My star-struck moments

Ali Sotto, who is still based in Madrid, Spain (and who celebrated her birthday last May 29), will be back for good October of this year. Diplomat husband Omar Bsaeis is retiring and the couple have decided to settle in the Philippines.

But I miss Ali and all those stories we always swapped with each other when she was here in Manila. Usually, we talk about our personal affairs (family problems) and at times about the lives of celebrities around us (we don’t gossip about them, we only exchange opinions).

Ali started very young — as singer — in showbiz. From singing, she developed into a fine actress — until she became the very much-respected broadcast journalist on radio (and later television as a newscaster in one of those phases of Channel 5).

But even if she had been an admired celebrity herself for so long, she once admitted to me that she still gets star-struck with some movie stars. Christopher de Leon may be one of her closest male friends, but there are occasions she still gets awed with his presence.

Flying back to Manila after a show in Europe a long time ago, they traveled together and since it was a long flight, Christopher — out of sheer boredom — went to the section where Ali and his former manager Tina Pecson were seated and flung himself on them in horseplay. “Imagine, the Christopher de Leon horsing around with us,” gushed Ali.

But for some reason, since I never acknowledged in the past that I had been star-struck in the presence of big-name stars (it gets in the way of my job as an interviewer, you know), I didn’t have the chance to tell Ali that I also got mesmerized in the company of showbiz people we move around the same circles with.

I already enumerated in my last column the names of personalities who got me enchanted in the past and here is the concluding list — for the sake of Ali (who follows us in the Internet) and for you dear readers.

Lorna Tolentino and the late Rudy Fernandez — I felt this beautiful couple immediately took a liking to me (this was quite early in my writing career) and they invited me for dinner one time in their White Plains home. I could hardly eat in their presence, but they were extremely nice and accommodating I eventually felt at home in their company. But what dazzled me was when they invited me to join them later for dessert in their den, a section of the house exclusively open only to close friends of the couple (yes, that was the same room where Daboy left us two years ago).

Then one evening, for some reason, they decided to visit me in our house in La Vista (not far from White Plains), except that I wasn’t there (this was before the advent of cell phones). It was our trusted help Josie who answered the door bell and since she was already asleep that time, she told me later that she thought she was just dreaming when she opened the gate and popped out Lorna and Rudy. To her, that was a star-struck moment of the highest order.

Dolphy — This was the time he was still with Alma Moreno and they lived in Wilson Circle. One time, Marichu Maceda decided to pay Alma a visit (they did a string of box-office hits) and in the middle of dinner, Dolphy arrived with pasalubong (chicken with Java rice) for Alma.

We all ate together and at that point I experienced how it was to dine with kings — in that case the Comedy King. Dolphy was very pleasant the whole time and made us feel comfortable. But when he came out with a book on his life a few years ago, it turned out that he actually resented having so many people in the house during that period with Alma since he valued his privacy. I do understand him and I now appreciate the way he handled his discomfort with outsiders that time — in a totally gentlemanly fashion that you expect from a great man like Dolphy.

Katy de la Cruz — To the young, Mommy Kate was the empress of vaudeville from the pre-war times till the ’60s. Aside from stage, she also made movies and was, in fact, one of the early FAMAS acting winners. In the mid-’70s, she settled in San Francisco for good, but returned to the country with much fanfare in 1988 when Celeste Legaspi produced the musical Katy! (She was there in the audience at every performance and was accorded each time with the respect that she so much deserved — Celeste and the other people in production saw to that.)

To help promote Katy!, Boy Abunda (who always did Celeste’s publicities) requested me to interview Mommy Kate and I recall my brother driving for me and we traveled all the way to Parañaque where the legendary performer stayed while in the Philippines (Celeste would give her hotel accommodations when there were performances though).

She was already in her 80s then, but she still stood erect in heeled stilettos. I never saw any of her live performances since I wasn’t around yet before the war and not even immediately after. I wasn’t sure either of her credentials because this was in the pre-Internet days when research on the life and career of a celebrity wasn’t all that easy yet.

But to this day, I can’t forget how she completely mesmerized me with her presence and her stories of the old days. What made me become her instant fan, however, was when she noticed that my brother was seated in an area where the afternoon sun was already starting to become bothersome. This brother of mine who is older and can take care of himself for sure felt uncomfortable in his spot, but was too polite to budge from his seat and interrupt Mommy Kate’s storytelling. What do you know? She turned out to be very considerate, stopped the conversation and thoughtfully turned to my brother to say, “Apo, lumipat ka na ng upuan at mainit na d’yan.”

Since she was getting the superstar treatment that time — and was, indeed, a vaudeville superstar in her days — I was pleasantly surprised to discover that she was not the type who was so full of herself. How I wish all the celebrities today would also have a sense of others as practiced by Mommy Kate. But she took that quality with her when she passed away about a decade ago and it’s sad to note that they never made another star like her.

Every year, GMA 7 always has this StarStruck search and at the end of the contest they would choose what they call the Ultimate Survivors. That afternoon I spent with Katy de la Cruz is what I would refer to always as my Ultimate Star-struck moment.