Janis Paige, an entrancing singer, dancer and actress who starred within the unique 1954 Broadway manufacturing of the hit musical “The Pajama Recreation,” died on Sunday at her residence in Los Angeles. She was 101.
Her demise was confirmed by a longtime pal of hers, Stuart Lampert.
Ms. Paige made her mark at 22 within the all-star 1944 movie “Hollywood Canteen,” however publicity in a string of 17 motion pictures over the subsequent seven years left her with little greater than a set of minor magnificence titles, like Miss Wingspread and Miss Naval Air Reserve. When she ran away to strive the New York stage, nonetheless, it took her solely three years to change into the toast of Broadway.
She was solid as Babe Williams, the feisty, romance-resistant union chief in “The Pajama Recreation,” reverse John Raitt. The manufacturing — involving theater luminaries like George Abbott (e-book), Richard Adler (music) and Hal Prince (one of many producers) — received three Tony Awards in 1955: for greatest musical, greatest featured actress in a musical (Carol Haney) and greatest choreography (Bob Fosse).
When the present was tailored for a film, the producers on the Warner Bros. studio determined that not less than one massive Hollywood identify was wanted. So whereas many of the New York solid, together with Mr. Raitt, made the transition to movie, Ms. Paige was changed by Doris Day.
Broadway continued to be type to Ms. Paige, with 4 different starring roles. Notably, she changed the seemingly irreplaceable Angela Lansbury in “Mame” in 1968. Clive Barnes, reviewing her efficiency in The New York Occasions, wrote that Ms. Paige had made “a superb job of it.”
“She is much less of a personality” than Ms. Lansbury, he continued, “however, as some compensation, maybe extra of a performer.”
Memorable supporting movie roles got here alongside. She performed a none-too-bright American film actress within the 1957 musical “Silk Stockings,” impressed by the 1939 Greta Garbo romantic comedy “Ninotchka.” (Requested by journalists how she felt about Tolstoy, her character answered, “We’re simply good mates.”)
In that movie, which featured songs by Cole Porter, Ms. Paige carried out a memorable duet, “Stereophonic Sound,” with Fred Astaire. She additionally performed a vengeful, badly reviewed stage actress within the comedy “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” (1960), decided to seduce a married theater critic (David Niven).
Janis Paige was born Donna Mae Tjaden on Sept. 16, 1922, in Tacoma, Wash., to George and Hazel Tjaden. (She modified her identify to Janis to honor the World Struggle I entertainer Elsie Janis; Paige was a household identify on her mom’s facet.)
She studied singing in Washington State and carried out in native novice exhibits till she moved together with her mom to Los Angeles. There she paid for voice classes with workplace work and different jobs, which included singing on the Hollywood Canteen, a hangout for servicemen on depart.
Her position within the movie “Hollywood Canteen” might need been her film debut, however two different photos she made — “Bathing Magnificence,” a musical comedy, and “I Received’t Play,” a battle drama with music — had been launched earlier in 1944.
Ms. Paige had her personal tv sequence, “It’s All the time Jan,” for one season (1955-56) on CBS, taking part in a widowed nightclub singer. She typically accompanied Bob Hope on his abroad journeys entertaining American troops.
Her final function movie was “The Caretakers” (1963), a hospital drama starring Joan Crawford. However she made frequent visitor appearances on tv sequence by way of the Nineteen Eighties, and had recurring roles on the daytime dramas “Normal Hospital” and “Santa Barbara.” Her closing display screen look was in a 2001 episode of the CBS sequence “Household Regulation.”
Ms. Paige was married 3 times and divorced twice. Her first husband (1947-51) was Frank Martinelli Jr., a restaurateur. Her second (1956-7) was Arthur Stander, the producer of “It’s All the time Jan.” In 1962, she married Ray Gilbert, the film composer. He died in 1976. She had no instant survivors.
If critiques regularly talked about her curvaceous determine as typically as her expertise, Ms. Paige confronted the identical attitudes off-camera.
In a 2017 essay in The Hollywood Reporter, because the #MeToo motion caught fireplace, she wrote that within the Forties, when she was 22, Alfred S. Bloomingdale, the division retailer inheritor, tried to rape her after inviting her to dinner after which to his residence in Los Angeles. She escaped, she wrote, by biting him and working down six flights of stairs.
Mr. Bloomingdale died in 1982.
“Possibly there’s a particular place in hell” for males like him, she mentioned within the essay. She added, “Even at 95, I keep in mind every part.”
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
