Before Lea Salonga, Filipinos Who Made It to Broadway and US Films
/Dites Moi, Barbara Luna
Born in Manhattan, NYC, to a Jewish-Hungarian mother and a Filipino father in either 1936 (or 1937), how could Barbara Luna not end up in show business? When she was 11 or 12 years old, Luna made her show biz debut as Ngana, the half-Polynesian daughter of French planter Emile de Becque, in South Pacific, the hit Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. (The role of younger brother, Jerome, was split between a pair of Fil-Am twins, Michael and Noel de Leon.) Thus, Luna was the original Ngana.
South Pacific the musical, based on Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener, opened on Broadway on April 7, 1949 – 40 years before Lea catapulted to fame in the West End. South Pacific was one of R&H’s biggest hits, going on to play 1,925 performances and becoming an even bigger hit in the movies in 1958.
Dites Moi and “across a crowded room,” the original blended Forbush-de Becque family above, onstage, Broadway, 1949m with Ezio Pinza as Emile de Becque and Mary Martin as Ensign Nellie Forbush. (Photo c/o the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization)
Since then Luna has worked constantly in the full gamut of stage, TV, and the movies, her credits too numerous to list (she also played uncredited roles, one as a prostitute in Elmer Gantry in 1960).
She played Anita in five touring companies of West Side Story. In the 1960s, if it was a hit TV show (Mission: Impossible; Dallas; Marcus Welby, MD; Hawaii Five-O, etc.) Luna probably guested in it at least once or twice. She even had the role of Marlena created for her in the Star Trek TV series.
Luna’s last appearance back on the Broadway stage was in 1976 as Diana Morales in A Chorus Line. Speaking of aligned stars, Barbara was married briefly (1961-63) to actor Doug McClure who was an extra (a USAF pilot) in the South Pacific film (1958).
Later on, Luna tweaked her name to BarBara (to differentiate from that other Barbra). She remains active in show biz and is 87 (or 88) today.
BarBara Luna (Source: IMDb)
Because they are of the same era, are both half-Filipinas and probably were considered for many of the same roles, Luna and our next feature, Neile Adams, were often mistaken for each other. In addition, they were married to Hollywood actor-husbands who were sort of the same “type,” at about the same period, thus adding to the greater confusion.
First Legit Staging of a Broadway Musical in Post-WW2 Manila
Speaking of South Pacific, a bare three years after it opened on Broadway, a staging in Manila became the first legit production of a “Broadway musical” on a Manila stage using local talents. The year 1952 actually saw the first stagings of South Pacific in the Far East—the professional production in Australia and the “college production” in Manila, mounted by Far Eastern University (FEU).
At the time, FEU’s new auditorium was the country’s finest (with air-conditioning and a revolving stage). As such, they needed something fitting to fill it for the university’s 18th anniversary. FEU’s Drama Department then was headed by Julie Cuaderno Andaya (daughter of the Governor of the country’s Central Bank at the time, Miguel Cuaderno). Andaya had previously seen South Pacific in New York and was eager to bring the hit show to Manila (a year before the Philippine International Fair opened in 1953).
Meanwhile, RHO was preparing for a professional production of the same in Australia in 1952. The RHO had more than just casual connections to Australia. Oscar Hammerstein’s then wife, Dorothy, was an Aussie. So, somehow the stars dovetailed in 1952, and Andaya managed to procure the script and orchestrations from the Australian production for the Manila production.
Published here possibly for the first time are the programme and a shot of the “Honey Bun” number from that landmark stage production. (Photos courtesy of Amadio Arboleda, cast member of the 1952 show.)
Souvenir program cover of the 1952 FEU production.
The oddest thing about the 1952 FEU-South Pacific production was that for a very quintessential American story (half the characters are supposed to be white US military personnel), it was played entirely by Filipinos. One of the themes of the musical is racial intolerance. So how that came off onstage when, for example, the US Navy Seabees (normally cast with Caucasian actors—see the clip from the 1958 film) sing lustily of their female service counterparts and leering at the native maidens in “There is Nothing Like a Dame,” must have deflated the impact of that number.
In the 1960s, starting with the Catholic colleges in Manila—mainly St. Paul’s, then the more professional theatre companies, like Repertory Philippines and Julie Borromeo’s Performing Arts Foundation, put on classic Broadway plays and musicals, including Conching Sunico’s annual, anthology Best of Broadway series.
Neile Adams
If you had to spell out her full, real name, it would be Maria Ruby Neilam Salvador Arrastia Adams, who has connections to prominent Fil-Hispano names. She’s better known as the one-time Mrs. Steve McQueen.
Neile started out life in Manila 1932 as the love child of Jose Salgado Arrastia and Carmen Salvador. So Neile (it might have been Ruby in those early years) intersected the sosyal Arrastia clan of Pampanga and the huge Salvador show biz clan of Manila.
Neile Adams from the 1957 film, This Could Be The Night
Adams supposedly never met her Arrastia father. In 1948, her mother, Carmen, moved with Neile to the US. They settled in New York where Neile broke into show biz. She first worked in the Broadway productions of Kismet (1953), understudying the part of the Princess of Abubu, then she moved on to The Pajama Game (1954). Soon after, she landed in Hollywood movies and TV shows.
The 1957 film, This Could Be The Night, was supposed to have been the big break-out film for Adams. She’s even featured prominently in the trailer. In 1956, she married the rising enfant terrible actor, Steve McQueen. They were married until 1972.
On her father’s Arrastia side, Adams’ legitimate, younger half-siblings include Beatriz/Betty Reinares Preysler and Mercy/Mercedes Tuason. Thus, Adams and socialite Isabel Preysler are actual aunt and niece, making Adams a grand-step-aunt to Isabel’s children, Enrique, Julio, Jr., Chabelli Iglesias, Tamara, and Ana Boyer.
Because they circulated in different worlds, it is not known if Aunt Neile and the Preysler-Iglesias have ever met or if the Iglesias have even acknowledged their kinship. (Scuttlebutt is that the Arrastias were not fluent Spanish speakers, and adopting the Castilian tongue came late in Isabel’s life.) Neile Adams is 91 years old today.
Another Broadway-Filipino Link-Up
Rodgers and Hammerstein had based their other “Orientalized” musical, Flower Drum Song (1958), on a novella of the same name, by C.Y. Lee. It’s now confirmed that Lee wrote his novella in the mid-1950s while renting an apartment located above the famed Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco.
building in San Francisco which formerly housed the Mabuhay Gardens.
Mabuhay Gardens was the premier Filipino nightclub/hang-out in San Francisco of the era; and Lee named the night club in his story “Celestial Gardens.”
When Flower Drum Song opened on Broadway in 1958, at least three of the cast members had Filipino ancestry: most prominent because of his role in The King and I was Patrick Adiarte, and in the ensemble (chorus) were Cely Carillo and Maureen Tiongco. All three can be heard in the Flower Drum Song’s Original Broadway Cast album.
In its Broadway run, Carillo at first understudied both leading lady roles—those played by Miyoshi Umeki and Pat Suzuki. But when Umeki left in January 1960, Carillo took over Mei Li until closing. When the show’s national touring company was launched shortly thereafter, Tiongco inherited the lead Mei Li role. (Lea Salonga then took her turn in the 2002 “revisical” of the same).
One of the few extant photos of Maureen Tiongco, originally from Santa Rosa, Laguna.
Flash-forward to February 1966. Maureen Tiongco made a return of sorts to Manila when she was tapped to repeat her US success as Mei Li in a series of charity performances. The cause was to raise seed money for a new Cultural Center of the Philippines—the first major pet project of the new Marcos administration, with the new first lady Imelda Marcos spearheading the effort. Those FDS charity performances were held in the beautiful PhilamLife Auditorium.
After that triumphant Manila appearance, Tiongco returned to the US, marrying American tenor Harry Theyard, retiring from show biz and raising a family in Montauk, New York. It’s a better fate than what befell the historic PhilamLife auditorium which, despite many efforts to save it, fell victim to the wrecking ball two years ago.
Dee Marquez – ‘Funny Girl’ Lyricist’s Wife
This list would not be complete without mention of a Manila gal whose connection to Broadway was more personal and backstage rather than in a “front-of-curtain” capacity. That was Dee (Dolores) Marquez from the larger educational Marquez (sisters) clan that established and still runs one of the smaller, scholastically advanced schools in the Philippines, St. John’s Academy of San Juan City. Dee was the daughter of Dr. Charlie Marquez and his American wife.
Before Schoenberg and Boublil (the composers of Les Miserables and Miss Saigon) descended on Manila in 1988, Dee Marquez had a front row seat in the creation of hit Broadway musicals of the early 1960s. Dee was actually a pioneering artist in early Philippine television when, in the mid-1950s, just as ABC-CBN was launching its operations out of the former Manila Times building on Florentino Torres St., she headlined her own small, musical variety show, The Dee Marquez Hour. This was before Pilita Corrales, Carmen Soriano, Nelda Navarro, etc., had their own variety TV shows later in the 1960s. In Dee’s show, the theme song was Pennies from Heaven.
In the meantime, on the other side of the world, a certain Broadway songman named Bob Merrill was launching his own composing career. Not to be confused with the Metropolitan Opera tenor Robert Merrill, non-tenor “Bob” Merrill, before he made it big on Broadway, wrote the early 1950s pop musical hit How Much Is That Doggie in the Window? Then in 1957, his first musical, New Girl In Town, arrived on Broadway.
In the late 1950s, Dee moved to the US and tried making it as a lounge singer (as she had done in Manila). It was in those nightclub rounds that she and Bob Merrill met. As best as one can reconstruct, Merrill was courting Marquez through 1963-64 when he was writing the score for Funny Girl with composer Jule Styne, which was no easy task. Not only were Merrill and Styne dealing with a new star in Barbra Streisand but they had to write a musical that was at least faithful to the memory of Fanny Brice, the late mother-in-law of the show’s real-life producer, Ray Stark.
You can be sure that when Merrill and Styne were tinkering with a new song for the show, Dee probably had first dibs on hearing them and first vocalized the new songs. Styne and Merrill are said to have written at least 35 songs to find the winning combination for the show; and added two more songs for the film version in 1968.
When Funny Girl was a confirmed hit, Dee and Bob got married in 1964. The relationship lasted a few years, and while Merrill was advancing as a successful Broadway composer, Dee kept house.
The couple separated a few years later. Dee remarried and returned to live in Manila. As successful a songwriter as Merrill was, things did not end happily for him. After suffering bouts of depression, the talented lyricist for “People” and Funny Girl took his own life in 1998 at age 76.
Still another instance of a cosmic Broadway-Manila connection, the year after Marquez and Merrill married in 1965, Bob Merrill’s most awarded musical in which he wrote both music and lyrics Carnival, was staged by St. Paul’s College Manila. Carnival was the stage musical adaptation of the 1952 film Lili.
Poster/CA art for Carnival which won the Tony Best Musical award in 1961.
It is not known if Mr. and Mrs. Bob Merrill were aware that Manila audiences had been treated to Merrill’s whimsical and melodic, multi-awarded musical a year after they married.
Whakindda Mother Names Her Son ‘Florenz’?
That line is a direct quote from Funny Girl. The answer, of course, is Mrs. Ziegfeld, who named her son who would someday rise to the status of a legendary stage impresario, after a great-grand uncle. This leads us to a small but significant “non-traditional” casting footnote on the Broadway stage. In the recent revival of Funny Girl on Broadway (closed on September 3, 2023), the character of Florenz Ziegfeld, a Caucasian and Fanny Brice’s boss, was played in the final months by New York-born Fil Am actor Paolo Montalban.
The “rule of thumb” in film/stage casting is that if the character is a real person, you honor the subject’s identity by casting as close ethnically and “essentially” as possible. If it is a fictional character and ethnicity is not pivotal to the story, then the “rules” are more relaxed. Ziegfeld is a minor character in Funny Girl, and since his ethnicity is immaterial to the story, the producers got away with what would have been a “firestorm” issue in earlier times. In 2015, the breakthrough musical Hamilton totally turned casting conventions on its head.
Montalban merely continued a record set by Lea in 1996 and in 2007 when, as an actor of Asian descent, she played the (fictional French, first Eponine, then Fantine respectively) characters not only in Les Miserables’ initial Broadway engagement, but also the same in the globally-televised 10th and 25th anniversary concerts (1996/2011) from London, breaking the mold.
Montalban shot to fame when he played Prince Charming in a United Nations-cast of all races in the Disney-ABC-TV remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1998), and he also appears in the new Fil-Am movie, Asian Persuasion. Behind the scenes with Mr. Ziegfeld himself! @Paolo Montalban shares s... | TikTok
Eleanor Calbes
Twenty years before Lea Salonga’s name appeared above the title of Miss Saigon on Broadway in 1990, Eleanor Calbes’ name appeared before the title in Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen (LLKG), the musical version of an earlier play Teahouse of the August Moon. LLKG opened on Broadway in December 1970.
Calbes, as Lotus Blossom, on Broadway, 1970 (c/o NYPL Free Digital Collections)
Calbes played Lotus Blossom. Unfortunately, the show was not a big hit. Critics panned LLKG for being based on a dated play that was out of place at the height of the Vietnam war, “an idea whose time had clearly passed.” LLKG only played 19 performances, closing on January 9, 1971.
Calbes, originally from Aparri, Cagayan, had two marriages both to Canadian gentlemen and retired in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where she intermittently taught voice lessons and continued to give concerts both in Canada and the Philippines.
Unfortunately, because it flopped, LLKG was never accorded an original cast recording; however, here is a clip of Calbes performing from the more classical repertory. Calbes succumbed to cancer in April 2016, age 76.
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Then there are two sets of lesser-known mother-to-daughter passage of Filipina performing genes.
In 1973, A Little Night Music with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim opened. The role of Anne Egerman, the young, virginal bride was originated by Victoria Mallory, whose name was Vicky Morales, a Filipino on her father’s side. (In the 1976 film version of A Little Night Music, Anne Egerman was played by Lesley-Anne Down.)
While playing in Night Music, Mallory met fellow actor Mark Lambert who played her stepson in the musical. In a case of art imitating real life, Mallory and Lambert soon became an item. They married and had a daughter named Ramona. Mallory then undertook other stage and TV roles, like The Young and the Restless, Santa Barbara, until she was struck down by pancreatic cancer in 1984. Daughter Ramona followed her parents’ career footsteps and also first became a stage actress. Then in 2009 a poignant, possible historic “first” on Broadway or American theatre occurred when Ramona Mallory reprised her mother Victoria Mallory-Lambert’s 1973 debut role of Anne in A Little Night Music.
The strange thing about Ramona reprising her mother’s Broadway role is that she actually shied away from going for the part because “I never wanted to fall into the trap of ‘Guess who (my) mom and dad are.’ I wanted to make my own way in this business.” So much so that she never closely researched or even explored A Little Night Music until just before her audition.
Another Filipina mother-daughter passage of show biz genes on Broadway was between Cely Carillo and her daughter, Cynthia Onrubia.
As noted previously, Carillo, was Miyoshi Umeki’s understudy and later replacement in Flower Drum Song. Carillo, born in 1934, had a proper University of the Philippines (UP) background. Her mother, Carmen Casas Ocampo, was a Spanish teacher at UP; her dad was a physician who served with the US Medical Corps during WWII. After the war, Cely was quite active with the Dramatics Club of the university, appearing both in an opera, Rigoletto, and in straight dramas.
In the late 1940s, Cely moved with some of her relatives to the US. Soon, she earned a six-year scholarship at Julliard School of Music. Finishing that around 1955, she started getting roles in many television dramas being filmed in New York. She even landed an audio-only job, for an LP record Hi-Fi in an Oriental Garden, performing three Filipino folk songs: Leron-Leron Sinta, Bahay Kubo, and The Pearls of Mindanao.
RHO and Flower Drum came a-calling in 1958, and the rest is history. Cely got more roles in early TV and met a guy from the old sod, Antonio Onrubia. They quickly married and had their first child, Cynthia, in 1962.
Cynthia followed her mother’s footsteps, and by age 15, got cast as the youngest dancer in A Chorus Line (in a 1977 touring company). Five years later, Cynthia made her debut on Broadway as the White Cat in the blockbuster hit Cats! Cynthia then turned to choreography in films mostly, working as assistant choreographer in Julie Andrews’ Victor/Victoria (1995) and for the multi-Oscared film version of Chicago (2002). Her last credit was associate choreographer in the 2014-15 revival of Cabaret on Broadway. After that Cynthia went off the grid. Her mother, Cely Carillo Onrubia, however, quietly passed away in New York in March 2017.
Cry For Us, Las Filipinas
On November 26, 2023, the controversial musical Here Lies Love revival, celebrating/satirizing Imelda Marcos, closed after some six months on Broadway. One of the show’s biggest distinctions was its nearly 95% Filipino cast and crew. While it may have recouped part of its initial cost—limping to 33 previews and 149 performances (even with Lea Salonga in a featured part as Aurora Aquino, Ninoy’s mother), it will still rank as one of Broadway’s biggest bombs at $22 million. However, because of another commitment in London, Salonga only stayed with the show until August, 2023. Whether she would have been able to sustain box-office draw had she stayed on, we will never know.
In London, Salonga became part of another first in theatrical history. September-December 2023 saw the names of two artists of Filipina descent, Salonga and Nicole Scherzinger—another rising Euro-Fil-Am diva—simultaneously billed above the titles of their respective shows in the West End. Salonga shared top billing with Bernadette Peters in Old Friends, a revue of Stephen Sondheim’s oeuvre, while over at the Savoy Theatre, Scherzinger reigned over a new staging of Sunset Boulevard, with her name over composer/producer Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s! Once again, in a very strange cosmic coincidence, both shows were set for limited 16-week engagements which ended by New Year’s Eve 2023.
It was a big deal. Hope they took selfies of the marquees and sent those to Mom!
SOURCES:
Barbara Luna - BarBara Luna - Wikipedia
Neile Adams – Neile Adams - Wikipedia
FEU South Pacific – photos c/o Amodio Arboleda and Virgilio A. Reyes, Jr.
Dee Marquez – Bob Merrill - Wikipedia and personal knowledge
Eleanor Calbes - Eleanor Calbes - Wikipedia
Victoria and Ramona Mallory - Ramona Mallory's Family Ties to A Little Night Music | Broadway Buzz | Broadway.com
Cely Carillo – Cynthia Onrubia -- Cely Carrillo, the First Filipino Broadway Star (esquiremag.ph)
The Richard Rodgers Fact Book, the Lynn Farol Group, NYC, 1968
Here Lies Love - David Byrne's Broadway Musical 'Here Lies Love' to Close in November (variety.com)
Myles A. Garcia is a Correspondent and regular contributor to www.positivelyfilipino.com. He has written three books:
· Secrets of the Olympic Ceremonies (latest edition, 2021);
· Thirty Years Later . . . Catching Up with the Marcos-Era Crimes (© 2016); and
· Of Adobo, Apple Pie, and Schnitzel With Noodles (© 2018)—all available in paperback from amazon.com (Australia, USA, Canada, UK and Europe).
Myles is also a member of the International Society of Olympic Historians, contributing to the ISOH Journal, and pursuing dramatic writing lately. For any enquiries: razor323@gmail.com
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