Janis Paige, a popular actress in Hollywood and in Broadway musicals and comedies who danced with Fred Astaire, toured with Bob Hope and continued to perform into her 80s, has died.
She was 101.
Paige died on Sunday of natural causes at her Los Angeles home, longtime friend Stuart Lampert said.
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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.
“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.
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.)
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.
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 glamour 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.
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.
