MEDIUM RARE
Days before last Tuesday the 22nd, I already had a headline for this little essay I was still going to write. It would be about the passing of two icons in the entertainment industry, Pilita Corrales and Nora Aunor, within days of each other.
Who could have known that the end of the life and papacy of Pope Francis on April 21 would make that headline even more dramatic?
Pope Francis is now part of world history after a 13-year reign. Meanwhile, for fans of Pilita and Ate Guy, it’s the end of an era, the era of two performers who were never anything or anyone but themselves. The curtains rang down with their passing, and the country that they sang to, sang for, sang about will remember them for the music, the songs, the lyrics, the emotions they evoked and provoked. Will there ever be another Pilita, another Nora?
Pilita burst upon the scene — though “undulated” might be more descriptive — in what to my young mind was a mermaid’s costume, glittering scales and all, plus a tail, her waistline as tiny as a fish’s. Men and even women called her “sexy” in a respectful way, for she always behaved like a lady. In Tagalog, some of her spoken lines, adlibbed, sounded hilarious. Her signature song, with which she began and ended her shows, on radio or TV, was “A Million Thanks to You” and nobody but nobody ever dared sing it after Pilita.
If Pilita was Personality with a capital P, Nora Aunor was always Ate Guy to her fans, and she was, perhaps, unknown even to herself, a Character. The best stories about her still have to be written, but wait for them we will.
Both ladies have left a legacy, children and grandchildren who are as beautiful as they are talented. Guy and Pilita are the grandmothers of the award-winning dramatic actor Janine Gutierrez, who is ready and more than able to carry on, and that’s on both sides of the family.
If TV producers know their business, now’s the time to start a drama series that could replicate the success of “Lavender Fields” that aired some months ago.