Siti Baizura Husin - The First Malay Model

The life & times of Siti Baizura Husin Dined with Bob Hope, acted with William Holden and dallied with Salvador Dali ... this woman has done all these and more in her precocious youth BY BISSME S. WHICH WOMAN CAN claim to have rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous of the world in a time where a girl is traditionally constrained by culture and norm to stay at home and bear children? Kuala Lumpur-bor n Siti Baizura Husin can proudly lay claim to having defied convention and left home at a young age to make her mark in the world. That was back in the 60s when well-brought-up Malay girls did not venture out far from home on their own. "I am the black sheep of my family ... the rebel with a cause," says Siti Baizura. "I was a tomboy. I loved climbing trees." This coming from a woman who was bor n with a silver spoon in her mouth and had two amahs to look after her when she was a child. Her father, Husin Ibrahim, was a doctor ("one of the first Malay doctors in the country") and mother Majmim Mohamad was a housewife ("a true beauty whom even royalty were chasing after"). Siti Baizura is the third among five children. Restless to see the world after the death of her father and with the blessings of her mother, she headed to Bali and Jakar ta where she claimed to have turned the heads of kings and politicians there. Then she hopped onto a plane to London without telling her family and with little money in her pocket, landed at the doorstep of a distant relative who was shocked to see her, to say the least. On her own accord, she managed to find a job at the Malaysian embassy there. It was in London that she saw the filming of the Hollywood movie, Road to Hong Kong (1962), which star red American comedian Bob Hope. The casting director was so captivated with her that she ended up playing an extra in the movie. "All I had to do was to sit in a trishaw," she recalls. After the shoot, Hope came over and asked to sit beside her. She ended up being invited to his dressing room and they had dinner together twice. She declines to elaborate more on their dates. "That will all be in my book," she says, referring to the autobiography she is in the midst of writing. The book will be out early next year. And if you think she is pulling a fast one on you, Siti Baizura has the photos, letters and mementos as proof. Being an extra also provided opportunities for her to rub shoulders with other Hollywood greats such as Bing Crosby and Joan Collins who were also starring in the movie. Siti Baizura was an extra on another Hollywood production, Play It Cool (1962). "I even had a few lines to say," she says proudly. From there, she had a screen test and made several appearances in commercials and magazines. "I attended parties and mingled with celebrities. I even appeared on the front page of the London Times," she says, showing off the cutting from that 1961 paper. Her `stardom' was unfortunately short-lived. She rushed home on receiving word that her mother was very sick and near death's door. But her mother was perfectly fine and she found herself cheated out of a promising career in London. Refusing to bow down to fate, she did some modelling ("I was one of the first Malay models in this country"). And when William Holden was in town to shoot his movie, 7th Dawn (1964), based on the book, Under the Durian Tree, she grabbed the chance to play the role of his secretary. "William took me out for dinner," she says, refusing to go into details about what happened after the date. It was also during this period that she received a proposal from a highly-placed political figure to be his second wife. But she declined, not wanting to cause trouble in his family. "I come from a strong religious background," she says, adding that her faith was strong enough to resist temptation. Her restlessness soon took over and once again she was off ­ this time to Paris where she worked in various jobs, including as a typist and translator, to support herself. There, she met the famous Spanish surrealist painter, Salvador Dali. She was only one of the few people to have been allowed to touch Dali's moustache. Dali even gave her one of his paintings, The Star of Bethlehem as a memento. She remembers organising dinner parties at her house where her guest lists included famous ar tists and musicians. "I remembered Ravi Shankar once dropped by at one of my dinner parties and played his sitar on the floor of my living room." One of her greatest regrets was cancelling a lunch date with Spanish cubist painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso at the last minute and thus missing the chance for a tete-a-tete with the artist. It was off to the Big Apple next where she got a job with the Thai embassy there. It was a dream come true for Siti Baizura: "All my life I had wanted to visit London, Paris and New York," and she did. In New York, she attended the inauguration ceremony of President Richard Nixon in 1969 where she met with the (then) richest man in America, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, the governor of New York, who later became the vice-president of the United States in 1974. Later, she was to visit the United States often when she joined the Tourism Ministry of Indonesia. Then in late 1988, she returned home to Malaysia to look after her sick mother. Her mum died in 2002. When asked why she never got involved in the local film industry, she recalls the time she was approached by (Tan Sri) P. Ramlee to play the lead in one of his movies. "I had to turn down the offer," she says, "as I was leaving for London soon." She remembers meeting Ramlee again in one of the nightspots in Singapore where the legendary singer sang more than 10 songs for her. Three weeks later, she heard he died. On one wall in her house, there hangs a huge portrait of herself, painted by well-known artist Peter Harris who was also her art teacher. "I was then 16 and a virgin," she says with a laugh, refusing to reveal her age now. "Age is useless. It is just a figure." She has certainly not let age stop her from enjoying life. Last August, she was in Monte Carlo for a charity ball where she sat at the same table with former James Bond Roger Moore and his wife, Christina. Her friends had called her silly for not using her opportunities to find herself a rich husband. "I am not the kind (of person) to take others for a ride," she says, adding that in many cases, she had been taken advantage of by others instead.