Imelda had a mental breakdown. Marcos sent her to New York for psychiatric help. After three months in Manhattan’s Presbyterian Hospital, the dilemma she faced was just as stark either leave her husband and face ruin, or bite the bullet and make the best of it.
Imelda decided to fight fire with fire. From New York, she flew to Portugal and, at the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, she prayed for children. The following year, her prayers were answered and in the middle of Marcos’s congressional campaign, Imelda gave birth to Imee, the first of their three children.
Her second child, Bong-Bong, was born two years later and her third, Irene, during Ferdinand’s 1959 senate campaign. During these years, Imelda suffered from migraine and, on at least one occasion, took an overdose of medication. She sought psychiatric help again and, slowly, reconciled herself to her situation.
Although Ferdinand had succeeded in making her pregnant three times, he was far from attentive. He confided to one of his extramarital conquests that Imelda was frigid and that he had become impotent with her. In a public outburst, he claimed she suffered from “virginitis”. However, their sex lilt may have been a little more active than Ferdinand made out. During the 1965 presidential campaign, a nude photograph of Imelda was circulated. It was said to have been filched from Ferdinand’s private collection. The Marcos camp claimed that Imelda’s head had been superimposed on another woman’s nude body. When Imelda heard about it, she collapsed in a state of shock.
Her reaction was similarly dramatic later, when the governor of Negros, Alfredo Montelibano Jr, pulled a cruel trick on her. He installed a one-way mirror in the lavatory of his hacienda. During a party, he invited several guests into a back-room to watch while the Philippines” First Lady took a pee. A photograph of the act was circulated. Benigno Aquino had a print, which he kept in his wallet until shortly before he died.
Ferdinand Marcos’s womanizing represented a political danger, and it was a danger particularly threatening to Imelda. Throughout his political career, he paraded his young wife. Their destinies were intertwined. Indeed, with a persistently unfaithful husband, she was First Lady of the Philippines or she was nothing. In 1969, he began showing a great interest in Gretchen Cojuangco, wife of Eduardo Cojuangco who belonged to a family that controlled a billion-dollar sugar-producing organization. Losing Cojuangco family support would have destroyed Marcos’s political base. Imelda sent Gretchen a note the content of which we know not, but after she had read it, Ferdinand said, Gretchen would “no longer- stop weeping”.
Eduardo Cojuangco knew what was going on and tried a more subtle approach. Marcos faced an election and needed a propaganda coup. Marcos had written a highly fanciful autobiography called Rendezvous with Destiny. In it, he claimed to have been a fearless fighter against the Japanese. He was rewarded for his valour with some twenty Philippine medals and the U.S. Medal of Honour. When, mysteriously, as President of the Philippines, he could not put his hand on his U.S. medal, the American government issued a new one. The Philippine army followed suit.
In fact, Marcos had fought on the Japanese side against the Americans during World War II, but at the height of the Cold War, why should the State Department bother with such details?
The idea was that Marcos’s book be made into a feature film — it had already surfaced as a TV documentary. Eduardo Cojuangco had contacts in Hollywood. He set to work.
According to Rendezvous with Destiny, during his fictitious anti Japanese guerrilla fighting days, Marcos had a Filipino-American lover called Evelyn, who had saved his life by stopping a Japanese bullet meant for him.
Cojuangco got a small-time producer at Universal Studios, Paul Mason, to recruit girls to audition for the part of Evelyn. He sent Joyce Reese and Dovie Beams.
When the two girls arrived, they were driven directly to a house in the Green Hills suburb for a party. They were taken to a half-finished house, to a room with a large bed in it. Ferdinand Marcos turned up a little later, introducing himself as “Fred”. Dovie sang “I Want To Be Bad”. “Fred” got the message. After a few words in Tagalog (the Filipino language), the other men left the room, taking Joyce Reese with them.
Once they were alone, Marcos kissed Dovie on the back of the neck. She asked if he was a lawyer. He admitted that he did have something to do with the law. He was President of the Philippines. The next day, they became lovers.
He installed Dovie in the mansion in Green Hills which was being renovated with a swimming pool being built in the garden. He told her that he had been sexually estranged from Imelda for many years. They lived separate lives, he said. That may have been true, but Dovie soon found out that Marcos was still seeing Carmen Ortega; and, after Dovie had had a quarrel with Marcos, Carmen fell pregnant once again.
Dovie was told that she had got the part of Evelyn in the movie. He bought her a tape recorder to help teach her Tagalog, but sometimes he would break off from the lessons to make love to her. Soon Dovie had a library of very interesting tapes.
They also made love in the cottage on the palace golf course; and when Imelda was away, Marcos would sneak Dovie into the presidential palace. After they had made love and he had fallen asleep, she would quickly search through the papers on his desk and steal documents to stash away for a rainy day.
Marcos’s aides were terrified by the affair. If they helped Ferdinand, Imelda might have them shot. If they didn’t, Ferdinand might have them shot. It was a fine line to walk. When Imelda got suspicious and made: them follow his car, somehow they would always manage to lose it.
One day, Dovie returned home to the house: in Green Hills to discover that it had been closed up. Marcos told her that it was too dangerous to slay there. The place was being watched by spies. She would have to move to a hotel in Wack Wack. She soon discovered that her Green Hills home had been given to Carmen Omega, which had been the plan all along. That was why it was being renovated.
Dovie continued surreptitiously recording their lovemaking sessions. Marcos wanted some souvenirs too. He bought a Polaroid camera and took a series of shots of Dovie in the nude, in explicit poses on the bed and in the bathroom. Then Dovie got lucky. Marcos asked for a lock of her pubic hair. She said she would give it to him in exchange for a lock of his. She sent that, the tapes and the documents she had filched to the U.S. for safekeeping.
Marcos’s affections were cooling fast. One night he told her that her movie was no good and she had been miscast. She packed her bags and headed back to Los Angeles.
Later, under the guise of making a travelogue about the Philippines, she returned. She was given $10,000 for her silence. She took it, but said that her silence was worth something more like $100,000. When that was refused, she upped her demand to $150,000. That night she was picked up by the secret police and taken to a safe house. Marcos turned up and there was a blazing row. It ended with Marcos trying to make up with her. She refused to kiss him though, and was taken to a room in the Savoy Hotel where she was beaten up and tortured.
When she was allowed to go to the bathroom, she escaped, found a phone and called a friend in Los Angeles. The friend contacted influential people Dovie knew in the U.S., one of whom was the Governor of California, Ronald Reagan. While the State Department alerted the American embassy in Manila, Dovie checked into the Manila Medical Centre under a false name.
By this time, Imelda had learned everything and her agents were combing the Philippines for Dovie. Dovie called the U.S. Embassy and talked to Consul Lawrence Harris. He and Ambassador Henry Byroade turned up at Dovie’s bedside with an offer from Imelda — $100,000 tax free if she would keep quiet.