Bomba: The Dovie Beams-Ferdinand Marcos Sex Tapes

• In Event: Machine, Sex, and Other Intimate Acts

Abstract

In 1971, the Dovie Beams-Ferdinand Marcos sex tapes excerpts aired in Philippine National Radio. Dovie Beams, a B-grade white American actress from Hollywood, exposes her torrid affair with the Philippine dictator, in fear of her life being at danger. This affair and sex tapes, I propose, are defining moments in the Malacañang during the Marcoses regime (what Primitivo Mojares calls “conjugal dictatorship”). Unlike any other of Ferdinand’s extra-marital affairs, I consider the Dovie-Ferdinand affair having caused a recognizable shift in power in Malacañang. In less than a year, Imelda was promoted second-in-command, veiled in official titles such as “Governor of Metro Manila” and “Minister of Human Settlements.” This tight cause-effect relationship between the Dovie Beams scandal and the birth of a very powerful and mercurial woman is what I delineate in my play-in-progress Bomba; how these sex tapes had boosted Imelda's place as co-dictator, co-sharing with if not stealing, the spotlight from her husband.

The Dovie Beams scandal that erupted in the Philippines in November of 1970 is a rarely explored chapter in the conjugal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda. Biographies that mention the Dovie-Ferdinand affair, such as Seagraves’ “The Marcos Dynasty,” Bonner’s “Waltzing with the Dictator,” and Paterson-Hamilton’s “America’s Boy,” the then-38 year-old B-actress who was flown to Manila for a lead female role in a film propagandizing Marcos’s heroic efforts during WWII – was just another mistress of the president. However, Beams, unlike the other queridas, did what the others didn't dare do: She’d gone public with her affair eighteen months into the affair, holding a snap press conference just hours before leaving the country for good. To prove her allegations, she played snippets from several of the sex tapes she’d recorded from a cassette player hidden beneath their bed. What was originally meant as mementos of her and Marcos’s love for each other would change the power structure in Malacañang.

Author

• R. Zamora Linmark, University of Miami (FL)