How my ‘love affair’ with the movies began

BERGMAN AND BOGART. Special screening of their enduring screen romance.

I WAS very excited! Yayang Punsay said that our family was invited to a movie being shown that night in the 1940s at the house of Tita Lolita dela Rama Lopez. Iloilo families socialized regularly at the Dela Rama residence after Liberation, because they had naval officer-friends who brought movies to screen.

Since no films were shown during the Japanese occupation, we were cinematically deprived. Then, the GIs brought back Hollywood films. We were elated!

Beautiful soprano

I “knew” some of the Hollywood stars, of course. I had heard of Shirley Temple. I also knew that Deanna Durbin had a beautiful soprano voice. My sisters were raving about “The Good Earth,” in which Durbin was at par with the likes of Jeannette McDonald and Nelson Eddy.

Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne and Bette Davis were the cinema’s dramatic stars, and Spencer Tracy and Charles Boyer were their male counterparts.

That night, the officials of a mine sweeper were bringing the Oscar-winning film, “Casablanca”—and, Iloilo’s selected families were invited to the special screening! I had not been able to sneak in before, so I was thrilled to be included in the “also-invited” list to watch my first Hollywood film.

When I got to the living room, there was a projector on top of a long table. I quickly and quietly found a place under the table.

When the lights were switched off, the audience oohed and ahhed. They swooned some more when they read the names of the stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, etc. Bergman was beautiful and luminous, and spoke with a European accent.

Theme song

I loved the theme song, “As Time Goes By,” which the members of the audience,  both GIs and Filipinos, hummed as the black pianist in the movie played it after Ilsa requested that he “play it again, Sam.” Under that table, I fell in love with the movies that night!