She was the 'Shirley Temple of the Philippines.' Now a book tells Tessie Agana's story

Mylene Richardson knew her mother, Tessie Agana, had been a child actor in her home country of the Philippines.

In the 1950s, Agana starred in several Filipino films, sometimes alongside her mother, Consuelo Agana, who performed under the stage name Linda Estrella.

But this glamorous slice of family history was a world away from Richardson's childhood, growing up as one of nine kids in the midwest. To her, Agana was just … her mom. With that many kids, it seemed she had little time to be anyone or anything else.

That changed in 1980 on a family trip to the Philippines.

Close to 30 years had passed since the peak of the mother-daughter acting duo's fame. They were interviewed on national Filipino talk shows. And fans lined up before and after filming, begging the entire family for autographs.

"I thought, 'OK, this is big,'" Richardson said.

Her mom was famous.

It changed how Richardson saw her mother. She began to ask questions, curious about what Agana's unique childhood had been like. Often, she was met with resistance.

"She didn't like talking about it," Richardson said. "She was so in the spotlight, she just did what she had to do as a child… she almost wanted to just keep it in the past."

But it was the start of a dialogue between mother and daughter that would continue for decades, and eventually turn into a book.

Writing the family history

Richardson started recording conversations with her mother and grandmother in 2009.

At first, it was to preserve the family history for Richardson's own son, who was born the year before. He would run around playing with his great grandmother's rosary beads, as Richardson caught their stories on a digital recorder.

She only ever intended the audio to be heard by family. But as people found out what she was doing, they made the same suggestion: Maybe you should write a book.

At the same time, Richardson's own perspective began to change. She had anticipated the fascinating tidbits about life as a child star. But she hadn't expected to learn so much about her mother, nor to gain so much insight into herself.

Her book, titled "The Legend of Tessie Agana: Beloved Child Star of the Philippines: An Intimate Portrait of My Mother," was released in September. In it, Richardson documents her mother's journey from childhood fame in the Philippines, to life as a midwest mother, to the Arizona town of Cave Creek.

Rising to fame with 'Roberta'

Agana was eight when she rocketed to fame in the 1951 film "Roberta."

Based on a comic by Filipino artist Mars Ravelo, it was billed as "the motion picture that will tear your heart to pieces." Agana shone as the titular character, an impoverished girl caring for her younger brother.

It wasn't her first film, but it was by far the biggest. "Roberta" broke box office records and revived the fortunes of production studio Sampaguita Pictures, then foundering in the wake of a fire that sent hundreds of its reels up in smoke.

In the wake of "Roberta," more gigs rolled in. Agana booked roles throughout the early 1950s, sometimes appearing in films with her mother, who began acting in 1941 at the age of 17.

They became an iconic duo, appearing in a combined 40 films. Agana was a beloved child star, dubbed the Shirley Temple of the Philippines. But as their fame grew, so did its trappings: freedom curtailed by hordes of adoring fans, media scrutiny that bordered on the unbearable.

When Agana was 14, her parents decided to move to the United States. It was partly because of the relentless spotlight, but also due to insecurity felt by Agana's father, Adriano. He was an OB-GYN, pursuing a medical career between the U.S. and the Philippines.

Richardson described her grandfather as old school, raised to believe the father was the provider, and he struggled with his wife and daughter earning more in movies than he could as a doctor.

They moved to Maryland, where Agana enjoyed four years out of the spotlight. In early 1960, before she turned 18, she returned to the Philippines for her cotillion, a coming-of-age celebration similar to a quinceañera. While there, she shot a couple of movies, and also met Charlton Heston, who was there to promote the 1959 epic "Ben-Hur."

But her acting life was winding down.

A 'charmed facade' of a life

In 1962, Agana met Rodolfo Jao, the man she would go on to marry.

Jao, who died in 2018, was a doctor, a larger-than-life man who had gone from growing up poor as one of eight children in the Philippines all the way to Harvard Medical School. He was endlessly proud to have married the famous Tessie Agana.

"Whenever he would meet Filipinos, he would say, 'This is Tessie Agana, my wife,' and she would shy away from it," Richardson said. "She would just be like, 'Oh, stop.'"

She really, truly did not want to talk about it.

Richardson doesn't believe her mother's experiences as a child star were traumatic. Rather, she said, her mom is at heart a shy person, an introvert who learned to manage the spotlight, but didn't miss it once it moved on.

As she and Jao built a life together, Agana had her hands full as a stay-at-home mom.

The house was full of noise and chaos, but rather than join in on the raucous ping pong tournaments or family video game sessions, Agana would retreat to her room, a cold basement space her kids nicknamed "the dungeon."

"She was kind of a negative light," Richardson said. There were mental health issues, never really addressed, and a damaging sense of insecurity.

Her mother's self-doubt was so pervasive, Richardson said, that she struggled to assert authority in her sprawling family. At family meetings, relatively formal gatherings where there would be an agenda and notetaking, Agana often demurred to her children and husband, or just left.

"She never thought she had anything to say," Richardson said. "Growing up, she was always told how to feel, how to look, how to dress, what to say. I mean, she was given notes when she would be interviewed about what to say."

Agana loved her children, and she gave them what she could, Richardson said. But she never would have described her mother as happy.

"I call it a charmed facade," she said. "She looked like she had a perfect life with all of us, dressing up to go to events and she was very strict.

"But she was never truly happy to be there at that moment. She was always thinking."

Uncovering the truths about her mother

As she interviewed and wrote, Richardson's view of her mother changed again.

She knew Agana had wanted to be a nun, an ambition that gelled with her Catholic upbringing. But she had no idea her mother had also harbored aspirations to be a doctor, like her father and husband, or to work as an international businessperson.

There was a "zest for life" in the younger version of her mother that Richardson didn't recognize.

"I just never saw that side of her until I started unveiling these stories of what she wanted to be and what she wanted to do," Richardson said.

Now a mother herself, Richardson began to see parallels between them.

She was an adventure seeker before her sons were born, Richardson said, the first to volunteer to skydive from an airplane, but her boys, now teenagers, found it hard to believe.

She has also found herself retreating, hunting for peace and quiet in a noisy home. It was a revelation, she said, a moment of "Oh my god, I'm so much more similar to my mom than I wanted to be."

She and her mother also have being a very emotional person in common, Richardson said.

It was a trait that made Agana a good child actor, able to convey depth of feeling. But as an adult, she struggled to translate her emotions into words.

"My mom always had a hard time saying verbally the words that would come to her heart. She would just cry," Richardson said. "I think I do a better job at articulating. I mean, I did write this book. But I also feel so much like my mom."

In 2017, things changed again. That's when Agana had a stroke and subsequently developed dementia.

She moved to Arizona, where two of her children already lived. Richardson followed, wanting to be close for her mother's twilight years.

"Since then, interestingly enough, my relationship with my mother has grown to be much more solid," Richardson said. Her mother seems happy, she said, in a way she never was when Richardson was growing up.

Richardson hasn't seen a lot of her mother or grandmother's movies. They are hard to access, with no original copies of some. A lot of her grandmother's reels were destroyed in the fire at Sampaguita Pictures.

But a handful are still floating around. Some have even made it onto YouTube, where fans of classic Filipino films have come out of the woodwork to watch and comment on their old favorites.

In recent months, Agana and Richardson have sat down to watch some together.

As a film started playing in crackly black and white, Agana recognized the familiar logo and music of Sampaguita Pictures. "Oh, I know that, this is one of my movies," she said. She registered herself, and then her mother, who died in 2012: "Oh, that's my momma and that's me."

She smiled the entire time.

"I embrace the moment with her, because that's all she has with dementia," Richardson said. When she visits, her mother often asks her: "Now, who are you again?"

"She'll ask me that question about 10 times in two minutes," Richardson said. "Who am I?"

It's life's most defining question, she said, and writing her mother's story has helped her find the answer.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Book tells story of Tessie Agana, 'Shirley Temple of the Philippines'