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For Philippine Independence Day: On Bodabil, The Filipino Vaudeville
June 12 is celebrated as Independence Day in the Philippines (it’s the day the archipelago declared independence from Spain in 1898). Irrelevant to the concerns of this blog? How wrong you’d be to say that! All roads to lead to vaudeville, some more than others. But this story is bigger than that, and especially worth telling to people who are not aware of the long, close history of America and the Philippines over the past century-plus. In fact, the island nation can be said to have come closer than almost any other (with the notable exception of Puerto Rico, and a handful of arguable others) to becoming absorbed by the U.S. in the same fashion as the Western states, Alaska, and Hawaii. And that story informs the vaudeville one.
Along with Puerto Rico, Cuba, and some other colonies, the Philippines were among the territories that the U.S. “liberated” during the Spanish-American War in 1898. (Cuba, too, was often spoken of as a potential “51st State” for many years, until Castro’s revolution reduced the likelihood of such a thing down to nil). As often happens in the lengthy historical process of decolonization, America dragged its heels on granting complete and immediate independence to the Philippines. The same revolutionary faction in the country that had fought Spain, now fought U.S. troops in what we today call the Philippine-American War, which lasted from 1899 to 1902. The hostilities ended not with Philippine independence, but with almost half a century of U.S. occupation. The Philippines became America’s new western boundary, so far west it was east. For a time it represented a problematic new chapter in the history of Manifest Destiny.
The Philippines’ proximity to Asian markets and to rival powers like China and Japan have always made it strategically valuable and a much-contested prize amongst aspiring regional powers. Thus, the very same day the Japanese invaded Pearl Harbor, they did the same in the Philippines. The nation finally fell to the Imperial Forces in April, 1942. I read a terrifying account of that process in a book called Give Us This Day by Sidney Stewart, a 21 year old private who was then a member of America’s small occupying force. (Yes, I was drawn to the book by the author’s surname, which is the same as mine. He also provides an account of the Bataan Death March, and is the man who coined the phrase “there are no atheists in foxholes” and variations thereon). The book was an eye-opener to me, as seen from Stewart’s P.O.V. The picture was not unlike the one we have of the Hawaiian bases prior to the Japanese attack, a sort of sleepy, complacent but vulnerable outpost. An uncle of my father-in-law’s, a Catholic Priest and missionary, was also in the country at the time. He died in a Japanese POW camp.
The Japanese occupied the Philippines until the end of War War Two, whereupon the liberated territories joined the brand new United Nations, and were granted full independence in 1946. Well, almost. American military bases remained there through 1991. These were particularly put into play during the years of the Vietnam War, when they were used as a staging area and jumping off point for troops heading into the battle zone. Remember how Vietnam is an American state in The Watchmen? That’s an interesting historical “what if”. There was much greater likelihood of such a thing happening in The Philippines, though, which had tens of thousands of Americans pouring through it, decade after decade.
Like the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, and Spanish before them, the Americans brought their own cultural influences to the Philippines. And one of those products was vaudeville. Having previously described Puerto Rican and Mexican vaudeville forms, we can now add the Philippine variety, which became Philippinized as “bodabil”. (Which bears an unfortunate close resemblance to “Bobadil”, a cowardly boaster, after a character in Ben Jonson’sEvery Man in His Humor. Amusingly, the screen character of Bob Hope, who surely came to the Philippines with many a U.S.O. road show, was Bobadilesque). Vaudeville came to the Philippines almost directly following the occupation starting in 1898, at roughly the same moment the big time vaudeville circuits were being established in the U.S. As in the music hall circuits of the British Empire, which extended from the Mother Country to far flung possessions in India, Australia and Africa, American vaudeville performers made the journey to entertain English speaking audiences in the Philippines. In time, this form of entertainment became Philippinized through the efforts of Borromeo Lou (Luis Borromeo) and other local entrepreneurs to appeal to the indigenous populous as well:
This reminds me of the ads for the all-black U.S. minstrel companies of the 1890s. A similar process of “owning” one’s own representation onstage. During the American occupation there were but a handful of these bodabil theatres, mostly in Manilla, presenting comedy sketches, singers, dancing, jazz music, local folk specialties, and other variety acts such as magic. I’m guessing Ming and Toy (whom we wrote about here) were no strangers to bodabil. During the Japanese occupation, when the movie industry was shut down, bodabil flourished and there were as many as 40 local theatres presenting it. It survived long after American vaudeville had died, going at least into the mid ’60s, when television finally killed it. (In this context, I can’t help remembering the Beatles’ disastrous visit to the country in 1966, which ended their career as a touring band).
In 1972 President Ferdinand Marcos attempted to revive a state-sanctioned, propaganda-laden form of bodabil to gin up approval for his imposition of martial law. The people didn’t go for it. In 1986 the People Power Revolution unseated the Marcoses; one of the tools that college activists used in the years leading up the revolution was, again, bodabil, this time a sort of Brechtian incarnation.
This is a story that takes us all the way to the present day. Google “bodabil” and you will find all sorts of contemporary Philippine companies using the term as part of their home grown neo-burlesque movement. Looking at the ads for these shows warmed my heart; made the 8,500 mile distance between New York and Manilla feel much, much smaller. The less pleasant aspect of the story is also timely. Just about two months ago, the U.S. DoD announced the opening of four new American military bases in the Philippines, purportedly as a measure to help counteract Chinese aggression, which has been steadily increasing in the region over the past several years. So much for independence!
Read much more about bodabil at:
For more on vaudeville and variety history, please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. And please stay tuned for my next book Vaudeville in Your Living Room: A Century of Radio and TV Variety, coming November 2023. And to support Travalanche directly, please check out my Patreon.
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