Janis Paige (1922-2014)

On 2 June 2024, American film, musical theatre, and television actress Janis Paige (1922) passed away at the age of 101. With a career spanning over 60 years, she was one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Paige felt out of place in her early Hollywood films. She became a star on Broadway and then returned to Hollywood for a second film career. Beginning in the mid-fifties, she would also make numerous television appearances, as well as star in her own sitcom It's Always Jan.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 759. Photo: Warner Bros.


Vintage card.


Dutch postcard by Van Leer's Fotodrukindustrie N.V., Amsterdam, no. 1250. Photo: Warner Bros.

Black Widow Girl

Janis Paige was born Donna Mae Tjaden in 1922 in Tacoma, Washington. She was singing in public from age 5 in local amateur shows.

She moved to Los Angeles after graduating from high school and was hired as a singer at the Hollywood Canteen, a studio-sponsored gathering spot for servicemen during World War II. She chose her first name in honour of Elsie Janis, a beloved entertainer of the troops during World War I; and Paige was her maternal grandmother's name. United States Army Air Forces pilots flying the P-61 Black Widow chose her as their "Black Widow Girl". In appreciation, she posed as a pin-up model, dressed in an appropriate costume.

A Warner Bros. agent saw her potential and signed her to a contract. One of her first film roles was co-starring in the Warner Brothers film, Hollywood Canteen (Delmer Daves, 1944), where she plays a Warner Brothers messenger girl working at the canteen.

She began co-starring in low-budget musicals, often paired with Dennis Morgan or Jack Carson. She co-starred in Romance on the High Seas (Michael Curtiz, 1948), the film in which Doris Day made her film debut. Paige later co-starred in adventures and dramas, in which she felt out of place.

Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Paige started out playing rather bland film ingénues, but never seemed to be comfortable in those roles - she had too much snap, crackle and pop to be confined in such a formulaic way." Following her role in Two Gals and a Guy (Alfred E. Green, 1951) with Robert Alda, she decided to leave Hollywood. Paige appeared on Broadway and was a huge hit in a 1951 comedy-mystery play, 'Remains to Be Seen', co-starring Jackie Cooper.


Italian postcard by Casa Editr. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F. Edit.), no. 2104. Photo: Warner Bros.


Vintage postcard. Photo: Warner Bros.


Dutch postcard by Takken, no. 16. Photo: Warner Bros / MPEA.

The love-starved married neighbour of Bob Hope

Stardom for Janis Paige came in 1954 with her role as Babe in the Broadway musical 'The Pajama Game'. After six years away, Paige returned to Hollywood in Silk Stockings (Rouben Mamoulian, 1957), which starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. She played an Esther Williams-like aquatic movie star. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "She was permitted one strong number, 'Stereophonic Sound,' with co-star Fred Astaire, and copped most of the film's laughs as she slapped herself in the head to get the water out of her ears during interviews."

She also was excellent in the Doris Day comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies (Charles Walters, 1960), and in Bachelor in Paradise (Jack Arnold, 1961) as the love-starved married neighbour of Bob Hope. A rare dramatic role was as Marion, a sharp-tongued man-hating prostitute, in The Caretakers (Hal Bartlett, 1963). Craig Butler at AllMovie: "The Caretakers is high camp and therefore a field day for those who prefer their acting performances so far over the top as to be in actual orbit. (...) Although the main drawing card for many will be Joan Crawford - who does not disappoint, down to and including her judo classes for her nurses - the true acting "honours" actually go to Polly Bergen, whose performance is shamelessly out of control; the opening breakdown at the movie theatre must be seen to be believed. Janis Paige also steals a number of scenes."

Janis carried on in summer stock, playing such indomitable roles as Annie Oakley in 'Annie Get Your Gun', Margo Channing in 'Applause', Mama Rose in 'Gypsy', and Adelaide in 'Guys and Dolls'. From the mid-1950s on, Janis also appeared on TV in such series as It's Always Jan (1955), Lanigan's Rabbi (1976), and Trapper John, M.D. (1979).

In the 1990s, among other TV appearances, she had recurring roles on the daytime serials General Hospital (1963) and Santa Barbara (1984). In 2001, she made her last temporary appearance on TV in an episode of Family Law. In 2017 Paige wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter in which she stated that Alfred Bloomingdale had attempted to rape her when she was 22 years old. Last year, she appeared as herself in the documentary Journey to Royal: A WWII Rescue Mission (Christopher Johnson, Mariana Coku, 2021).

Paige married three times in her life.in 1947, she married Frank Martinelli. However, the couple divorced again in 1950. Her second marriage was even shorter: in January 1956, she married Arthur Stander but divorced him again in June 1957. With her third marriage, she really seemed to have found happiness. In 1962, she married Disney composer Ray Gilbert, who wrote the classic children's song 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.' After a marriage of almost 14 years, Gilbert died in 1976 after complications from open-heart surgery. Paige never married again. She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6624 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California in 1960.


Vintage postcard, no. 3041. Photo: Warner Bros.


Dutch postcard by Van Leer's Fotodrukindustrie N.V., Amsterdam, no. 1250. Photo: Warner Bros.


Vintage card. Photo: Warner Bros.

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.