'Remember When?': Great memories, great celebrities
In July 1969, when American astronauts landed on the moon, a Filipino conquered the universe. She was 18-year-old Gloria Diaz. In a beauty pageant televised worldwide, she was crowned Miss Universe.
As he took his first step on the moon, Neil Armstrong was quoted to have said: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
It was probably no less for the Philippines and Gloria, who took the world by storm. International photographers flashed their cameras shortly after anchor Bob Barker announced Gloria’s name winning the title, the Philippines’ first.
Danny’s collection
The pictures captured the face of the new Miss Universe: how she looked that night—so young, so beautiful, so sweet, yet so smart; her youth, her glorious smile, that towering feeling, all landing in Manila papers the following day, her story rivalling that of Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landing on the moon.
Some of these photographs caught the imagination of a young man in Batangas. He was Danny L. Dolor, son of a wealthy couple. His father was pharmacist-businessman Leon Dolor of Lipa and his mother, Soledad L. Dolor of Tanauan, who would later become an assemblywoman.
Danny has collected so many pictures of so many celebrities, most of them in the movie industry, ahead of Gloria. It turned out that he was—and still is—a great film enthusiast. Gloria Diaz would later join the movies.
As far back as he could remember, Danny has always been collecting souvenirs of interesting events, news clippings or magazine articles, books, or objects of art, memorabilia of any kind, photos, and paraphernalia of any sort which hold significance.
Beautiful women, men
Danny kept copies of Gloria’s pictures, along with those of other celebrities: pretty women and their leading men, and even the not-so good looking ones, in various stages of their lives and careers, in costumes or half-naked, some in black and white, the most visible proof that the pictures belonged to a bygone era; the handsome men and women looked raw, their pulchritude obviously untouched by medical and vanity science, but they didn’t look unsophisticated.
His collection was a treasure trove of photographs showcasing the stars of the Philippine entertainment scene, possibly covering the last 100 years, from Atang de la Rama and Carmen Rosales and Rogelio dela Rosa, Gloria Romero and Delia Razon, to Amalia Fuentes and Romeo Vazquez and Susan Roces and Fernando Poe Jr, to Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos, among other greats.
By their looks, by their hairstyles, by their clothes, most of the stars mirrored some of the best of Philippine movies, if not of Philippine pop culture and lifestyle, the past many decades.
Over the years, Danny would accumulate more pictures after some of these people became his friends, including Susan Roces and Vilma Santos, who became mayor of his hometown.
He stored these safely, “like those of (my) family’s photo albums that bring back memories.” Indeed, like he was keeping the memorabilia of his own father and mother.
“The photos may be sharp or faint, but definitely, they have been useful as navigators of a certain era, of a certain generation,” he wrote in his prologue of another book, the biography of his mother titled Soledad L. Dolor, Simple Family Remembrance.
Where it began
Before her marriage and before her showbiz career, Yolanda was Maria Luisa Hernandez of Macabebe, Pampanga. She grew up in San Diego, California with her Filipino father and Mexican mother. Except for some senior citizens, nobody would probably remember her until she returned to the country and married millionaire Leo Prieto. And the once movie star became Mary Prieto, the known socialite and a society columnist.
Thus, the column, titled “Remember When? From the collection of Danny Dolor,” was born. A showcase of old photographs with an accompanying short essay written by veteran entertainment journalist Ronald Constantino, the column was a trip down memory lane.
For Ricky Lo
In all, Danny published more than 1,400 issues or photos in the regular Sunday column from 1994 to 2021.
Now, he has compiled these columns into a 465-page book he is dedicating in memory of Ricky Lo, a great chronicler of the lives and careers of movie and TV stars here and abroad. Low-key, low-profile Ricky produced too many scoops, unmatched by any other movie reporter, in his stint at The Philippine STAR.
Thanks, but no thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Danny managed to finish putting together his collections and have the first few copies of the book printed last year, with permission from the paper’s bosses. No date has been set yet for the book launch.
The book is a historical account of Philippine entertainment in pictures, all oldies but goodies, ably spiced by Ronald’s essays. The pictures were mostly in black and white, but the lives of these men and women were all colorful.
In his foreword, Ronald said the book was a “modest, although belated contribution” to the centennial celebration of the Philippine cinema in 2019. It provides “spices and elements of huge, human interest.”
Atang’s time
Page 3 of Danny’s book takes you to a lookback at Atang de la Rama, “the first star of Philippine Cinema.” Atang topbilled the “very first '' full-length Filipino movie Dalagang Bukid shown in September 1919, more than 100 years ago. She was a movie pioneer, but Atang likewise made an indelible impression on the musical stage.
Atang was 89 when she died in 1991. She was the wife of Amado Hernandez, National Artist for Literature in 1973.
When Darna first flew
Now that ABS-CBN is showing Mars Ravelo’s Darna, it is only fitting to know how the iconic komiks character evolved. The first Darna was Rosa del Rosario and she flew in the early 50s. She did two Darna movies and broke box office records. She was “tall, beautiful, well-built, but very feminine.” Another Darna box-office breaker was that which starred Vilma Santos, the "Star for All Seasons."
Immortal loveteams
Danny called the pairing Carmen Rosales and Rogelio dela Rosa “the immortal love team” which lasted for three decades. Like it or not, that loveteam defined the formula for Philippine cinema as it paved the way for more in the next generation—Nora Aunor and Tirso Cruz III, Sharon Cuneta and Gabby Concepcion, and Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo, and many, many more.
Next to durable loveteams, the book featured the indisputable kings, queens, and clowns of Philippine movies. Actors who made movie watchers cry, fall in and out of love, actors who made people laugh and forget about their worries; actors in movies who raised people’s libido, like Peque Gallaga’s Scorpio Nights, among others, and actors who brought it down, and even actors who got involved in and out politics.
Gloria: ‘Box Office Queen’
There was a page on Gloria Romero, FAMAS best actress in 1954 for Dalagang Pilipina. She was the undisputed queen of the box office in the 1950s—a Regal Queen, he called her. Her statuesque and regal beauty attracted the top couturier of the country, the revered Ramon Valera, who dressed in her classic and elegant ternos and asked her to join fashion shows for charitable causes.
Valera was National Artist for Fashion Design in 2006.
Gloria was paired onscreen with actor Juancho Gutierrez, who later became her husband, in what was called Wedding of the Year in September 1960. The two eventually separated. They reunited after so many years, before he died in October 2005.
She is now 89 years old and, for the love of acting, she is still working.
Atang de la Rama: ‘Bodabil Queen’
Before everybody used 'tita' and 'lola' to refer to friends and elders, there was Mommy Kate, or Katy de la Cruz, “the Bodabil Queen.” She was compared in the book to American singers Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday in terms of talent.
Each time she performed in the United States, she would ask that she be introduced as a Filipina. Her last public appearance in the Philippines, according to the book, was in November 1988 at the Rizal Theater in Makati, watching “Katy!” the musical based on her life.
Rita Gomez: ‘Original Mother’
The book acknowledged Miss Rita Gomez with that title given by the entertainment press and at the same time saying she was one of the most talented, most intelligent, most articulate actresses of her time. She was FAMAS and Manila Filmfest Best Actress in 1970, known for her films Pagdating Sa Dulo and Bakit Ako Pa?
She was once married to another handsome actor, Ric Rodrigo, but she was—and still is—the only one called “Miss.”
Miss Rita Gomez died of cancer in New York at 55.
Mila del Sol: ‘LVN Queen’
According to the book, Mila del Sol was the “ever sweet and pretty” actress who had the distinction starring in the very first LVN Pictures in 1939 titled Giliw Ko and after the war in Orasang Ginto in 1946.
LVN was the country’s biggest Philippine movie production company owned by the De Leon family until the family sold its assets to ABS-CBN in 2005. One of its more famous films was Ibong Adarna.
Action Kings
There are pages devoted to action greats such as Fernando Poe Jr., the King of Philippine Movies, named National Artist in 2006, and for whose film Ang Probinsiyano became the basis of the longest running TV action series starring Coco Martin on ABS-CBN. Snippets on films showing with good-vs-evil themes featuring Joseph Estrada, Ramon Revilla, Jess Lapid, Rudy Fernandez, Robin Padilla, among others, were also included.
Movies in politics
Which of the fields is more influential? Whatever, not all actors can be a good politician, but all politicians should be a good actor—at least at the campaign floor while wooing voters.
Politicians have tapped the movies to tell their story, and there were a number of movies that tackled political themes. There was Joseph Estrada’s Ito Ang Pilipino, an epic set during the Philippine revolution against Spain, the two Hollywood’s Bataan films shot in the Philippines, one of which starred American actor John Wayne in 1949. There were photos of First Ladies and Blue Ladies, too.
And there were of course, photos showing President Ferdinand Marcos and wife Imelda Marcos, whose life story was featured in Iginuhit ng Tadhana in 1965 starring Gloria Romero and Luis Gonzales, which also featured their son, Bongbong Marcos as himself. The movie showed the young Bongbong saying when he grows up, he wants to be president.
Imelda was shown once as the favorite cover girl of international magazines. On Page 309, the book features “Eva Macapagal: The Correct First Lady” which is sourced from a coffee table book featuring the first ladies.
Send in the clowns
There are actors who make people cry. There are actors who make people laugh. And there are people who say that the last one is harder to do.
Take a look at the columns and see the many photos of young Dolphy, the King of Comedy Films, or “Comedian of the Century,” as the book called him, and the rest of his kind Panchito, Lopito, Chiquito, Chichay and Tolindoy, Dely Atay Atayan, Pugo and Togo, among many others.
They all shaped, if not mirrored the people’s own jokes and values.
Conde: Man ahead of his time
Among other actors, the book pays tribute to Manuel Conde, saying he deserved “a niche among immortals in Philippine Cinema.”
Conde wrote, produced, directed and starred in the movie titled Genghis Khan, a movie about the famous Mongolian warrior, rated by some American critics as superior to two Hollywood versions of the subject. It was the first Filipino movie distributed worldwide by United Artists.
Conde was also behind the “Juan Tamad” series, a satire on the behavior of the Filipinos and the government.
The book features many, many more. Turning its pages takes you to a time when life was much simpler, much kinder, when a slight screen kiss between a star and his leading man would cause an uproar, because supposedly it defied social norms, when screen tales and fairy tales become one and real, but known only to great grandmothers and great grandfathers of today’s generation.
It features the rise and fall of some film companies, the disappearance of some movie theaters, of some actors who shone and perished in grace and disgrace.
It feels so wonderful to look at the past and realize how far the Philippine actors and the Philippine movies and the Philippine movie audience have gone, thanks to The Philippine STAR, thanks to Ricky Lo, thanks to Danny and Ronald’s book. The young generation gets to see the best and the brightest of the long-lost generations. It was one giant leap after another, indeed.
One is tempted to ask, to quote from another great movie of the same title: “Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon?” directed and written by multi-awarded Eddie Romero and Roy Iglesias.
There is wisdom in looking back.