Janis Paige dies at 101; actress who rose to fame in old Hollywood also had splashy roles on Broadway
By Mark Kennedy | Associated Press
NEW YORK — Janis Paige, a popular actor in Hollywood and in Broadway musicals and comedies who danced with Fred Astaire, toured with Bob Hope and continued to perform into her 90s, has died. She was 101.
Paige died Sunday of natural causes at her Los Angeles home, longtime friend Stuart Lampert said Monday.
Paige starred on Broadway with Jackie Cooper in the mystery-comedy, “Remains to be Seen” and appeared with John Raitt in the smash hit musical “The Pajama Game.”
Her other films included a Hope comedy, “Bachelor in Paradise”; the Doris Day comedy “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” and “Follow the Boys.”
In 2018, she added her voice to the #MeToo movement, alleging an assault when she was 22 by the late department-store heir Alfred Bloomingdale, who died in 1982.
“I could feel his hands, not only on my breasts, but seemingly everywhere. He was big and strong, and I began to fight, kick, bite and scream,” she wrote. “At 95, time is not on my side, and neither is silence. I simply want to add my name and say, ‘Me too.’”
Paige’s big break came in wartime when she sang an operatic aria for servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen. MGM hired her a day later for a brief role in “Bathing Beauty” — she spoke two lines in the film, which starred Esther Williams and Red Skelton — then dropped her.
The same day, Warner Bros. signed her and cast her in a dramatic segment of the all-star movie “Hollywood Canteen.” Her contract started at $150 a week. “I earned more per week than my mother had made in a month during the Great Depression,” she recalled in The Hollywood Reporter in 2018.
Her salary rose to $1,000 weekly as the studio kept her busy in lightweight films such as “Two Guys from Milwaukee,” “The Time, the Place and the Girl,” “Love and Learn,” “Always Together,” “Wallflower” and “Romance on the High Seas,” which marked Doris Day’s film debut.
Meanwhile, she had changed her name from Donna May Tjaden, adopting her grandfather’s name of Paige. She took her first name from Elsie Janis, famed for entertaining troops in World War I.
Paige’s contract expired in 1949, at a time when studios were unloading talent because of the inroads of television. “That was a jolt,” she remarked in 1963. “It meant I was washed up at 25.”
She took her talents to Broadway, where she starred in “Remains to Be Seen” (her role would be snatched by June Allyson for the screen adaptation), and starred as Babe opposite Raitt as Sid in the original production of “The Pajama Game,” directed in 1954 by George Abbott. (Doris Day would take her role in the film version.)
MGM producer Arthur Freed caught her nightclub act at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and offered her a part opposite Astaire in “Silk Stockings,” also co-starring Cyd Charisse. The film is famous for her and Astaire spoofing the newfangled movie gimmicks in the Cole Porter number “Stereophonic Sound,” including swinging from a chandelier.
“I was one mass of bruises. I didn’t know how to fall. I didn’t know how to get down on a table — I didn’t know how to save myself because I was never a classic dancer,” she told the Miami Herald in 2016.
In May 2003, Paige resumed entertaining after a long absence. She opened a show she called “The Third Act” at San Francisco’s Plush Room. She told stories about Astaire, Frank Sinatra and others and sang tunes from her films and stage musicals.
Chad Jones, reviewer for the Alameda Times-Star, commented that at 80 “the charming Paige shows a vitality, verve and spirit that performers half her age would envy.”
Paige grew up in Tacoma, Washington. Her father deserted the family when she was 4, and her mother eked out a living at the Bank of Tacoma.
“We always had enough to eat,” Paige told the Saturday Evening Post in 1963, “but nothing to spare. My mother worked so hard. And she used to keep saying that she wished I’d been born a boy, so I could help out more. I always wanted to be a success for her, to make up for my father.”
After leaving Warner Bros., she turned to TV, starring in a 1955-1956 TV series, “It’s Always Jan” and playing recurring roles in “Flamingo Road,” “Santa Barbara,” “Eight Is Enough,” “Capitol,” “Fantasy Island” and “Trapper John, M.D.” On “All in the Family,” she played a diner waitress who becomes involved with Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker.
Paige replaced Angela Lansbury in the New York production of “Mame” in 1968 on Broadway and toured with the show in 1969. She also toured in “Gypsy,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Born Yesterday” and “The Desk Set.” Her last time on Broadway was in 1984’s “Alone Together.”
She also supplied glamor for Hope’s Christmas visits to Cuba and the Caribbean in 1960, Japan and South Korea in 1962, and Vietnam in 1964. She sang in clubs with Sammy Davis Jr., Alan King, Dinah Shore and Perry Como.
In 2020, her autobiography, “Reading Between the Lines: A Memoir,” was published, recounting her connections with Frank Sinatra, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, David Niven, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable and Lucille Ball.
She had two brief marriages, to San Francisco restaurateur Frank Martinelli and to writer-producer Arthur Stander. In 1962 she married songwriter Ray Gilbert, who won an Oscar for the song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Da” from Disney’s “Song of the South.” He died in 1976, and she assumed management of his music company.