by Joel Saracho
Malaya, March 20, 1991
Hardly had the Best Actress Awardee in this year's Star Awards finished her thank you speech when this section's editor rang up: Can you do me a Nora Aunor story?
Of course...
But what of?
Since La Aunor decided to take the lead role in PETA's Minsa'y Isang Gamugamo (on extended run this coming weekend) three editors of various publications called up this same writer to do an interview and story on her.
But what else is there to write about the Superstar>?
Her life is an open book - from the impoverished beginnings in Iriga to the Golden Voice and Phenomenal Star of the 60s to the Superstar of the 70s; from Sampaguita to Tower back to Sampaguita and everything in between before Regal; from Tirso Cruz III to Manny de Leon to Pip to Cocoy Laurel and everything in between to Christopher de Leon and Richard Merck; from Maria Leonora Theresa to Ian and Matet; from Darling Nora to Himala; from rags to riches...She has scaled the heights, and we all watched in awe.
So is there anything new with Nora Aunor?
Many believe Nora is a has been. After a series of flops (including Andrea, Paano Ba ang Maging Isang Ina for which she won best actress in both Metro Manila Film Festival and Star Awards) and when her shows were axed last year, prophets of doom predicted the final fall of Aunor (oh, but how many deaths are there to suffer?). They said she was (is?) into drugs and heavy drinking, and has lost interest in her career. Nora Aunor, as far as her critics are concerned, has lost the claim to the title superstar.
So what else is there to write to her?
People who's had negative experience working with Aunor says unless she mends her ways, Nora will have a hard time recovering lost glory. Those close to her claim Nora has shifted gear and is no longer competing for titles. What she wants now is to be known and remembered as a compleat artist.
In the last Star Awards, Nora lipsynched a medley of All By Myself, I Will Survive and Greatest Performance of my Life with the elan and sophistication of a matured performer. It was reminiscent of her What Now My Love number for the same event years back. Such electrifying pathos manifests itself intrinsically on Nora either when she's singing or acting, or just offstage.
It could be this same aura that she casts to mesmerize people and get them awestruck. It is this enigma that draws fans and critics to her, and the failure to put together the jigsaw puzzle that is Nora Aunor throw them off.
Aunor is drama and angst personified. She is contracdiction by herself, and antithesis to her own thesis, the yin to her own yang. Nora Aunor is unfathomable and as such, always misunderstood. Efforts to reach her guts almost always end up in hatred.
So what is there to write of Nora Aunor? So much of nothing.
But then, she's back in the news. Again.