Mother Lily: 80 Carats

Regrets I’ve had a few

But then again too few to mention

I did what I had to do

And saw it through without exemption

I planned each charted course.

Each careful step along the byway.

And more, much more than this

I did it my way

When Paul Anka wrote that song for Frank Sinatra, he must have had in mind people who hurdled the stumbling blocks of life, hit rock bottom with a thud before scaling the peaks of ecstasy and taking the blows with head held high, chin up, dreaming the impossible dream and emerging triumphant, doing it their way all by themselves.

Like Regal Matriarch Lily Yu-Monteverde who is turning 80 years young(er) today, an event she’s celebrating with family, relatives and friends at the grand ballroom of a five-star hotel. The affair will look like a big scene from a Regal movie with the Leading Lady wearing a dress by Paul Cabral before fading out and fading in in another gown by Patty Ang.

She wore a P5,000 Pitoy Moreno gown (paid on installment) when she married Remy Monteverde

“I feel like I’m 18,” she told Conversations three days before the Big Day. “So I am having my debut.”

The truth is that Mother Lily has had her “coming out” long, long ago, back into the early ‘60s when she started to put up the Regal Empire with P10,000 that she borrowed from her older brother Jessie Yu to buy the rights to the tearjerker movie All Mine To Give that raked in over P500,000. That was called, in showbiz lingo, tubong-lugaw, a huge sum equivalent to today’s box-office hits. As a nod to that iconic movie about a poor mother who gives her children away, Mother Lily produced a local version titled Araw-Araw, Gabi-Gabi with Charito Solis as lead actress and Didith Reyes singing the haunting theme song. Araw-araw, gabi-gabi, day in and day out, Mother Lily has been at it, working and thinking of new ventures as if she hadn’t achieved enough, more than enough.

“It has been a long journey,” she says, her eyes lighting up with new ideas. “And the journey continues.”

Her typical day, Monday through Saturday, starts at 6:30 a.m. She prays, plays her favorite tune on the piano and spends the next two hours being briefed on the development in her subdivision in Baguio (“Overlooking the China Sea”), her livestock (bakahan) in Tagaytay, her resort in Batangas and (even if she has relegated the task to her daughter Roselle) the progress of three (or more) movies being shot simultaneously. She drives-thru McDo (owned by her good friend George Yang) for a breakfast of (usually cheeseburger) on her way to her favorite beauty parlor. Then she’s all set for a busy day until 6 p.m. when she relaxes by, so to speak, shooting the breeze with close friends — that is, if she’s not attending a friend’s birthday dinner or some such special occasion.

“Sundays are for my family,” she adds.

If she were to live her 80 years all over again, would Mother Lily do it the same way, with nothing changed?

“Yes, I would,” she says with conviction. “It is a wonderful life, a beautiful life, and I would spend every single day the same way.”

Here are some of what she would “do the same way all over again” (italicized excerpts from The STAR’s previous interview included in my book, Conversations With Ricky Lo, Volume 1):

During her 80th birthday party tonight at the ballroom of a five-star hotel, Mother Lily will wear two gowns alternately, one by Patty Ang (right) and the other by Paul Cabral (far right)

• “I will still court Remy” (her husband, Remy Monteverde whose father was known as the Copra King of Quezon). “Pinaghirapan ko ‘yan kaya never ko siyang iiwan. Today, we have five children who have given us seven grandchildren (one of them a lawyer who graduated summa cum laude from a school in California).”

Ako ang nanligaw sa kanya. He was a basketball player at San Beda and at the same time he was playing for the team of my father, Yu Chu. I would watch him practice every night. Remy stood 5’8” and it was considered tall at that time. He has smiling eyes. He’s the quiet type, my exact opposite because I am noisy. I was then studying at UNO High School (a Chinese school in Binondo owned and managed by the Yu Family) and I would skip classes to go on dates with him. Our theme song was From Candy Store on the Corner to the Chapel on the Hill. He would wait for me at the corner so people wouldn’t see us and make sumbong to my parents. My parents were against Remy. Our wedding was simple. I wore a gown by Pitoy Moreno worth P5,000 which I paid by installment for one year.

• ”I will still be a movie fan.”

My No. 1 favorite was Nida Blanca but I also liked Gloria Romero. When a Nida Blanca movie opened at Dalisay Theater, uma-absent ako sa school. My friends and I would hire a bus to visit the set of Nida’s movie with Nestor de Villa. Remember that scene in Luneta na nagsasayaw ng ballet sina Nida at Nestor sa spiral staircase? We were there when that was shot. It was a dream sequence and it was beautiful! When I was 12, I went to Zurbaran to buy a petticoat, four layers, and then I wore it and stood in front of the mirror, whispering, “Sana maging Nida Blanca ako!” Nagsasayaw-sayaw pa ako! Parang dream sequence, hahaha!!!

(Trivia: One time, Mother Lily was made to wait…for hours!...at the sala of an actress’ house. “Someday,” she told herself, “I will own this house!” True enough, only a few years later, she bought the house with a back door into which the indianera actress escaped.)

• ”I will still start my business the same way.”

Because my parents didn’t approve of Remy, I started doing business from scratch. I put up two popcorn machines, one at the Cherry Foodarama (on Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong City) and the other at Good Earth (on Avenida Rizal). I was very happy when I made P100 a day. There was a a moviehouse (Ideal Theater) near Good Earth and I always prayed that a woman’s movie would be shown dahil maraming babaeng manonood at bumibili ng popcorn. Kapag action picture, mostly men would watch at kokonti ang bumibili ng popcorn. Malungkot ako siempre. The most that I would earn was P30. I also sold blouses at the Zurbaran Market. I would consign the blouses at the Corazon Dry Goods Store, P24 per dozen, at five percent lang ang tubo ko.

With Remy and children (Winnie, Roselle, Meme, Dondon and Goldwyn), in-laws and some of their seven grandchildren during a family affair. ‘It’s a wonderful life, a beautiful life,’ says Mother Lily, ‘and I will live it the same way all over again.’

How does Mother Lily end her busy day(s)? Does she go to bed clad in her “magic camison” (worn on film by Cherie Gil, Gina Alajar, Rio Locsin and other Regal actresses) that spelled magic at the box office)?

“Sira na!,” she laughed. “I bought it for our honeymoon.”

 It must be noted that Mother Lily introduced the pito-pito system (films shot in seven days) which discovered two of today’s top directors, Lav Diaz and Jeffrey Jeturian. The system was maligned when, in fact, Lino Brocka shot Insiang, one of his classic works, also in seven days, proving that what matters is not the number of days you shoot a movie but the product.

It’s true: she used to talk to three different people on three different landlines)…angry on one, tsismising on another and checking a shooting on the third…without missing a beat. Today, she owns two celfones, one worth P1,200 which she hurls to the floor when she loses her temper over “misbehaving” or non-functioning employees.

Come to think of it, if her life were made into a Regal movie, who would Mother Lily choose to portray her multi-layered, multi-colored and highly-dramatic life?

She broke into a regal smile.

“Kim Chiu as the young Mother Lily, Bea Alonzo in my (post-teenage year), Vilma Santos in my 50s and Susan Roces as me today.”

(E-mail reactions at [email protected]. For more updates, photos and videos, visit www.philstar.com/funfare or follow me on Instagram @therealrickylo.)