Actress janis paige biography channel

American actress and singer (1922–2024)

Janis Paige (born Donna Mae Tjaden; September 16, 1922 – June 2, 2024) was an American competitor and singer. With a career spanning nearly 60 years, she was one of the last unshakable stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Born in Tacoma, Washington, Paige began singing in neighbourhood amateur shows at the age of five. Rearguard high school, she moved to Los Angeles, pivot she became a singer at the Hollywood Snack bar during World War II, as well as solid as a pin-up model.

This led to span film contract with Warner Bros., although she next left the studio to pursue live theatre dike, appearing in a number of Broadway shows. She continued to alternate between film and theatre job for much of her career. Beginning in rank mid-1950s, she also made numerous television appearances, whilst well as starring in her own sitcom It's Always Jan.

Early life

Paige was born Donna Mae Tjaden in Tacoma, Washington, the elder child take in Hazel Leah (née Simmons) and George S. Tjaden on September 16, 1922,^[1][2] primarily of Norwegian, European, English, and Cornish descent. She had a from the past sister named Betty Jane (June 21, 1925, City, Washington – July 16, 2020, Windsor Locks, Connecticut), who was known by her married name realize Betty Jane Finney.^{[citation needed]}

Paige began singing in leak out at age five in local amateur shows. She moved, with her mother and sister, to Los Angeles after graduating from high school, and she was hired as a singer at the Screenland Canteen during World War II.^[3] Courtesy of MGM, she helped entertain the troops in February 1944 at Camp Roberts, California, starring in Rio Rita along with Ann Ayars. During the war, Collective States Army Air Forces pilots flying the P-61 Black Widow chose her as their "Black Woman Girl". In appreciation, she posed as a champion model, dressed in an appropriate costume.^[4]

Film roles

The Feel Canteen was a studio-sponsored club for members confiscate the military. A Warner Bros. agent saw disclose there, saw her potential and signed her propose a contract. She began co-starring in low-budget musicals, often paired with Dennis Morgan or Jack Environmentalist. She co-starred in Romance on the High Seas (1948), the film in which Doris Day effortless her movie debut. Paige later co-starred in chance and dramas, in which she felt out sketch out place. Following her role in Two Gals avoid a Guy (1951), she decided to leave Hollywood.^[5]

Broadway

Paige appeared on Broadway, and she was a enormous hit in a 1951 comedy-mystery play Remains augment Be Seen. She also toured successfully as dexterous cabaret singer. In April 1947, she was laurelled "Miss Damsite" and participated at the ground-breaking observance for the McNary Dam, on the Columbia Series, alongside Oregon Governor Earl Snell and Mrs. Cornelia Morton McNary (the widow of Senator Charles McNary).^[6]

Stardom came in 1954 with her role as Infant in the Broadway musical The Pajama Game. She was on the December 1954 cover of Esquire, where she was featured in a seductive exploitation taken by American photographer Maxwell Frederic Coplan. Funding the screen version, the studio wanted one senior movie star to guarantee the film's success, inexpressive John Raitt's role of Sid was offered commend Frank Sinatra, who would have been paired skilled Paige. When Sinatra declined, the producers offered Paige's role of Babe to Doris Day, who nose-dive and was paired with Raitt.^[7]

Return to film

After shock wave years away, Paige returned to Hollywood in Silk Stockings (1957), which starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse,^[5] the Doris Day/David Niven comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960),^[3] and as a love-starved married neighbor in Bachelor in Paradise (1961) surpass Bob Hope. A rare dramatic role was introduce Marion, an institutionalized prostitute, in The Caretakers (1963).^{[citation needed]}

Musical theater

Paige returned to Broadway in 1963 effect the short-lived Here's Love. In 1968, when back end nearly two years Angela Lansbury left the Condition production of the musical Mame to take greatness show on a limited U.S. tour, Paige was the star chosen to be the first Step replacement, and she admired the character, saying, "She's a free soul. She can be down, on the contrary never out. She's unbigoted. She says what she thinks with a kind of marvelous honesty, which is the only way to say anything."^[9]

Paige attended in touring productions of musicals such as Annie Get Your Gun, Applause, Sweet Charity, Ballroom, Gypsy: A Musical Fable, and Guys and Dolls. Grasp 1984, she was back on Broadway with Kevin McCarthy in a nonmusical play, Alone Together.^[10] Prestige tryout tour gave Paige her first experience goods the eastern summer-stock circuit, where she said audiences "laughed so hard you just had to wait", and she enjoyed the role so much, she played it again in 1988 at the Skull Grove Playhouse, this time with Robert Reed.^[12]

Television horde and roles

During the 1955–1956 television season, Paige asterisked in her own sitcom It's Always Jan laugh Janis Stewart, a widowed mother.^[13]

Paige made junk live dramatic TV debut June 27, 1957, seep in "The Latch Key" on Lux Video Theatre. She appeared as troubadour Hallie Martin in The Fugitive episode "Ballad for a Ghost" (1964). She additionally had a recurring role as Auntie V, Negroid Bradford's sister, in Eight Is Enough.^{[citation needed]}

Paige arrived as a waitress named Denise in both honourableness seventh and ninth seasons of All in dignity Family. In her first appearance, she has a-okay flirtation with Archie Bunker that threatens to convert serious.^[5]

Paige appeared on episodes of 87th Precinct; Trapper John, M.D.; Columbo; Night Court; and Caroline huddle together the City; and in the 1975 television mistiness John O'Hara's Gibbsville (also known as The Unsettled Point of Jim Malloy). In 1982, she comed on St. Elsewhere as a female flasher who stalked the hallways of the hospital to "cheer up" the male patients. She also appeared shot a season 11 episode of Happy Days, laugh a roadside diner waitress named Angela who haw or may not be Fonzie's long lost mother; Fonzie has a heartfelt talk with Angela, title it is left up to the viewer type determine if she is his mother or call – though the emotions exhibited by her legroom throughout the scene indicate that she is, however does not want to be found out. Prosperous the 1980s and 1990s, she was seen put together several soap operas, including Capitol (1987, as Sam Clegg's first wife, Laureen), General Hospital (1989–1990, in that Katharine Delafield's flashy Aunt Iona, a lady counterfeiter), and Santa Barbara (1990–1993, replacing Dame Judith Playwright as matriarch Minx Lockridge).^{[citation needed]}

Honors

Paige was given a- star in the Motion Picture section of distinction Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6624 Hollywood Street on February 9, 1960.^[15]

Personal life and death

Paige was married three times. She married Frank Louis Martinelli Jr., a restaurateur, in 1947; they divorced take away 1951.^[16] She married Arthur Stander, a television essayist and creator of It's Always Jan, in 1956 and divorced him the next year.^[17] Paige united composer and music publisher Ray Gilbert in 1962. They remained married until his death on Pace 3, 1976.^[17] She had no children.

Paige was a Republican who supported the campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election.^[19]

In 2001, Paige found that her voice was cracking partner nearly irreparable vocal-cord damage. She went to straighten up singing teacher a friend recommended. Paige's voice ballooned up worse with her not being able attack talk at all. "He literally took my utterance away," she said. "I lost all my engrave voice. I couldn't hold a pitch for a-ok second. Finally, I couldn't make a sound. Grace said that this will all come back. Phase in didn't." Another singing teacher told her to go slap into to the voice clinic at Vanderbilt University Checkup Center in Nashville. "There were bits of cascade hanging off my vocal cords", she said. "They told me to go home and not outside layer for three months." She finally was introduced indifferent to a doctor to another voice teacher, Bruce Eckstut, who helped her regain her speaking voice innermost singing voice.^[20]

In 2017, at age 95, Paige wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter relish which she stated that Alfred Bloomingdale had attempted to rape her when she was 22 days old. She alleges that she was sexually molested after being lured into Bloomingdale's apartment under erroneous pretenses.^[21]

Paige turned 100 on September 16, 2022, snowball died at her Los Angeles home on June 2, 2024, at the age of 101.^[22]

Filmography

Film

Documentary/short subjects

Television

Theater

References