There is a saying that death comes in threes. There usually is a gap of two, three weeks, or even a month between deaths, but the series of deaths in showbiz last week terrifyingly came in extreme successions. Roger Calvin died 30 July. Then, last Sunday, 2 August, the Grim Reaper claimed two lives in the world of entertainment: Jobert Sucaldito and Romeo Jalosjos Sr. This column pays tribute to these three showbiz personalities today.

ROGER CALVIN

A Pampangueño, he was born Roger Visdan Calvin on 9 November 1946. It may be of interest to a new generation that he was the father of Cher Calvin, who had a brief career on Philippine television. Educated in New York University, Cher worked for GMA in 1998, but eventually moved to ABS-CBN where she co-hosted the lifestyle show F! with Angel Aquino and Daphne Osena. She then moved to Los Angeles, California and had a successful career as a broadcaster. Cher Calvin is a winner of 11 Emmy Awards.

Half a decade before Cher was born (1 August 1974), her father, Roger, was one of the most popular matinee idols in Philippine movies. Among his contemporaries were Ricky Belmonte and the brothers Rodriguez Pepito and Ramil.

Roger had a good mix of Oriental and Occidental blood and was one of the best-looking leading men not only in his mother studio, Sampaguita Pictures, but in the entire local entertainment. At six feet tall, he was a gentle giant — kind and soft-spoken. Before he was discovered for the movies, he modeled for a popular tailoring shop, Toppers Haberdashery, in an era before RTW.

In the late 1960s, he migrated to the United States. The trend in the movies was already bomba (simulated sex) and he was not comfortable with the genre. While his fellow Sampaguita actors — Lito Legaspi (the father of Zoren and Kier); Gloria Romero’s younger brother, Tito Galla; and even Eddie Garcia dropped their pants, Roger decided to hang on to them.

He stayed in New York and worked as a bank teller and, for a time, as an assistant in an advertising agency. When he had saved enough, he enrolled at New York University and studied filmmaking ang graphic arts.

In 1973, he married a New York-based Pinay doctor (a psychiatrist), Delia Santos, at the St. Patrick’s Cathedral on 5th Avenue. The following year, the couple had Cher. Delia, sadly, died of cancer in 1994.

Roger would fly to the Philippines every so often and spend time with old friends in the movies. He helped colleagues who were in dire financial straits. At one fund-raising event for Mowelfund, he was the first to dip into his pocket and donated a hefty sum — in dollars!

This year, it was discovered that he had lung cancer and had heart problems. He underwent some 10 operations in just a matter of months, both here and in the US.

Last 30 July, he flew back to Manila, but collapsed at the arrival area of the NAIA Terminal 2. He had a massive heart attack and was declared dead upon arrival at the Cardinal Santos Hospital. Roger’s wake was held at his farm in Floridablanca, Pampanga. Among the movie stars who paid him their last respects were Nova Villa and Liza Lorena.

Cher is now in town and is arranging for the cremation of her father’s remains. His ashes will be brought to the US and inured in the same columbarium where his wife’s cremated remains had been kept in the past three decades.

JOBERT SUCALDITO

The showbiz reporter/radio host Jobert Sucaldito was a native of Santa Barbara in Iloilo province. In the mid-2000s, he was named most outstanding citizen of this municipality that serves as a gateway to an international airport in Panay Island. For college, he went to the UP campus in Iloilo. In 1982, he decided to move to UP Diliman and set sail for Manila. Unfortunately, in his excitement to be in the big city, somehow, he lost copies of his transcript in the boat. He could have returned to Iloilo to get a new set of school records, but chose to explore Manila life instead. He found himself joining PETA where he met showbiz reporters who encouraged him to write for entertainment.

Naturally feisty, he quickly made a name for himself as a terror of local show business, especially its “artistas.” Jobert’s opinions changed lives. In 2010, he was anchoring a radio show on DZMM when he called out the staff of Wowowee for not carefully screening the contestants of this ABS-CBN noontime show. He was particularly peeved when host Willie Revillame conducted one of the program’s regular quiz shows. The question was basic: What is the name of the country where Canadians live? The contestant’s answer: Canadia.

That incident sent Jobert on a rampage when he went onboard that afternoon on DZMM. The trouble was, DZMM and Wowowee are both productions of ABS-CBN. As it turned out, that wasn’t the first time Jobert had criticized both Willie and Wowowee. The following day, Willie went on air and made a threat to ABS-CBN officials: Either they fire Jobert from DZMM or he’ll leave Wowowee.

It wasn’t exactly a Sophie’s Choice decision for ABS-CBN to make. Willie had been quite a handful since he became a TV superstar, thanks to Wowowee. Management decided to retain Jobert. If Willie wanted to leave, that was his prerogative. And so, that was the beginning of Revillame’s nomadic journey on television. He had an unsuccessful stint on TV5 before moving to GMA, where he stayed for about half a decade. Where is Willie Revillame now? Supposed to be somewhere in the internet. At least, the public knows where Jobert Sucaldito is — in the afterlife.

By the way, more lives changed as a result of the Willie-Jobert feud. In the absence of Willie in Wowowee, ABS-CBN took in Robin Padilla as a temporary host of the program. During Robin’s two-week stint, he and Mariel Rodriguez fell in love on the set and they are now a couple. Today, Robin and Mariel are the current flavors of the season on social media. Such was the effect of Jobert Sucaldito in Philippine entertainment.

ROMEO JALOSJOS

Born to a landed family in Basilan, Romeo was a medical student in Cebu when he did a side hustle as a disc jockey for the Cebuano radio station DYDR. When he was given a better offer by DYRR in Ormoc, he perished his dream of becoming a doctor and focused on broadcast media. He eventually became DYRR’s station manager and also took charge of sales. That was when he embraced the fact that he was a born salesman. During his boyhood in Basilan, he was always so convincing in his sales pitch that he could sell a buwig ng saging (a bunch of bananas) within minutes in his neighborhood.

In the early 1960s, his reputation as a sales genius in the Visayas reached Manila-based media outlets that he got several offers to join the biggest TV and radio networks in the country. Romeo relocated to Manila and became part of the sales force of the old Channel 5. He was later pirated by ABS-CBN and one of his contemporaries there was Freddie Garcia, who brought the Lopez-owned network to meteoric heights after it reopened after EDSA I. Trouble may now be at every nook and cranny of ABS-CBN, but that’s another story.

Although he worked behind the scenes, Romeo’s face became familiar to the public because he had a high-profile romance with movie queen Nida Blanca. Circumstances didn’t allow them to get married since Nida’s marriage to Victorino “Ruth” Torres had yet to be annulled by then. Nida and Romeo eventually parted ways because Romeo was, well, being Romeo. A third party came in — a very sexy dancer-choreographer who was very popular among TV viewers in the late 1960s.

When martial law shut down ABS-CBN in 1972, Romeo formed an independent TV company and among the investors were Dolphy, Ariel Ureta and, yes, Nida Blanca (they remained friends even after the breakup). By the mid-1970s, the group was disbanded and Romeo formed his own company called Production Specialists. It produced the PBA and other special events, including Binibining Pilipinas. In 1981, Romeo even bought the franchise to Miss Young International, which was previously based in Japan.

Romeo’s death at 85 brought mixed reactions among social media users due to his involvement in a statutory rape case in the mid-1990s that sent him behind bars. But setting his personal life aside, it cannot be denied that Romeo had a lot of contributions to the local TV industry. Tito, Vic and Joey may have been the force that made Eat Bulaga bloom as the most successful noontime show in the history of Philippine television, but it was Romeo who planted the seeds when he bankrolled the show in 1979. Of course, Romeo and the Eat Bulaga group parted ways bitterly in 2023. Life truly is full of ironic twists. Did Romeo have to die the day after Eat Bulaga marked its 47th? The stories of Eat Bulaga and Romeo Jalosjos will forever be intertwined.