Janis Paige

Janis Paige, born Donna Mae Tjaden on September 16, 1922, in Tacoma, Washington, was an American actress and singer whose career extended across nearly six decades in film, theatre, and television. Of Norwegian, German, English, and Cornish descent, she was the elder daughter of Hazel Leah Tjaden and George S. Tjaden, and had a younger sister, Betty Jane, born in 1925. Paige died on June 2, 2024, and was among the last surviving performers associated with the Golden Age of Hollywood.

She began singing publicly at age five in local amateur shows in Tacoma. After completing high school, she relocated to Los Angeles with her mother and sister, where she found work as a singer at the Hollywood Canteen during World War II. In February 1944, she traveled to Camp Roberts, California, under MGM's auspices to entertain troops, appearing in Rio Rita alongside Ann Ayars. United States Army Air Forces pilots flying the P-61 Black Widow designated her their "Black Widow Girl," and in recognition she posed as a pin-up model in an appropriate costume. In April 1947, she was crowned "Miss Damsite" and took part in the ground-breaking ceremony for the McNary Dam on the Columbia River, alongside Oregon Governor Earl Snell and Cornelia Morton McNary.

A Warner Bros. agent who spotted her at the Hollywood Canteen signed her to a studio contract. She appeared in a series of low-budget musicals, frequently paired with Dennis Morgan or Jack Carson, and co-starred in Romance on the High Seas in 1948, the film that marked Doris Day's movie debut. After later roles in adventure and drama films, which she found ill-suited to her strengths, she departed Hollywood following Two Gals and a Guy in 1951.

Her Broadway career ran from 1951 to 1987. She made an early impression in the 1951 comedy-mystery Remains to Be Seen, and also appeared that year in Happy Birthday, Mr. Abbott! Stardom on stage arrived in 1954 when she originated the role of Babe in The Pajama Game. Her performance earned her a place on the December 1954 cover of Esquire, photographed by Maxwell Frederic Coplan. When the show was adapted for film, the studio sought a major movie star to anchor the production; Frank Sinatra was offered John Raitt's role of Sid on the condition he be paired with Paige, but Sinatra declined. The producers then recast Paige's role of Babe, giving it to Doris Day, who was paired with Raitt. Paige returned to Broadway in 1963 in Here's Love, and in 1968 became the first replacement star in the Broadway production of Mame after Angela Lansbury departed to take the show on a limited U.S. tour. In 1984, she appeared on Broadway alongside Kevin McCarthy in the nonmusical play Alone Together. She later reprised that role in 1988 at the Coconut Grove Playhouse with Robert Reed. Outside of Broadway, she toured in productions including Annie Get Your Gun, Applause, Sweet Charity, Ballroom, Gypsy: A Musical Fable, and Guys and Dolls.

After six years away from Hollywood, Paige returned to film in 1957 with Silk Stockings, which starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. She subsequently appeared in the Doris Day and David Niven comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies in 1960, and in Bachelor in Paradise in 1961 with Bob Hope. A departure from her usual work came with The Caretakers in 1963, in which she played Marion, an institutionalized prostitute.

Television became a significant part of her career beginning in the mid-1950s. During the 1955–1956 season she starred in her own sitcom, It's Always Jan, playing widowed mother Janis Stewart. The show was created by Arthur Stander, whom she married in 1956 and divorced the following year. She made her live dramatic television debut on June 27, 1957, in "The Latch Key" on Lux Video Theatre. Among her many subsequent television appearances, she played troubadour Hallie Martin in the 1964 Fugitive episode "Ballad for a Ghost," held a recurring role as Auntie V in Eight Is Enough, and appeared as a waitress named Denise in both the seventh and ninth seasons of All in the Family. In 1982 she appeared on St. Elsewhere, and in the 1980s and 1990s she had roles on the soap operas Capitol, General Hospital, and Santa Barbara, where she replaced Dame Judith Anderson as matriarch Minx Lockridge from 1990 to 1993. Additional television credits include 87th Precinct, Trapper John M.D., Columbo, Night Court, Caroline in the City, Happy Days, and the 1975 television movie John O'Hara's Gibbsville.

On February 9, 1960, Paige received a star in the Motion Picture section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6624 Hollywood Boulevard. She was married three times: to restaurateur Frank Louis Martinelli Jr. from 1947 to 1951, to television writer Arthur Stander in 1956 until their divorce the following year, and to composer and music publisher Ray Gilbert from 1962 until his death on March 3, 1976. She had no children.

In 2001, Paige experienced severe vocal-cord damage that left her temporarily unable to speak or sing. After treatment at the voice clinic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, and subsequent work with voice teacher Bruce Eckstut, she recovered both her speaking and singing voice. In 2017, at age 95, she wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter in which she stated that Alfred S. Bloomingdale had attempted to rape her when she was 22 years old.