Enriqueta "Etang" Discher Grau (November 24, 1906 – November 22, 1991) was a prominent Filipina character film actress frequently cast in villainous roles. Her stern, gaunt Castilian face loomed in many post-war Filipino films, especially

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

-type dramas. She was the woman Filipino movie audiences loved to hate, often playing a villainous aunt, mother-in-law or even a witch. While her roles were hardly predisposed to have made her a star, she nonetheless was one of the more famous (or infamous) and durable stars of Filipino films. Many of her films were produced by

Sampaguita Pictures Sampaguita Pictures was a Philippine film production company. It was named for the Philippine national flower, sampaguita. Though no longer functioning, the company's Sampaguita Compound remains in Quezon City. History Sampaguita Pictures was es ...

, the studio under which she was under contract for a significant part of her career. Discher was born to a German father, Leo Discher Sr. and a Filipina mother, Pacencia Discher. She has a sister named Elena Discher. Her extended family resides on the West Coast of the United States in

Washington state Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washington ...

and

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. She began her career in the show business as a chorus girl in the

bodabil Vaudeville in the Philippines, more commonly referred to as bodabil, was a popular genre of entertainment in the Philippines from the 1910s until the mid-1960s. For decades, it competed with film, radio and television as the dominant form of Filip ...

stage shows of Katy de la Cruz. Her son, Panchito, became a famous film comedian in his own right, usually cast as the comedic foil to Dolphy.

Filmography

References

Notes

External links

* 1906 births 1981 deaths Filipino film actresses Filipino people of German descent Filipino television actresses Filipino television personalities People from Manila People of American colonial Philippines Tagalog people 20th-century Filipino actresses {{Philippines-actor-stub