Armida Siguion-Reyna—better known anywhere as Tita Midz—hosted a dinner on December 18 at the ritzy Lolo Dad's Brasserie at 6750 on Ayala Avenue, in memory of the first death anniversary of her husband, Leonardo, whom everyone fondly called Atty. Sig.
Atty. Sig was the big man at the Siguion-Reyna, Montecillo, and Ongsiako Law Office, but was better known around his office as the man who, in their 60 years of marriage, always treated his wife like a queen.
It is said that he never denied her every wish. Through all her many incarnations—as wife to a prominent lawyer, as mother of three, as grandmother to six, as film and music producer, as cooking-show host, as actress, as activist, as censors chief, as newspaper columnist, as political campaigner, as lobbyist, as film preservationist, and as formidable personality—he was there for her.
Now his queen was honoring his memory with a gathering.
Following Filipino custom, one year after a person dies, a "babang-luksa," literally meaning a shedding of grief, is held. It is generally thought that the dead, by this time, have found their way to where they are going, and now allow their loved ones to shed their grief, pain, and black clothes, to go on and live their lives with new hope.
Atty. Sig's law office would itself host a gathering to mark the occasion. But his queen wanted—and got her wish—to have another gathering, a dinner she would host herself and to which she would gather her close friends and allies.
GUESTS FROM POLITICS & SHOWBIZ. From the political scene came Vice President Jejomar "Jojo" Binay and his wife, former Makati Mayor Elenita Binay. The Vice President is, of course, a regular presence in Siguion-Reyna family gatherings, in part because the latter are his solid supporters and in part because they have become good friends.
Also present were former President Joseph "Erap" Estrada and his wife, former Senator Loi Ejercito. Erap and Tita Midz are long-time allies, as everyone in both showbiz and politics knows. She backed his successful run for the presidency and stood by him through his impeachment and beyond.
During Erap's term as the 13th President of the Republic, he appointed her chair of the Movie Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), where she distinguished herself as, unarguably, the most enlightened censors chief the country has ever known.
As MTRCB chair, she earned such a reputation for championing artists that, it's been said, if Erap's critics have to find something sterling in his aborted term, it would have to be the presence of Armida Siguion-Reyna in his Board.
Until Armida was widowed and became frail, she was consulted, as needed, by the present MTRCB chair, Grace Poe Llamanzares, who acknowledges Armida's formidable stock knowledge about censorship, freedom of expression, and the legislation surrounding these all-important issues.
The intelligent and always-composed Grace was herself present at the intimate dinner, although her mom, Susan Roces, often seen with her at Armida's parties, was not. Susan and Armida became solid friends following Armida's unbending support of Susan's husband, the late Fernando Poe, Jr., in his 2004 run for the presidency.
From the movie, television, and musical scene came, among others, the respected actor-couple Barbara Perez and Robert Arevalo, director-actress Gina Alajar, veteran director-actor Eddie Garcia, writer-actress Raquel Villaviciencio, director Mel Chionglo, singers Bayang Barrios, Bimbo Cerrudo, Rachel Gerodias, and other mainstays of the long-running Aawitan Kita musical series.
GMA-7 corporate communications chief Butch Raquel, former ABS-CBN PR chief Maloli Manalastas, and TV5 top executive Bobby Barreiro, writer-translator-editor-poet Jose "Pete" Lacaba and his wife, poet Marra Lanot, and reporters Mario Hernando and Mario Dumaual also came to join Armida.
Incidentally, the host's left shoulder and arm, recently fractured in a fall, were elegantly slung in a soft red cloth that blended quietly with her gold-flecked red top and long skirt.
Guests greeting her, not knowing it was a working sling, would sometimes make a gesture to wrap their arm around the sometimes-painful shoulder, to which the host would say, "Oh, please, not my shoulder."
But fracture or not, PEP.ph (Philippine Entertainment Portal) knew that the silver-haired Armida was quite all right after she snorted, "Binigyan ba naman ako ng sling na royal blue and white! Ayaw ko nga, hindi bagay sa suot ko!"
Told about this, actress Dawn Zulueta threw back her head, laughed, and said, "I love it!" The actress, who owes her first big film role to Tita Midz, was delighted: the 81-year-old lady was still her old opinionated self.
Still others at the dinner were businessman Tony Boy Cojuangco, a Siguion-Reyna old family friend and neighbor in Forbes Park; showbiz industry insider Marichu Maceda; talent managers Shirley Kuan, Dolor Guevarra, and Girlie Rodis (who took the photograph shown here)...
Advertising man Law Tan; Atty. Opap Villionco, his former wife Monique Siguion-Reyna Villionco, and their daughter Cris, who is currently making waves in the stage musical The Sound of Music; Armida's sister, the singer and voice teacher Irma Potenciano, and other members of the Siguion-Reyna family.
That evening, the multi-hyphenated (writer-comedian-activist-breast-cancer survivor-UP Regent) Bibeth Orteza, who is Tita Midz's good friend and daughter-in-law, put together a simple musical reverie featuring Aawitan Kita singers.
The reverie put true talent right on centerstage and set the mood for a genial and intimate evening among people who have known each other for years.
Towards evening's end, in the spirit of good fun, guests started to be called to the microphone to sing for Tita Midz. Richard Gomez, Dawn Zulueta, Eddie Garcia, Opap Villiongco, and Pete Lacaba were some of those who obliged, bringing a smile to the face of the host, who that night did not sing.
Also that night, Bibeth was all smiles. Her husband, director Carlitos Siguion-Reyna, came home for the occasion and the Christmas holidays. Carlitos is based in Singapore, where he teaches screenwriting and directing at the Graduate Film Program of the NYU Tisch Asia School of the Arts.
Carlitos, a New York University film school graduate, has helmed well-remembered obras for his mother's Reyna Films, including Hihintayin Kita sa Langit, a love story whose emotional and visual sweep and grandeur has made the film iconic twenty years after it was made.
HIHINTAYIN KITA SA LANGIT. The movie starred the dark and handsome Richard Gomez and the fair and beautiful Dawn Zulueta, and turned them into one of the most electric screen couples to hit Philippine movies in a long time.
In fact, Tita Midz always likes to say, "In all my years in the business, I have not seen anyone who can beat the chemistry of those two. No one."
To this day, she will say that she has yet to see a movie love team with the kind of magnetism that she saw in Richard and Dawn, when she, as a 61-year-old producer, cast them together.
In truth, that "chemistry" extended beyond the screen. Richard and Dawn, who had just hit their 20s, fell in love.
The craggy Batanes scenery, where the film was partly shot, probably helped make their Wuthering Heights-screen chemistry cross over to real life, but whatever else it was, the two were certainly a match.
They had the looks, the height, the youth, the fame, the talent, and the romance, not to mention the promise of more creative team-ups to regale an admiring audience. They became the "It" couple of showbiz.
They also, as a consequence, became the stuff of tabloids and television talk shows, with stories that ended up testing their relationship from day to day.
Richard was particularly vulnerable. Having romanced many beautiful women before Dawn, and having just come from a high-profile relationship with Megastar Sharon Cuneta, he was always being linked to beautiful women in and out of showbiz.
Naturally, Dawn—whose Hihintayin Kita sa Langit stint was her first as a leading lady—was always being hounded by the press about these rumors. She and Richard would have little peace.
Whatever other factors bore down on their romance, Richard and Dawn would eventually go their separate ways.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT. Dawn would go on to play bigger and bigger roles, and also steadily grow more luminous and more stylish. She would end up a bonafide star.
She would also go on to have other suitors, until she finally chose to settle down with Anton Lagdameo, a scion of the Floirendo-Lagdameo clan and currently a congressman from Davao. They would have two children.
While she kept away from showbiz for years, staying with her husband in Davao where he worked in his family's giant agri business, Dawn would eventually return to showbiz.
On television, she would be seen in teleseryes in both ABS-CBN and GMA-7, and on stage, in a musical. She did A Little Night Music, where her soulful rendition of the Stephen Sondheim classic, "Send in the Clowns," would earn her applause here and in Singapore, where the musical would go on tour.
Richard would remain, for many more years, a top matinee idol, challenged only by Aga Muhlach and Gabby Concepcion, and would keep being linked with still other stunning faces in and out of showbiz.
But one day he found the girl he would marry in Lucy Torres, the beautiful daughter of a landed and close-knit family from Ormoc, Leyte.
At the time, Lucy's only exposure to showbiz was her limited appearance in television commercials. It was in one of these commercial shoots that she would meet Richard and fall in love.
Lucy would later admit to the press that Richard had always been her "crush," and that she had magazine pictures of him in her room years before she even met him.
As for Richard, the fellow was smitten. He spent hours flying in and out of Ormoc and wooing, not only Lucy, but her entire non-showbiz family.
As his late manager, Douglas Quijano, liked to say, "Ang hinahanap lang pala ni Goma ay isang probinsiyana." (Goma is Richard's nickname.)
Because of Richard, the shy Torres girl would find herself in the thick of showbiz— hosting gatherings for Richard's friends and fellow stars, appearing briefly in a TV sitcom with her husband, attending showbiz events, and making friends of her own in her husband's world. They would have one child.
In recent years, she found her mettle as a TV personality, where she was well-received both as dance-show and lifestyle host.
She also gave notice that she could write: her Philippine Star columns exhibit a style and mood all their own, with their prose consistently leading itself to a good read. These activities, alongside her continuing passion for dance (she still puts in hours in dance classes) and arts and crafts (a love for which her daughter has inherited), would keep Lucy occupied.
Ironically, just when she was settling into a groove she was comfortable in, she would be yanked out, again because of Richard, and get into politics.
Lucy is now the representative of the 4th district of Leyte. Although a reluctant candidate in the beginning, she is today, from all initial reports, standing her ground as a legislator.
With Richard beside her as her first chief of staff, Lucy has been studying the art of negotiation, listening and learning from both veteran politicians and new legislators, bringing in the funds for more schools, water pumps, and roads, protecting her district's rich geothermal resources, and generally making good on promises made to those who voted for her.
Her latest act was to sign the impeachment proceedings against Supreme Court Justice Renato Corona, along with a majority of the representatives of Congress, putting her squarely in President Benigno Aquino III's camp.
LUCY & DAWN. What many people don't know is the real score between Lucy and Dawn.
The two, of course, did not know each other in the beginning. They had not met. And what they knew of each other was naturally filtered through press stories and through their relationship to Goma.
But while there was distance, there was no bad blood between the two women. Richard had nothing bad to say about Dawn, after all. Dawn was quietly living her own life with her own family. And Lucy, deeply religious, has always wished others well.
A little-known detail about Lucy is that, before she went to church to marry Richard, she and her family prayed together. They prayed that all those whose lives she and Richard had crossed paths with in the past may find joy in their union— and one of those prayers was for Dawn.
At a certain point, Lucy and Dawn began to give each other gifts on special occasions, such as Christmas. They do not go out as girl friends, and their lives remain full but independent of each other, but from the looks of it, there is good will between them.
That evening, at a dinner hosted by a venerable lady they all loved, the three met up. Lucy, in white, and Dawn, in black, hugged happily. They looked like they genuinely liked the sight of each other.
Richard stood by, watching, and then with a big smile whispered to PEP, "Bakit ako, hindi hina-hug nang ganyan?"
Fact is, they all knew they would bump into each other at the dinner. Richard and Dawn had been taping for days for Walang Hanggan, the ABS-CBN teleserye which takes off from Hihintayin Kita sa Langit, and they had said they were going because "This was for Tita Midz!"
The following day, Richard and Dawn were to tape again, and if management plans hold, will probably be taping till August of next year. PEP asked Lucy what she thought about the renewed teamup of her husband and his ex-flame.
Lucy, taking a sip of red wine and looking happy, said, "Do you know that whenever Hihintayin is shown on Cinema One, I always stop and watch? I never tire of it. There is something about them together on the screen. There is kilig. And I'm their biggest fan."