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Manila Carnival
Promotional material released for the 1910 Manila Carnival
Genre	Festival
Frequency	Annual
Venue	Wallace Field
Location(s)	Manila
Country	Philippine Islands (Philippine Commonwealth; from 1935 to 1939)
Years active	1908–1939 (31 years)
Activity	Beauty pageant, carnival, fair, and exposition

Manila Carnival was an annual carnival festival held in Manila during the early American colonial period up to the time before the Second World War. It was organized by the American colonial administration to showcase the economic development of the Philippines. The highlight of the event is the crowning of the Carnival Queens.

History

The Manila Carnival was first held in February 1908. The carnival's original organizer was an American colonel named George T. Langhorne who asked the Philippine Assembly for 50,000 pesos to build a cockpit, exhibit "half-naked" Igorot tribesmen and set up curiosities. Horrified by the plan of the proposed carnival, Governor General James Smith transformed the planned freak show into a ritual celebrating the Philippine-American progress in the islands. Secretary of Commerce Cameron Forbes took charge of the preparation and asked 15,000 instead of 50,000 from the Assembly. He planned to raise another 15,000 by private subscription campaigns such as the Carnival Queen contest.

The site of the Manila Carnival was the old Wallace Field that was just off the present Luneta Park.

During those two weeks of carnival, Wallace Field was walled with amakan and given a decorative facade brilliant with lights and adornments. A variety of shows were presented like circus, vaudevilles, slapstick comedies, and the grand theatrical presentation of Borromeo Lou, the great impresario of the era. Starts such as Atang de la Rama, Katy de la Cruz, Canuplin, and Dionisia Castro often staged performances that audiences loved.

The entrance fee range from 50 centavos and up and one can buy at the gate a mask, a horn, and a bag of confetti. The children wore a harlequin costume, a clown costume, or a dunce hat, while the elder ones wore dominoes or similar attractive attires.

The scene was like New Year's Eve with all the gaiety, laughter and gossips in old Manila circling around. Everyone seemed to be tooting horns or throwing confetti.

Parades

There were five parades during the carnival season:

1. The opening day parade, which was mostly clown and circus
2. The military parade, mostly Americans and Scouts
3. The civic educational parade in which the public schools of Manila participated, and wherein each school compete for the best and most original floats
4. The business and industrial parade in which the international community participated
5. The floral parade, which is the highlight parade of the carnival. The parade featured the competing carnival beauties as well as the newly crowned Carnival Queen, her consort, and her court.

Carnival Queens

The highlight of the Manila Carnival is the crowning of the Carnival Queen by the Carnival mascot Billiken. Cameron Forbes and the carnival promoters established the Carnival Queen contest. The Queen will be selected through purchase of ballots through newspaper clippings. Initially, Forbes decided to restrict the contest to the daughters of the wealthiest families from the capital city of Manila but eventually accepted entries from different parts of the country. The Queen was voted through a system of money ballots or magazine coupons. Philippine magazines like Liwayway, Telembang, and Lipang Kalabaw had such coupons inserted in their pages.

The Carnival Queens dressed the most beautiful costumes of the parade, ranging from Egyptian inspired to Siamese to that of the Arabian Scheherazade.

The first Manila Carnival in 1908 elected two queens representing the Oriental beauty and the Western beauty (called Occident) – Pura Villanueva from Iloilo City, Iloilo (Queen of the Orient) and Marjorie Radcliffe Colton from Galesburg, Illinois (Queen of the Occident). The only other time this happened was in 1920 Manila Carnival. In 1912, for the first time aside from the carnival queen the contest chose four ladies to represent Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, and America. In 1913, three women representing Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao were named as co-winners of the Manila Carnival. The first and only American woman to solely win as Carnival Queen was Mela Kamakee Fairchild (born in Oakland, California in 1898) in the 1917 Manila Carnival. Two queens were also chosen in 1926 to elect the last to be called as the Carnival Queen (Socorro Henson) and the very first Miss Philippines (Anita Agoncillo Noble)

Manila Carnival Queen is the precursor of various national pageants in the Philippines.

Titleholders

National Beauty Contest

These are the candidates for the national beauty contests of the Manila Carnival.

1st National Beauty Contest

2nd National Beauty Contest

See also

• History of the Philippines (1898–1946)
• Binibining Pilipinas
• Miss Philippines Earth
• Miss Republic of the Philippines
• Miss World Philippines

Further reading and viewing

Books and magazines

• Lipang Kalabaw Vol.3, No. 56 1923 (carries interesting articles about the Manila Carnivals)
• Telembang Magazine 1922–24
• Joaquin, Nick "Manila, My Manila", 1979, Manila Philippines
• McCoy Alfred and Roces Alfredo, "Philippine Cartoons" 1983, Manila, Philippines

References

1. "Oh, Meet Me at the Carnival". Manila Carnivals, Alex R. Castro. 20 July 2008. Retrieved 20 July 2008.
2. "A Man, A Plan, A Carnival". Manila Carnivals, Alex R. Castro. 16 July 2008. Retrieved 16 July 2008.
3. "1908 Carnival in the Philippines". Manila Carnivals. Retrieved 3 August 2011.
4. "Manila Carnivals 1908–1939". Carnivals RSS. Retrieved 12 August 2012.
5. "1917 Queen Mela Fairchild". Flickr. 16 April 2012. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
6. "SOCORRO HENSON: When Kapampangan Beauty Was In Flower". Views From The Pampang, Alex R. Castro. 24 June 2007. Retrieved 24 June 2007.
7. "7 Fascinating Facts About Filipina Beauty Queens". Filipiknow. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
8. "A Gallery of Carnival Queens". Philippine Star, Ricky Lo. Retrieved 13 February 2006.
9. Ocampo, Ambeth (3 February 2017). "The Philippines' first beauty queen". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved 23 March 2017.
10. Tariman, Pablo A. "Beauty search brings back days of famous Misses Manila". Philstar.com. Retrieved 21 February 2023.
11. "Candidates of the 2nd National Beauty Contest". Manila Carnivals, Alex R. Castro. 4 February 2009. Retrieved 4 February 2009.

External links

• Manila Carnivals 1908–1939, A Pictorial History of the "Greatest Annual Event in the Orient". Alex R. Castro
• Manila Carnival 1908–1939
• Philippine Manila Carnival Queens, Pinoy Kollektor
• Manila Carnival Royalty
• Manila Carnivals 1908–1939 Flickr Group
• Manila Carnival 1932 Fort Drum Under Reconstruction
• Manila Carnival Tumblr

• Carnivals in the Philippines
• Beauty pageants in the Philippines
• History of Manila
• Culture in Manila
• Recurring events established in 1908
• Recurring events disestablished in 1939