Janis Paige, a popular actress in Hollywood and Broadway musicals and comedies who danced with Fred Astaire, toured with Bob Hope and continued to perform well into her 90s, has died. She was 101 years old.
Paige died Sunday of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, her 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 hit musical “The Pajama Game.”
His 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 started fighting, kicking, biting and screaming,” she wrote. “At 95, time is not on my side, and neither does silence. I just want to add my name and say, “Me too.”
Paige’s big break came during wartime when she sang an opera aria for the 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 film “Hollywood Canteen.” His contract started at $150 per week.
“I made more a week than my mother made in a month during the Great Depression,” she recalled to The Hollywood Reporter in 2018.
His salary rose to $1,000 a week as the studio kept him busy in light 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.
During this time, she had changed her name from Donna May Tjaden, adopting her grandfather’s name, Paige. She takes her first name from Elsie Janis, famous for entertaining troops during the First World War.
Paige’s contract expired in 1949, at a time when studios were shedding talent due to the advance of television.
“It was a shock,” she remarked in 1963. “It meant I was stranded at 25.”
She took her talents to Broadway, where she starred in “Remains to Be Seen” (her role would be reprized by June Allyson for the screen adaptation), and starred as Babe alongside Raitt in the role of Sid in the original production of “The Pajama Game,” directed in 1954 by George Abbott. (Doris Day would play his role in the film version.)
MGM producer Arthur Freed filmed her nightclub act at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and offered her a role opposite Astaire in “Silk Stockings,” also starring Cyd Charisse.
The film is famous for her and Astaire spoofing new cinematic gimmicks from Cole Porter’s number “Stereophonic Sound”, including swinging from a chandelier.
“I was a mass of bruises. I didn’t know how to fall. I didn’t know how to sit on a table — I didn’t know how to save myself because I was never a ballet dancer,” she told the Miami Herald in 2016.
In May 2003, Paige returned to entertainment after a long absence.
She opened a show she called “The Third Act” at the Plush Room in San Francisco. She told stories about Astaire, Frank Sinatra and others and sang tunes from his films and musicals.
Chad Jones, critic for the Alameda Times-Star, commented that at 80, “the charming Paige displays a vitality, verve and wit that artists half her age would envy “.
Paige grew up in Tacoma, Washington. Her father abandoned the family when she was 4 and her mother earned her 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 kept saying she wished I had been born a boy so she could help more. I always wanted to be a success for her, to compensate my father.
After leaving Warner Bros., she turned to television, starring in a 1955-1956 television series, “It’s Always Jan” and playing recurring roles in “Flamingo Road”, “Santa Barbara”, “Eight Is Enough”, “Capitol”, “Fantasy Island” and “Trapper Jon, MD”
In “All in the Family,” she plays a restaurant waitress who becomes involved with Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker.
Paige replaced Angela Lansbury in the 1968 New York production of “Mame” on Broadway and toured with the show in 1969.
She also starred in “Gypsy,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Born Yesterday,” and “The Desk Set.” His last appearance on Broadway was in “Alone Together” in 1984.
She also brought glamor to 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, his autobiography, “Reading Between the Lines: A Memoir,” was published, chronicling his relationships 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 screenwriter-producer Arthur Stander.
In 1962, she married songwriter Ray Gilbert, who won an Academy Award for the song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Da” from Disney’s “Song of the South.” He died in 1976 and she took over the management of his musical company.