The actress Janis Paige has died at the age of 101.
Longtime friend Stuart Lampert said on Monday that the actress from the Golden Age died of natural causes on Sunday at her home in Los Angeles.
Paige starred with Jackie Cooper in the mystery-comedy “Remains to be Seen” on Broadway. She also played Josie in the smash hit musical “The Pajama Game.”
She also worked on the comedies “Bachelor in Paradise” with Bob Hope, “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” with Doris Day, and “Follow the Boys.”
She joined the #MeToo movement in 2018 and said that the late Alfred Bloomingdale, heir to a department store, had raped her when she was 22.
“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,” said she.
“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 during the war, when she sang an opera aria at the Hollywood Canteen for soldiers.
A day later, MGM hired her for a small part in “Bathing Beauty.” She had two lines in the movie with Esther Williams and Red Skelton, and then they fired her.
Later that same day, Warner Bros. signed her and put her in a dramatic part of the all-star movie “Hollywood Canteen.”
The first week of her contract paid $150.
She told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 that she made more in a week than her mother did in a month during the Great Depression.
The studio kept her busy with light movies like “Two Guys from Milwaukee,” “The Time, the Place, and the Girl,” “Love and Learn,” “Always Together,” “Wallflower,” and “Romance on the High Seas,” which was her first movie role.
She had changed her name from Donna May Tjaden to Paige, which was her grandfather’s name.
The famous performer Elsie Janis gave her the name she did.
When Paige’s contract ended in 1949, studios were getting rid of talent because TV was becoming so popular.
In 1963, she said, “That was a shock. It meant I was washed up at 25.”
She took her skills to Broadway and played the lead in Remains to Be Seen. In 1954, George Abbott directed the first production of The Pajama Game, which starred Raitt as Sid and her as Babe.
Arthur Freed, an MGM producer, saw her perform in a nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and offered her a part in “Silk Stockings” with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse.
In the famous Cole Porter number “Stereophonic Sound,” she and Astaire make fun of new movie tricks, like 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 said in 2016 to the Miami Herald.
After a long break, Paige started entertaining again in May 2003.
She started a show at San Francisco’s Plush Room that she called “The Third Act.”
She talked about Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, and other stars, and she sang songs from her movies and stage shows.
As an 80-year-old performer, Chad Jones of the Alameda Times-Star said, “the charming Paige shows a vitality, verve, and spirit that performers half her age would envy.”
Paige was born and raised in Tacoma, WA. When she was four years old, her father left the family, and her mother barely made it at the Bank of Tacoma.
“We always had enough to eat,” Paige told the 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.”
She started working on TV after leaving Warner Bros. She had lead roles in the show “It’s Always Jan” from 1955 to 1956 and recurring roles in “Flamingo Road,” “Santa Barbara,” “Eight Is Enough,” “Capitol,” “Fantasy Island,” and “Trapper Jon, M.D.”
On “All in the Family,” she played a waitress at a diner who falls in love with Archie Bunker, played by Carroll OConnor.
Paige filled in for Angela Lansbury in the 1968 Broadway production of “Mame” in New York. In 1969, she went on tour with the show.
In addition to “The Desk Set,” she toured with “Gypsy,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” and “Born Yesterday.” Her last show on Broadway was “Alone Together” in 1984.
Hope also used her as a model when she went to Cuba and the Caribbean for Christmas in 1960, Japan and South Korea in 1962, and Vietnam in 1964.
Samantha Davis Jr., Alan King, Dinah Shore, and Perry Como were all singers she shared the stage with.
Paige was married for a short time to both Frank Martinelli, a restaurant owner in San Francisco, and Arthur Stander, a writer and producer.
During her marriage to Ray Gilbert in 1962, she managed his music company after he died in 1976. Gilbert won an Oscar for the song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Da” from Disney’s “Song of the South.”
