AS I write this, I have just learned that my colleague and friend from pre-martial law Graphic Magazine has just died on a late Sunday afternoon.
She was known as Ethelwolda A. Ramos of Studio Whispers fame in the early ’70s.
In the summer of 1971, I realized I needed a job more than I needed a college diploma. When our Manuel L. Quezon University journalism professor Prof. Angel Anden announced that there was a vacancy for a proofreader at Graphic Magazine, I jumped at the opportunity.
After writing a few short stories for Graphic (literary editor: Ninotchka Rosca), Nation Magazine (literary editor: E.P. Patanne), and Now Magazine (literary editor: Norma Miraflor), I realized what I needed was a chance at journalism which I had dreamed of since high school. I also realized that my intermittent forays into the literary circle could not pay for my Quiapo board and lodging.
I said goodbye to my college life and landed a job as proofreader with Graphic Magazine under editor Luis Mauricio.
The first time I walked into that office hallway in Port Area, I knew this was the job I would like.
The first time I saw 1964 Miss International Gemma Cruz Araneta (she was one of the Graphic columnists), my jaw dropped, gazing at that beauty for the first time.
At noontime, when the editorial room would be buzzing with staff members (Chato Garcellano, Tony Hidalgo, Amadis. Ma. Guerrero, among others), I saw a young and winsome Ethelwolda A. Ramos who was then entertainment editor.
It took a while to know her. When she learned I was also from Bicol, we became close.
She was then entertainment editor. It took a while to know her. When she learned I was also from Bicol, we became close
She herself was originally from Albay and lived along Lapu-Lapu Street in the heart of Legazpi City.
She would bring me along to her movie presscon assignments. I stepped into the lobby of ABS-CBN for the first time in 1971 and saw singer Marilen Martinez.
I didn’t dream of covering the movies, but Ethel opened the entertainment world for me. For my first assignments, she asked me to interview the then very young Jay Ilagan at the FPJ Studios on Roosevelt Avenue (now FPJ Avenue) and cover Guy and Pip at the Vera Perez Garden in Quezon City. She brought me along to one informal dinner with her famous actor friend, Rita Gomez, at her Quezon City residence. It was the first time I heard La Gomez as raconteur with her famous, legendary guffaw.
Apart from interviewing movie stars, Ethel also asked me to cover beauty contests and Red Feather fundraising events where the then very young Chavit Singson was always around.
I became so close to her, she’d often invite me for lunch and dinner in her Maria Clara apartment in Sampaloc. She’d introduce me to her mother with a qualifier, “Mama, Pablo is also from Bicol.”
I joined Graphic September of 1971 and it closed September 22, 1972 after the declaration of martial law.
As fate would have it, I only lasted for more than a year at Graphic. But I was able to cover everything I was interested in: The Con-Con and the infamous Quintero Affair, the burning of a barrio in Ilocos Sur where Bingbong Crisologo became famous, and countless movie presscons courtesy of Manay Ethel. (I started calling her Manay Ethel when I learned she was 13 years older than me.)
After martial law, I got a call from Manay Ethel, then holding office at Burke Building in Escolta. “Pablo, I know you are jobless now. Would you like to write for Movie Life, which I edit?”
I said yes. She’d often prepare snacks every time I submitted an article. She would quip, “I have always known you as the poor boy from Catanduanes. I prepared something for you as I realized you have not eaten for days since you lost your job at Graphic.” Then she would break into a smile.
Later I learned she was also into managing movie stars. At her El Oro office in Burke Building, she was managing then beauty queen Elizabeth Oropesa and other stars. (I believe her El Oro office was named after the beauty queen from Guinobatan, Albay.) I would often catch her giving instructions to her messenger, delivering something to her talent in Antipolo who would be away for nine months.
I got another job from Kit Tatad’s office in Albay before the end of 1972—three months after the declaration of martial law.
She would quip, ‘I have always known you as the poor boy from Catanduanes’
For a while, I did not see much of Manay Ethel while I was in Albay. But when I left my government job in 1975 to join an advertising agency back in Manila, I started seeing Manay Ethel again in her El Oro office.
With her as constant companion, I was back to interviewing movie stars for her Movie Life Magazine and attending premiere nights and on the side, reviewing films for Kerima Polotan’s Evening News.
When I joined CCP in 1980, I still frequented Manay Ethel’s El Oro office. By then, I re-discovered her influence in the movie world.
It seemed all the movie stars frequented her office. Come August 1, which was her birthday, her office would be swamped with chocolates, flowers, food (a lot of lechon), and wine.
I believe she shared them with her secretary, Emma Guevarra, her full-time messenger, and the rest for her sisters, nephews, and nieces. “Here, take these,” she would say, confronted with a lot of perishables in her office.
Over the last 23 years, she made sure I was around at some of her ABS-CBN presscons.
She would start the presscon proper with a warning: “Magandang araw sa inyong lahat. Bago tayo magumpisa, nais naming ipaalaala sa isang kasamahan na ang presscon na ito ay tungkol sa pelikula ng Star Cinema, hindi tungkol sa concert ni Cecile Licad.” The presscon attendees would burst into laughter, knowing the warning was intended for me.
Moreover, Ethel had seen me at my worst in entertainment gatherings. In one birthday party for the late Didith Reyes in the late ’70s at the Sheraton Hotel, I got so intoxicated I greeted everybody with Didith Reyes beside me and looking as though I knew the guests. Ethel would tell me the following day, “Pablo, you behaved like a perfect social climber last night, making beso-beso people you don’t even know.”
Another presscon reminder from Ethel in the ’90s: “Pablo, no drinking in my presscon even if Eddie Garcia offers you a case of beer.”
(Eddie Garcia liked one of my articles on him, and he actually offered beer as a thank-you gesture. When he heard Ethel’s warning, the actor offered me a check to say thank you. “You really captured my Sorsogon life in that article,” the actor said. I told him, “It so happens that I need a round-trip air tickets for a Romanian violinist I am bringing to Catanduanes.”
Upon hearing this, Garcia wrote a P5,000 check right there. “For your violinist’s air tickets,” he said.)
I would see the last of Ethel the year before the pandemic. It was the usual series of presscon she handled, and as always, she would ask me to sit beside her. “I asked you to sit with me not because you are a good writer. I know you come from a poor island that your favorite writer described…” She would describe the exchange between Kit Tatad and Kerima Polotan, where the latter described how islanders live in no flattering terms.
Another presscon reminder from Ethel in the ’90s: ‘Pablo, no drinking in my presscon even if Eddie Garcia offers you a case of beer’
Ribbing close friends was a habit with Ethel. One time in 2019, she asked me to accompany her to Bambbi Fuentes’ salon along Timog Avenue.
Inside, she gave instructions to the staff: “Please give my friend a good pedicure and a manicure if he likes. The last time he had one was in 1975.” The salon attendants laughed.
At one presscon at Fisher Mall, I told Ethel, “Manay Ethel, I think we need a good picture of us together. I think I will not last long.”
Ethel Ramos with the author at a Fishermall presscon
“Dai ca magtaram caiyan (Don’t ever say that). We have more years to live,” she snapped at me. That’s the back story of the photo of Ethel holding my hand, and with my other hand on her shoulder.
When the pandemic happened, Ethel would call me from time to time.
The typical exchange:
“Pablo, what really happened to Isah Red (another departed Bicolano from Albay)?”
“What did Ricky Lo (another Bicolano who used to live in Tabaco, Albay) die of?”
All of which I answered with, “Honestly, Manay Ethel, I don’t know. You know Ricky Lo and Isah Red better than I do.” I believe she expected to get new info on her late friends’ demise.
The author and Manay Ethel (leftmost, standing) with other entertainment writers, including Nestor Cuartero and the late Ricky Lo (second from right and rightmost)
Ethel was many things to people close to her in the showbiz world. Former entertainment editor Nestor Cuartero said Ethel was born with an ear for news and scoops. “Her initials are EAR (for Ethelwolda A. Ramos) and they curiously represent our sense of hearing. She is sharp in all senses. In the ’70s, she was anointed as the Dean of Philippine entertainment writers. True enough, she lives up to that appellation through more than six decades of seeing stars. Ethel is always the first to break the news about actors coupling, breaking up, reconciling. She makes it her business to be on top of celebrity stories, such that she would start her day inevitably chatting on the telephone with her sources. She was also mother to many an aspiring reporter, offering free use of her small office then at the Burke Building in Escolta. Friendly to a fault, she nurtured old and new ones, feeding them home-cooked Bicolano meals like laing and sinaing na galunggong that her mother, Amparo, lovingly prepared.”
Ethel with Coco Martin (center) and showbiz entertainment colleagues including Nestor Cuartero (standing rightmost), her sister Chit Ramos (second from left, seated), and the author (seated rightmost)
Cuartero added that any encounter with Ethel would seem incomplete without an anecdote that she heard from her latest source. “It could be anything from the latest pregnancy, a death in showbiz, to a feud between stars and starlets plus their family members. Then again, she would be quick to issue a word of caution, while holding, pressing your hand: ‘Don’t say it came from me. I will deny it.’”
Any encounter with Ethel would seem incomplete without an anecdote that she heard from her latest source, according to Nestor Cuartero
Manay Ethel became a byword in entertainment circles in the 1960s when she launched a movie column, Studio Whispers, in the old, pre-martial law Graphic magazine.
Ethel Ramos hosting a movie presscon
A University of Santo Tomas graduate of AB Journalism, the Bicolana was also publicist of leading movie companies and talent manager of celebrated stars, among them Aga Muhlach, Elizabeth Oropesa, Claudine Barretto ,and Angel Locsin, among others.
Aga Muhlach (second from right), with his two children Andres and Atasha, and Sen. Bong Revilla (rightmost) at Ethel’s wake (Photo: Salve Asis)
Cuartero recalled how he met Ethel for the first time in the late ’70s when he was working with Mr. and Ms. Magazine. Ethel had a movie column in the publication. “I needed to shoot a Nora Aunor cover. It happened she was PR of the Nora Aunor starrer. She set it up for us. After the shoot, she started inviting me to her events.”
For a while, Ethel and Nestor were neighbors in Sampaloc in Manila. “Every Monday, I would pick up her Mr. and Ms. column in her place. I would arrive at her apartment while a parlorista did her pedicure. She would hand me her column called Say and I would dash off to work.”
In 1977, Ethel, along with writer Cristina “Jing” Pantoja Hidalgo, treated us to lunch in Escolta with the heavyweight beauty Cecile Iñigo, who was starring in a film called Dabiana.
When I told Jing about Ethel’s death a few days ago, her reaction: “Oh no!”
For now, I rewind the last time we were together. Then I prepare to have a last look at Manay Ethel at Room 301 of the National Chapels and Crematory (formerly Funeraria Nacional) on Araneta Avenue, where she would stay until Wednesday, Sept. 13. Her cremation was scheduled for 12 noon on Thursday, September 14.
