THE WAY ANGIE YOINGCO remembers it, the Wing Duo started out as “serious” singers, but comedy was injected into their act because of the onstage and backstage high jinks of partner Nikki Ross.
“We had three shows at the Clover Theater (in Sta. Cruz, Manila)—1 p.m., 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.,” Angie recalls.
“We were called the Wing Trio at the time. Angie’s sister Ronnie was performing with us,” Nikki recounts.
Since rehearsals lasted till the wee hours, Nikki would often catch ZZZs between shows in the dressing room. One fine day, she overslept.
“It was already our turn. So my sister and I rushed onstage,” Angie says.
The curtain was about to rise when Angie heard urgent footsteps from backstage. She took a deep breath as the pianist Porfirio Joaquin played the opening strains of “Whatever Lola Wants.”
In her mad dash, Nikki tripped and flew across the stage. Hollering, she recalls, “I grabbed the curtain ropes and swung around like Tarzan.” And she landed on her fanny like a ton of bricks.
Angie adds, “Nikki turned red, like a child whose hands were caught in the cookie jar.”
The entire Clover Theater erupted in sheer glee. “Long after our song number,” says Angie, “the audience was still laughing.”
In the mid-’50s, after two years and a half in the group, Ronnie got married and the Wing Trio became the Wing Duo.
A bit of trivia: it was actor-radio announcer Koko Trinidad, husband of Angie’s aunt, the society columnist Lina Flor, who thought up the name “Wing.”
“He asked me what my father’s surname was. He got the Wing from Yoingco,” Angie says.
“He chose Wing so we would soar and go places in show biz,” Nikki quips.
And go places, they did.
They wowed ’em near and far. With fellow Clover and Manila Grand Opera House alumna Pilita Corrales, the Wing Duo headlined shows in San Francisco, San Diego, Phoenix, Singapore, Japan and Malaysia in the 1960s and 1970s.
“We’ve performed everywhere,” Angie says.
“Even on an aircraft carrier,” Nikki adds, laughing.
Nikki says they “made sure to learn the native language, so we could talk to the audience and sing local songs,” in all their Asian shows.
Giving 110 percent was and still is par for the course for these two. They add that though they’ve been met with applause all over the world, nothing beat performing in Clover and the Opera House.
It was Katy de la Cruz, Angie’s mom and grand dame of bodabil, who convinced them to join the Clover in the early 1950s. “She told us to try it for just a week. One week became 10 years,” Nikki chuckles.
In their stage shows, they would usually dish out “15 to 20 songs per show. That’s about 50 songs a day,” says Nikki.
As neophytes, their talent fee in Clover was pegged at P40 a week, with admission tickets costing 80 centavos for orchestra, P1 for balcony and P1.20 for lodge. In any case, Angie says, “Money was just secondary to us.”
Nikki agrees that performing was their oxygen. “We would have died if we were not allowed to do what we loved best.” That was despite low pay that was barely enough to cover their expenses for costumes and musical arrangements.
“We would hire a pianist to make areglos for us. I would often pawn my watch just to pay for our costumes and areglos,” Nikki reminisces.
Onstage, they strutted like millionaires.
From the bodabil stage, they inevitably crossed over to the movies in the 1960s. Sampaguita producer Dr. Jose Perez, an Opera House regular, thought of casting the Wing Duo as screen partners for the box-office tandem Dolphy and Panchito.
Nikki remembers doing 13 movies for Sampaguita – “‘Lawiswis Kawayan,’ ‘Beatnik,’ ‘Wedding Bells,’ ‘Barilan sa Baboy Kural,’ ‘Double Trouble’ with Dolphy and his brother Georgie Quizon as conjoined twins. That movie had the same story as the recent Hollywood flick ‘Stuck on You,’ starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear.”
She adds that they looked forward to the musical numbers with the King of Comedy: “I enjoyed dancing with Dolphy, a professional stage dancer before joining the movies. We had a production number à la ‘Singing in the Rain.’ We danced under fake rain provided by firemen. It took eight hours!”
Shoots with Dolphy were always set at dusk, says Nikki. “He had asthma and he preferred shooting at night when it wasn’t too hot or dusty.”
Soon the small screen beckoned. “While touring in Australia, we did the TV show ‘Melbourne Tonight’ with Pilita there,” Nikki says.
Back in Manila, they teamed up with Pilita and director Mitos Villareal for the award-winning musical-variety show “An Evening with Pilita,” which ran from 1964 to 1972 on ABS-CBN.
“Mitos often joined our song numbers and we soon became known on the show as Lemons Three,” Angie says.
Unique concepts
They came up with unique concepts for the show every week.
“We set skits and production numbers in a beauty parlor or in a hospital, and we crooned songs like ‘Fever,’” says Nikki.
One stormy night, the old ABS-CBN studio along Roxas Boulevard was flooded. Quick-thinking Nikki, Angie, and Mitos decorated the drenched studio with bougainvillea.
“For Pilita’s closing number, she had to pretend she was in the middle of a lake,” says Nikki.
Those were the glory days, they sigh. They admit that they sometimes miss the biz.
“When I hear a beautiful song on the radio while driving, I suddenly get the urge to sing,” says Angie.
She stayed away from show biz for 26 years to take care of mom Katy, who passed away only last year at age 97 in Sacramento, California. She’s currently in Manila for a vacation and to spend Christmas with an ailing brother.
Nikki never really left Manila or show business. “I do consulting work. Julie Borromeo, Bernardo Bernardo, and I drafted the syllabus for performers bound for abroad. I worked as testing officer for POEA (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration) and TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority). I’m also busy with church activities,” she says.
But the lure of the spotlight is always irresistible.
At the moment Angie and Nikki guest in Pilita’s concerts and in “Master Showman: Walang Tulugan,” the late-night GMA 7 show of another Clover colleague, German Moreno.
“We’ve been a duo for so many years that it’s only natural for us to miss the stage,” Angie points out.
To which Nikki adds, “It’s difficult to sing alone.”
