Maricel Soriano: The Pluperfect Artist Sans Rival

BY MONTOGAWE

Three nubile bodies in kaleidoscopic swimsuits, splashed across the front page of an entertainment magazine (Jingle), snatched my steady gaze away from my erstwhile childhood crush who ironically was leisurely reading its inside pages unmindful of my existence or my leery gaping. I gingerly inched closer towards her and quick-read the names on the magazine: Dina Bonnevie, Snooky and Maricel Soriano. The Underage Regal Babies. Then the school bell rang signaling the end of lunch break and the start of afternoon classes. My clueless crush ran off with the pages of the magazine flailing in the air and closely behind her, my tattered sneakers stomping away to keep up with her panicky paces. That was during the early 80’s when I was a pesky prepubescent pupil aged ten waiting for school year to be over.

Then, at last, the lazy as well as frenetic summer came. As was wont among cousins with nothing to do except horse around, we sometimes cajoled our elders to subsidize our juvenile soirees which included a trip to the cinema. Our rural town, sylvan locale peppered with snooty residents, 26 kilometers away from the capital city best known for its aromatic broth with generous heaping of swine innards on top of yellow rice noodles, boasted of its privately-owned theatre except that it wasn’t air-conditioned nor swanky at all. Once inside that warehouse-like edifice, humidity plus suffocating smog was the order of the day. With putrid air like that then, who needed hashish to stay high? Double programming, 2 films for the price of 1, also was in vogue. And such programs repetitively ran for an entire month or even longer. After such run-throughs, I swear I could have memorized a whole script if someone just dared me.

It was in one of those celluloid sorties, that I saw a petite, raven-locked teener crying her hearts out for a group of impoverished children. (One of those who portrayed these kids became my classmate and friend.) I could not appreciate the nuances of acting then but the film’s theme resonated something to me – a mother’s love. So, in my mind, Miss Soriano was forever entwined with the maternal image: loving but firm, kind but strong-willed.

At about those times, an aunt brought home an entertainment magazine (Jingle) with a beautiful young couple dressed for a garden wedding. The names read: Snooky and Albert Martinez. After she was through reading it, I junked my mother’s Anatomy book with its graphic images and browsed over the magazine. I saw a tally of some sort for the most beautiful, most handsome and/or most popular movie star/s. A quick read of the listed names and the tallied votes revealed that in one category Miss Soriano was just ahead of Miss Cuneta, followed by Miss Serna, Miss Ramirez, Miss Blanco, Miss Foster and so on. My curiosity about Miss Soriano was pricked from then on.

Aside from the wisp-of-a-girl Shirley whom she portrayed in John en Marsha, I hardly saw enough of her on TV. This could be a consequence of paternal censorship in our household. We only got to watch English-speaking shows and series, hence, Newswatch, Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, Charlie’s Angels, McGyver, Air Wolf and the likes. Miss Soriano’s shows, or Filipino shows for that matter, were too unedifying for my parents’ pedantic tastes. Thus, I missed her antics in Kaluskos Musmos, Kuskos Balungos, but surprisingly not her guest stint in the top-rated Flor de Luna where a future classmate and friend also was one of its leads.

I never got to see any of her films while I was in high school and I instead saw Bagets, Dapat Ka Bang Mahalin and other Sharon Cuneta-starrers because my sister would often tag along my mother or me to these box-office screenings. Viva films were so glossy and Sharon films were too sugary that they were not considered harmful to our education. And as the first-born son, it was my filial duty to accompany the women in my family in places of possible danger.

As we grew older, however, certain compromises were made and one learned to reason to get his wishes. As long as we exhibited a certain amount of being mature and responsible, TV fares were democratized and we were allowed to watch any show of our liking save those with pornographic or violent content, which was still up to us, of course, when no one was around. Hence, with our mother leading her pack of factotums, primetime weekend viewing was a rigodon of Superstar, The Sharon Cuneta Show, VIP and The Maricel Live Show and other local shows including the circus-like See True and Seeing Stars with Joe Quirino. Remote control was a thing of the future so the honor of switching channels, now called surfing, befell on my callused fingers. It was quite funny, but the only local shows my father watched were Ang Bagong Kampeon and Aawitan Kita. And he can’t bring himself to sing even in these days of the ubiquitous videokes.