Bob Hope and Janis Paige hug during the annual Christmas event in Saigon, Vietnam, December 25, 1964. Paige, a popular actor in Hollywood and in Broadway musicals and comedies who danced with Fred Astaire, toured with Bob Hope and continued to perform into his 80s, has passed away world Sunday, June 2, 2024, because of nature in his Los Angeles home, longtime friend Stuart Lampert said on June 3 | Photo Credit: ANONYMOUS
Janis Paige, a popular actor in Hollywood and in Broadway musicals and comedies, who danced with Fred Astaire, toured with Bob Hope and continued to perform in the 90s, has died. He is 101 years old.
Paige died Sunday of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, longtime friend Stuart Lampert said Monday.
Paige starred on Broadway with Jackie Cooper in the mystery comedy, Stay tunedand appeared with John Raitt in the smash hit musical Pajama Game. Other films include the comedy Hope, Bachelor in Paradise; a Doris Day comedy Please Don’t Eat Daisies and Follow the Boys.
In 2018, she added her voice to the #MeToo movement, reporting the attack when she was 22 years old by the late heir to the department store Alfred Bloomingdale, who died in 1982. . He was big and strong, and I started to fight, kick, bite and scream,” he wrote. “At 95, time was not on my side, and it was lonely. I just wanted to add my name and say, ‘Me too.'”
Paige’s big break during the war was when she sang an operatic aria for the soldiers in the Hollywood Canteen. MGM hired her days later for a brief role in the Bathing Beauty – she said two lines in the movie, which starred Esther Williams and Red Skelton – then dropped her. On the same day, Warner Bros Hollywood Canteen. His contract starts at $150 a week. “I made more a week than my mother made in a month during the Great Depression,” he recalled The Hollywood Reporter in 2018.
His salary rose to $1,000 per week as the studio kept busy with light films such as Two Guys from Milwaukee, Time, Place and Girl, Love and Learn, Always Together, Wall Flower and Romance on the High Seas, which marked Doris Day’s film debut. Meanwhile, she has changed her name from Donna May Tjaden, to her grandmother Paige. She took her first name from Elsie Janis, who was famous for entertaining the troops during World War I.
Paige’s contract expired in 1949, when studios let go of talent due to the presence of television. “It was a jolt,” he said in 1963. “It meant I was washed up at 25.” She took her talent to Broadway, where she starred in “Remains to Be Seen” (her role will be taken over 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 will take on the role in the film version.)
MGM producer Arthur Freed caught her nightclub act at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and offered her the part opposite Astaire in it Silk Stockings, also starring Cyd Charisse. The film is notable for him and Astaire spoofing newfangled movie gimmicks in the Cole Porter 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 get off the table – I didn’t know how to save myself because I was never a classical dancer,” she said. Miami Herald in 2016.
In May 2003, Paige started entertaining after a long absence. They opened a show called “Third Act” at San Francisco’s Plush Room. He tells stories about Astaire, Frank Sinatra and others and sings songs from movies and stage musicals. Chad Jones, reviewer for Alameda Times-Starcomments that at 80 “the charming Paige shows vitality, verve and enthusiasm that players half her age would envy.”
Paige grew up in Tacoma, Washington. His father left the family when he was 4 years old, and his mother lived in the Bank of Tacoma. “We always had enough to eat,” Paige told the Saturday Evening Post in 1963, “but there was nothing left over. My mother worked hard. And she always said she wished I was born a boy, so I could help more. I always wanted to be success to him, to complete my father.
After leaving Warner Bros., he moved into TV, starring in the 1955-1956 TV series, It’s always Jan and play a recurring role in it Flamingo Road, Santa Barbara, Eight Is Enough, Capitol, Fantasy Island and Jon Trapper, MD. On All in the Family, she plays a diner waitress who becomes involved with Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker. Paige replaced Angela Lansbury in the New York production of Ms in 1968 on Broadway and toured with the show in 1969. He also toured the Gypsy, Annie Take Your Gun, Born yesterday and District Table Set. His last time on Broadway was in 1984 Once Together. He also provided the glamor for Hope’s Christmas visits to Cuba and the Caribbean in 1960, Japan and South Korea in 1962, and Vietnam in 1964. He sang in clubs with Sammy Davis Jr., Alan King, Dinah Shore and Perry Como.
In 2020, his autobiography, Reading Between the Lines: A Memoirpublished, recounting 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 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. Southern Song. He died in 1976, and he was in the management of the music company.
(tagFor Translation)Janis Paige