Move over Imelda Marcos !

Lang Hancock

Our favorite local Filipino gal made good Rose Hancock Porteous is about to be immortalised in song and on stage with the gala premiere of  Prix D’Amour (The Price of Love) a musical based upon the life of the former nurse and maid who snared the heart of her billionaire patient.

Prix D’Amour was written by  Paul Dion of Merimbula.and is to be presented at the local Twyford Hall  with a show that promises laughter, tears, singing and dancing. No mention yet if the beloved Rose's drug conviction for forging a script for sleeping pills features. Surely the incident is an ideal moment for a dreamtime sequence or a dramatic interlude, perhaps just at the end of the first half. 

The musical is based upon the book "Rose" by Robert Wainwright.

It poses the question : was Rose a gold-digger or was she a woman misunderstood by the values of two vastly different cultures?. The mind boggles.

This is the story of a woman who began life as a small town girl but became one of Australia's wealthiest and most eccentric socialites.

the Prix D'Amour cast

Rose was born in Silay City in the Philippines and was the granddaughter of a Philippine Revolution war hero. Her father was a friend of Ferdinand Marcos.

It has been claimed that loved blossomed between Rose and the ailing Hancock when she was watching TV reports of the dramatic fall of the Marcos regime that was broadcast live. At one stage after  the Marcos clan had scrambled aboard a US helicopter to flee to Hawaii, with a dozen Louis Vuitton suitcases crammed with US dollars- Imelda turning to her tearful and loyal servants proclaiming  "I leave with nothing but your love" diamond bracelets cascading down her wrist-.a camera crossed to the then Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans who was one of the first visitors to the former presidential palace. 

Evans described for the cameras the chaos he found as he toured the palace and his puzzlement on coming across Imelda's bedroom where he opened a chest and discovered a variety of brightly coloured objects, holding one one up for the viewers to reveal a very large purple veined dildo. Evans feigned ignorance as to the dildo's use wondering  aloud what Imelda could possibly do with such a strange object.. (Rose also has a collection of shoes just like Imelda).

Ms Hancock nee Lacson  flew in to a rage, issuing Filipino curses and hurled a vase at the telly.

Startled from his oxygen tent , the West Australian mining magnate Land Hancock shot up to see the fiery dark haired downstairs maid with eyes flashing in anger- love was borne and the rest is history.

In his later years Lang languished in the same bedroom  whilst his loving bride /nurse entertained Perth's elite in the downstairs ballroom of their love nest, Prix L'Amour, occasionally ushering a few into his bedroom like a tour group. Will all these wonderful moments be put to song and dance in Prix D'Amour ?.

Sadly Rose will not be attending the world premier. She is still recovering from a stroke late last year. Prix D'Amour opens on July 30th.

We bring you again some clips of our Rose in action and , click here to hear one of the wonderful toons from Prix D'Amour !

A Rose By Any Other Name...

As the dust settled in Perth's Langley Park earlier this week and the billionaire's protesting over  a new mining tax were safely ensconced in their limos, our thoughts wandered to the whereabouts of the wondrous Rose Hancock Porteous , Perth socialite who thrilled and delighted a nation when as a humble maid for the late mining magnate Lang Hancock, she married  the ailing tycoon when he was 74 and she 38.

Rose, in a city that was not easy to shock with the antics of an Alan Bond who first snared a nation by winning the prestige America's Cup in 1983 outraging the conservative New York Yacht Club that had held the trophy since 1851, and then snared tens of thousands of investors in dud schemes, or a Laurie Connell who launched a merchant bank with a few hundred million dollars borrowed from the state government which all disappeared in a puff of smoke, Rose Hancock was breath of fresh air edging out Bond's wife "Big Red" Eileen as the western city's major society queen.

Rose & Lang

Rose and Lang built a love nest for themselves-Prix L'Amour, a 50 room gala palace overlooking the Swan River and in the upper class Perth suburb of Peppermint Grove where champagne and caviar parties  abounded and swells from all over the country, bussed in on Rose's private jet, danced the  night away-whilst Lang languished upstairs in an oxygen tent.

Lang's daughter Gina Rinehart from a previous marriage never saw eye to eye with Rose and bitter legal fights followed Hancock's death and stories of dodgy wills abounded and there were tales of Lang being poisoned and so on.

Prix L'Amour

But Rose got Prix L'Amour and a tidy sum  and married a real estate agent William Porteous 3 months after Lang's death and together they razed Prix L'Amour to the ground, sold off blocks of the land for tens of millions and built themselves their own smaller love nest in it's place. Drug charges followed and court battles over legal fees but our Rose survived it all.

Now news comes that Rose has had a stroke and is recovering at home. Her facebook page has remained strangely silent with the last post being on the Dec 9th 2009 saying "So many lovely fans!". The previous one on May 17th she says "oh I still love my Willie!", presumably referring to husband William who is caring for Rose at home.

The Shuttle encountered Rose a few times when she travelled to Sydney. The first was at the premier of the FoxTel cable TV show "Beauty and The Beast" where she was a panelist along with others like Ita Buttrose and  the One Nation politician Pauline Hanson. Hanson made a derogatory comment about Asians at which point Rose stood up and swore at Hanson in Filipino and stormed out, clambered into a Roller and tore off in a cloud of dust!

Now we've uncovered a wonderful video of Rose on youtube as she castigates her staff while getting ready for one her legendary lunch parties. Enjoy-