbuster, one that has the potential to put Manila, and the Philippines, back into the world’s consciousness.

The filming of the fourth of the popular Bourne franchise may leave a legacy more than just the couple of million dollars invested in the hiring of extras, bit players and fix-ups of locations in the city chosen as backdrops. The movie will reach audiences worldwide and give them a reason to Google Manila. This may hopefully get a good number of them on a plane to find more fun in the Philippines.

Concerns that the choice of seedier locations of the metropolis may be more a minus than a plus are balanced by the fact that the production will also film in Palawan. They are reportedly also set to shoot in the more historic quarters like Intramuros and Binondo. The film Hangover 2 bade well for Bangkok despite exposing the city’s underbelly (and associated anatomical parts). The shots of the resort islands were breathtaking.

Colonel Walter Loving could be played by Denzel Washington.

I had advocated this route to instant tourism stardom for Manila in a previous article. The story of Captain Walter H. Loving is tailor-made for Hollywood. The captain was a dashing African-American hero who rose up from the ranks via one of the few routes available to a black man: music.

Loving came over with the volunteer troops and stayed on to serve in the Philippine Constabulary. He found a niche for himself by establishing the Philippine Constabulary Band in the early 1900s. He and his talented Filipino musicians caught the eye of Governor General Howard Taft, who eventually invited Loving and his band to play at his inauguration a few years later; the only foreign band ever to play at a US president’s inauguration.

Loving kept up with his mission to lift up the prospects of both Filipinos and black officers and men. He nurtured his band, touring them all over America and Asia and winning accolades everywhere they played. His four-decade career reached its zenith with his promotion to colonel and the establishment of the PC orchestra. He and his orchestra wowed the crowds at the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair.

Trudl Dubsky Zipper’s wonderful watercolors were finally published in 1994, fifty years after she painted them.

The colonel and his wife were caught by the Japanese and interred at the UST. They were let out because of their advanced age. In the battle for Manila, it was rumored that Walter saved Filipino lives by putting himself between hostages and bayonet-armed Japanese Marines. He lost his life in the effort.

There is another story from that era that is also deserving of being shown on the silver screen. It is also a story that involves music, a band leader (of sorts), and the horrors of war. This story, however, differs from Loving’s in that it also involves dance and the magic of watercolor painting.

Herbert and Trudl Zipper were two Austrians that fate transported to the far-flung Philippine islands. The exile to the Far East allowed them to survive persecution in the continent but put them through hell and back, which was Manila in the occupation years between 1941 and 1945.

Trudl Dubsky was an accomplished dancer and dance teacher. Born in Vienna in 1913, she started to dance at nine and in five short years rose to become a star in Europe. She added choreographing and teaching to her repertoire before she reached the ripe age of 20. In 1937 she got an invitation to set up a dance program for the University of the Philippines. She accepted the invitation and, as war spread in Europe, she decided to stay.

Left in Europe was her fiancé Herbert Zipper. They had met in Vienna, the cultural capital of Europe, where he was studying at the Vienna Music Academy. He trained to be a composer and conductor but his career was cut short by the Anschluss (Germany’s forced annexation of Austria). In 1938 he and his brothers were rounded up and incarcerated at the infamous Dachau concentration camp.

Herbert survived by turning to music. He secretly formed an orchestra using instruments secretly fashioned from scrap wood and wire. He and a fellow inmate even composed and wrote a song, Dachau Leid, which spread throughout the camp and even to other camps, lifting the spirits of the prisoners.

Herbert and his brothers survived because they were moved to another camp due to crowding and because, miraculously, their parents, working through channels in London, managed to get them released in 1939. He and his family were reunited in Paris in the middle of that year.

Towards the end of 1939 Herbert received an invitation to Manila to set up the Manila Symphony Orchestra. He was recommended to the patrons of the orchestra by Trudl. Herbert sailed for Manila. Before the year was out, he and Trudl were married. They soon made waves in the Manila cultural scene. Trudl set up a dance company, “Ballet Moderne,” and Herbert started whipping the MSO into shape. But within two years the war caught up with them as the Japanese invaded in December 1941.

The Zippers were put in a camp and interrogated for four months. They were eventually released. The next few years were a struggle for survival as they had lost everything they owned. They made ends meet by giving private music and dance lessons in their apartment building in Ermita.

Life in Manila got increasingly more difficult from 1943 onwards. The suffering, drama and even the lighter side of this experience was documented by Trudl in a series of watercolor sketches she produced in those years. Trudl had drawn and sketched since her teenage years. Her skill crossed into design as she also created costumes for ballets and performances.

Trudl Dubsky was a dance prodigy, rising to stardom in Europe after only five years of training.

Trudl took to sketching scenes from life in Manila during occupation. She documented scenes from daily life of both the occupied and the occupiers. Trudl sketched and painted with a humorous touch, only touching on more dramatic subjects a few times during the Battle for Manila.

The sketches (some reproduced here) are in color and give us a glimpse into what our parents and grandparents went through in those dark days. You can identify key landmarks and districts in Trudls sketches — the Monumento in Caloocan, the Jai Alai building, the Escolta, Santa Cruz Church, the UST, port area and the suburbs of old Manila like Sta Ana.

Unlike Loving, the Zippers survived the violent Battle of Manila, where over 200,000 were wounded or died — mostly civilians. Herbert, like Loving, also saved lives as he got word to Americans to delay the shelling of areas in the city that were full of civilians. By March 1945 the city was liberated. The Zippers immediately set to piece back their lives and their art. Herbert managed to get the surviving members of his orchestra together for a victory concert a few months later. It was held in the ruins of the Sta Cruz church. The American authorities got wind of the concert and sponsored a few more to boost the morale of the troops and Manilans reeling from the trauma of war.

In 1946 Herbert and Trudl sailed for the US to help raise funds for a Philippine Cultural Rehabilitation program they had helped start. Once in the US the program stalled and the couple eventually stayed and reunited with relatives. The couple received offers for teaching positions on the East Coast. Eventually they settled moved slowly westward through Chicago, finally settling in California by the 1950s.

Flooding in Manila was a seasonal fact.

The Zippers continued to visit the Philippines, Trudl choreographing and mounting ballets, while Herbert conducted the Manila Symphony Orchestra well into the ‘50s. In the ‘60s they still continued their work in the Philippines but they were also busy with their advocacies to bring music and dance to American public schools. Trudl passed away in 1976, succumbing to cancer.

Trudl’s sketches were compiled by Herbert in the mid-‘60s but its publication was delayed. He immersed himself in his missions for music after she died. He expanded his territory to China and was one of the first American cultural workers there in the 1980s. He continued to compose and conduct until his death in 1997. He was 92.

In 1994, friends published Trudl’s sketches. I bought a copy at a book fair in Manila in 1998. I had always wanted to write about the Zippers but the book got buried in my archives till now. A friend, Tats Manahan, had done a TV documentary on survivors of the war including the Zippes in the ‘90s but I was living in Singapore at the time and did not get to see it. In the ‘90s a film documentary on Herbert was nominated for an Oscar.

This all brings us back to Manila in 2012. The buzz that the Bourne film will create may also open the doors to the dramatization of the stories of Loving and the Zippers. The movies of them will be period pieces, one a few decades ahead of the other, and overlapping in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Many of the locations for these movies are extant (like parts of the Manila Hotel and Intramuros) or could be recreated.

Trudl continued painting after the liberation. Here she catches the attention of GIs as she paint the ruins of the Manila Cathedral.

These recreations may actually be permanent and form the base for revived historic quarters of Manila. Parts of Binondo, Sta Cruz, Ermita and Malate have remnants of the pre-war years just waiting to be brought back to life. Even parts of outlying cities like Pasig, San Juan and Quezon City have architecture from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. The houses of New Manila and Kamuning, the Balara Filters, the older buildings of the UP in Diliman come to mind. Streets in the older parts of Pasig and Marikina could double as old Manila streets. Farther away, one can find wonderful period settings at UP Los Baños and its surrounding towns.

When I wrote about Loving, I had speculated that the role would be good for Denzel Washington or Jamie Foxx. For the tale of the Zippers, Rachel Weisz would be perfect to play Trudl (although I just found out that she is being considered to play opposite Colin Firth in a World War II epic set in Burma). Herbert Zipper could be played by Bradley Cooper. I’m sure he won’t mind coming back to Asia. In fact, if the DOT and Manila supported the effort, the two films could be shot back to back!

This could be our Hollywood decade. If you wanted to take the setting a few decades forward, you could even shoot a movie about an American embroiled in Philippine politics — Harry Stonehill. Finally, we could do a Slumdog Millionaire, but set in General Santos City and starring Bruno Mars as a young Manny Pacquiao. Any other ideas?