Recalling glory days

Back when television was less complicated, most TV viewers were at least familiar with the names of the people behind the camera who helped put together  their favorite  shows. Audiences at  home knew that Ading Fernando was the top comedy director (and it helped that he did onscreen appearances from time to time) and that Al Quinn (still very active to this day) did most of the  variety programs. TV viewers, in fact, even knew the names of the studio makeup artists: Ligaya Serrano and Norma Calubaquib.

All that was 30 or 40 years ago — when each program still ran the closing credits (officially called Closing Billboard or CBB) that listed the names of the people behind every show.

Today, very few shows on both ABS-CBN and GMA 7 run the CBB due to overtime and if ever they air it, priority is given to the sponsors of the on-cam talents.

But when life on TV was so much simpler, TV viewers knew that the most prolific writers then were Lyca Benitez, Tats Rejante (later Manahan when she married Johnny — or Mr. M to young talents today) and Bibeth Orteza (although she came a little later).

When I was starting my career in journalism, I asked Tats to write for our magazine a series of articles on the shows they put up for the king of Morocco (he was a big fan of Filipino talents and would send over the likes of Celeste Legaspi and Leah Navarro to sing for him). Tats and I would always be on the phone but we never got to meet in person. That was in the mid-’80s. We never heard from each other since.

Then came Typhoon Milenyo last year. My house was a wreck and I needed an architect and  interior designer. Rosa Rosal recommended Francisco Bernabe and Tats Manahan. Tats Manahan — the TV writer?

It turned out that towards the latter part of the ‘80s, Tats decided to leave television to study surface design and decoration in San Francisco and, later, in Venice (in between were art courses in New York). Tats had since become one of the best interior designers in town (although she and her clients — really big, so says June Keithley — are low profile).

For three months  last year, Tats worked on my place and I can say that I’ve never been this happy — and fully satisfied — with the house. Every week, we would sit down for a meeting to discuss what to do with the ceilings, the walls and other parts of the house that had to be changed. But somehow, our talks would veer toward television in the past and we promised ourselves that once our project (my house) was over, we’d sit down, recall TV in the ’’70s and ’80s and  put everything in writing.

Tats and I did that recently (after she came back from Italy for another refresher course) and talked about TV from late afternoon till evening.

At Maryknoll (now Miriam College), where she finished AB Communication Arts, one of her teachers (in thesis class) was Johnny  Manahan. But there  were no love sparks then — yet. To begin with, Tats had  her hands full doing on-the-job training at pre-martial law ABS-CBN. She was assigned to the news department as researcher for a political talk show — the title of which she no longer recalls. What she remembers was that on the day of the telecast, suddenly they would have no guest because that person had been salvaged.

Later, she did the ABS-CBN musical Mari-len that topbilled Mari-len Martinez and was given her first TV credit as  writer. That early, she was taught how important advertising was to television and in one segment sponsored by Mirinda, they had hundreds of fresh oranges rolling on the studio floor while Mari-len did her song number. How’s that for subtle advertising?

Tats was only months into the job when most media people were displaced because of martial law. Like most other fresh graduates, she had a diploma, “but nowhere to go.” There were only two choices for most of them: Sell encyclopedia or go into advertising. She went for the latter and to this day can still claim credit for that image of a compacted chicken on the label of Knorr cubes.

When BBC-2 was put up in what used to be the ABS-CBN studios, one of the early programs was a gag show called Dos Por Dos. This was one of the first local shows on TV that used a pool of writers and Tats was one of them along with Nonoy Marcelo, Larry Alcala, Rico Flores and Edgar Soler.

Dos Por Dos starred Mitch Valdes, June Keithley, The APO and Chinggoy Alonso. June Torrejon was their cheesecake girl, while Bert de Leon was the beefcake. One of their production assistants then was a very fresh graduate  who would rise to become one of the most powerful women on TV today: Wilma V. Galvante of GMA 7.

(To be continued)