Fond Farewell: Turning of the Paige

Well, if we're being completely honest, it wouldn't truly naturally fall to me to write up a tribute/photo essay on today's recipient, though I certainly had nothing against her. Janis Paige was a feisty, vibrant, enthusiastic performer in many a movie and TV program. But she wasn't someone who grabbed me in a significant way. However, when you take into account that she passed away recently (June 2nd, 2024) at the age of 101 (!) and was performing a one-woman show as recently as 2012 - topping off a career that started in the mid-1940s... well, it's a no-brainer that she deserves some attention here. 

Born Donna Mae Tjaden in Tacoma, Washington on September 16th, 1922, she was of Norwegian and Eastern European descent. Already a ham by age 5, she was singing her little heart out in local amateur talent shows.

Evolving as a big-eyed brunette, she moved with her mother and sister to Los Angeles after graduating from high school. Work as a pin-up model followed soon after. As the U.S. entered WWII, she began singing and volunteering at the Hollywood Canteen. It was the beginning of a lifetime in which she would offer support and entertainment to soldiers. 

Having been discovered at the canteen by a talent scout and signed to MGM, she found herself in the 1944 Esther Williams spectacular Bathing Beauty as well as playing a studio guide in the film Hollywood Canteen (1944.)

Air Force pilots who flew the P-61 Black Widow twin-engine fighters during WWII selected Paige to be their "Black Widow Girl," hence her unusual pose for this pin-up.

The curvy, sultry young girl with a lustrous mane of thick, beautiful hair, sat for countless photo sessions as an ingenue.

Here we find her "shipwrecked" and "stranded" on a photographer's set.

In 1946 and now at Warner Brothers, she was featured in movies like Of Human Bondage (with Eleanor Parker) and Two Guys from Milwaukee while also winning costarring parts. 

She was the female lead in Her Kind of Man (1946) opposite Dane Clark and Zachary Scott and was the same in The Time, the Place and the Girl (1946) opposite Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson.

One thing which probably helped prevent Paige from becoming a highly successful movie star was the fact that she tended to look very different from project to project. The biggest stars usually had a set persona and a regular look which they often carried from movie to movie.

There was this brief blonde period during her days when she was most frequently a brunette or dark auburn-haired performer.

It wasn't uncommon to find her rather overdone, even in a time when gals were always at least "done." There's a lot going on here.

And here, striking as the whole look may be, she's being overtaken.

But she was busy, either in support of others (like in Cheyenne, 1947, with Dennis Morgan and Jane Wyman) or Winter Meeting (1948, with Bette Davis and Jim Davis) or costarring, as seen here with Robert Hutton in Wallflower, 1948.) She also wed for the first time in 1947 to a restaurateur, but the union was over by 1951.

In 1948, she was the leading lady in Romance on the High Seas, the film which introduced Doris Day to movie audiences. Note the way Paige suits the piled-up hair more than Day, whose face was wider and rounder. We wouldn't see this type of coiffure on Ms. Day much thereafter.

Paige kept plugging along in a variety of projects, few of which seemed to play to her biggest strengths.

1950 wound up as a rather pivotal year for Paige. There was a pair of noir movies including This Side of the Law...

...and Fugitive Lady in which she looked very lovely, but which did nothing to expose her innate effervescence and skill with song and dance. After filming two comedies which would see release in 1951 (Mister Universe and Two Gals and a Guy), Paige packed up and headed for New York City.

There, she joined Jackie Cooper for the Howard Lindsay-Russell Crouse comedy-mystery Remains to Be Seen. The show was a moderate success (and she toured with it after its 199 performances), but she was considered a highlight.

In 1954, she and John Raitt scored a smash with The Pajama Game. The Tony-winning musical ran for more than 1,000 performances and garnered a lot of attention.

At this same time, Paige was putting together and starring in a sitcom, co-produced by Desilu. She played a nightclub singer with a 10 year-old daughter who shares a New York apartment with two other singles ladies.

Called It's Always Jan, the show offered Arte Johnson his first work on television in a recurring role as a delicatessen employee and comic foil to Paige. The series only lasted one-season despite moderate popularity. Paige wed the creator of the show, but the marriage ended right about the time the show did!

The following year, 1957, she was dealt a blow when Warner Brothers bought the rights to The Pajama Game. It was under the condition that only one of the two leads would be cast in the movie as neither one was a box office draw. Initially, it was meant to be Frank Sinatra and Paige for the film, but Sinatra turned the part down.

And so it was that Raitt was permitted to bring his stage role to the screen opposite Doris Day who, in the meantime since debuting in one of Paige's movies, had become a sought after movie star. A lesser mortal might have created a voodoo doll with a lock of Day's blonde hair, but Paige was philosophical about it and moved on.

In fact, she did a complete turnabout, changing her hair, her makeup and - to a degree - her image, emerging in the Cole Porter movie musical Silk Stockings (1957) as a glitzy Hollywood actress.

There's a lot going on here...! The brows, the eyelashes... and her hair was red. It's as if Joan Crawford and Carole Cook made a daughter. This time, it was she who was inheriting someone's stage role (in this case, Gretchen Wyler) for a movie and she leapt into it full bore.

She had no follow-up to Silk Stockings, movie-wise, instead appearing on various TV series of the time such as Lux Video Theatre, Studio 57, Schlitz Playhouse and (the unwieldy-named) Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse.

Her next movie came in 1960, playing another glitzy, emotionally-feisty actress. Ironically, the movie was Please Don't Eat the Daisies, which starred none other than Doris Day!

By this time, the die was cast and Paige was a go-to for brash, brassy, energetic ladies with a goal in mind.

She popped up on many TV variety shows, game shows, sitcoms and even the occasional western, such as Wagon Train.

1961 brought a showy supporting part in Bachelor in Paradise, with Bob Hope. The movie's leading lady was Lana Turner, but Paige did all she could to score points of her own.

She and Hope had worked together on TV and at various events over the course of several years and so there was a comfort level in their scenes that Turner (for whom comedy was never a strength) couldn't achieve.

Now on the cusp of 40, a deadly age at that time for most actresses, Paige was still actively working, but the caliber of her projects was diminishing.

Follow the Boys (1963) was a negligible comedy-romance about girlfriends and wives catching up with the sailors they love at various ports of call. She was in support of Connie Francis, who was making a futile attempt at movie stardom.

The Caretakers (1963) offered more meat, and had her playing a mental hospital patient who's a complete floozy and party girl. She turns in on full-blast, though Robert Stack as her doctor, is able to withstand it.

The crazed, troubled film is brimming over with stars, each hoping to make a mark, and Paige is by far the one ACTING the most. (She's given a run for her money by leading lady Polly Bergen who, in a feverish performance, is repeatedly ripping up her own clothing. While wearing it!)

While returning to Broadway again (for the modestly successful show Here's Love, a musicalization of Miracle on 34th Street, 1947), Paige made occasional TV appearances on series like Burke's Law and The Fugitive. In 1967, she returned to the big screen as a saloon girl in Welcome to Hard Times, starring Henry Fonda.

Paige, who'd been a favorite of servicemen since the 1940s, joined pal Bob Hope on a couple of his legendary tours. Here, she's seen giving her all to a flood of G.I.s during The Vietnam War.

Back home, she was treading the boards of The Great White Way again when she became the first replacement for Angela Lansbury in Mame.

Soon enough she adopted Angie's close-cropped hairdo while enacting the grueling role, as seen here in this ad for the New York News. Paige, who'd previously done regional productions of Born Yesterday and Sweet Charity, would continue in that vein with productions of Gypsy, Applause, Desk Set and others over the next several years.

As the 1970s arrived, Paige proved a worthwhile guest star on many hit TV series. Columbo, Mannix, Police Story, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Alice, Hawaii 5-O and Charlie's Angels are only some of the ones she popped up on. This is the Janis Paige I first became aware of as a kid.

She also made a key appearance on All in the Family as a diner waitress who temporarily catches Archie's eye in a two-parter. (Note that the promotional photo was from a rehearsal, before Paige had her hair properly done and full costume and jewelry added.) Two seasons later, he character returned for another appearance.

Amid requisite appearances on The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, Paige was tapped as the star of a pilot for another similar series, virtually a hybrid (!) called Magic on Love Island (1980.) Her character appeared to have a certain level of ESP, but the show wasn't picked up. (Don't know if she saw that coming...! LOL) Paige proceeded to a recurring role on Eight is Enough.

One memorable guest appearance came with St. Elsewhere in which she played a middle-aged female flasher bent on "cheering up" male patients in the hospital!

Paige was also found alongside a roster of longtime pal Bob Hope's leading ladies that same year.

One final Broadway show was Alone Together, with Kevin McCarthy and an array of younger performers. The show ran for just under 100 performances before closing in 1985. She continued to act on stage in various locales until 1989.

She was far from finished performing on-screen, however. She played Parker Stevenson's mother in an episode of the Mission: Impossible redux and appeared on 15 episodes of Trapper John, M.D.

She next turned to daytime TV, working on Capitol, General Hospital and most memorably on Santa Barbara, taking over the role of Minx Lockridge from Dame Judith Anderson.

The always effusive Paige, with a fun, zany style of her own, was retired not by choice, but by medical necessity. Since the late-1990s, she'd been experiencing "cracking" vocals in her speech and singing. During some treatment in 2001, she wound up not being able to speak at all! In time, and with further - different - therapy, she was able to regain her voice.

In 2006, she was able to make a dazzling appearance as a presenter at the Tony Awards with Michael McKean.

In 2012, at age 90, she made a startling comeback on stage in Hollywood with a one-woman show about her long and varied career, complete with songs.

In 2017, at 95, she emerged at an Actor's Fund commemoration, still flashing the smile that had entertained millions of viewers and audiences over the years.

I hope you enjoyed this peek under the veil of Ms Paige. A third marriage (in 1962 to songwriter Ray Gilbert - "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah") was the most successful, though it ended with his death at 64 in 1976.)

The tireless performer managed a career that lasted almost the length and breadth of her time on earth!

Only the march of time could put an end to her vivacity, zest and lively spirit. She was, as I noted above, 101 years of age when she died of natural causes on June 2nd, 2024, missing 102 by only a few months.