Monday, June 10, 2024

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.

16 comments:

  1. Great tribute, Poseidon! You do these so well.
    Wasn't Paige writing her memoirs, or had they already come out?
    As a '70s kid, I always remembered her as that nice waitress who Archie Bunker had the hots for. And also on Columbo, as the glitzy, good-natured ex-wife of businessman Forrest Tucker!
    Cheers, Rick

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  2. Hi Poseidon!

    Wonderful tribute to a highly enjoyable performer. I was saddened (though hardly surprised...I mean she was 101!) to read the news of her passing, though as with Glynis Johns I was hoping they would give Olivia de Havilland and Luise Rainer a run for their money and make it to 105!

    I agree that part of her inability to get a bit higher in the ranks was her penchant to look differently in many of her films. However unlike many of her contemporaries as she aged out of her glamour girl years she was willing to change with the times and always looked relaxed, fresh and modern not becoming locked in a dated frowzy appearance.

    I'm not sure Warners was the proper studio for her, especially after Doris Day came on the scene. She was a good dramatic actress but not an arrestingly great one. Her real strengths were song, dance and comedy and Warners wasn't really the top studio for any of those. She might have fared better at MGM or Paramount.

    I have only Two Gals and a Guy of her theatrical films to see, which seems to be locked up in a vault somewhere but for which I don't really have high hopes of discovering a hidden gem. The quality of most of her pictures wasn't the best but she was always a vibrant, welcome presence.

    From seeing her over the years on various game shows she seemed like a down to earth, intelligent and funny person and it was a delight to take a trip through her long career!

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  3. Thanks for this great tribute, Poseidon! I agree with Rick-- you really have a gift for presenting these overviews of a performer's life and career!

    To be honest, Janis Paige was someone that I was aware of, but had not really focused on as a performer. I have *very* vague memories of seeing her in PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES with my Mom (a huge Doris Day fan) when I was about 5, but oddly, that shot of her in that feathered hat really rings a bell.

    I also saw her in THE CARETAKERS in a TV showing years after its release, but it's been so long ago that I don't have a specific memory of her in that over-the-top ensemble. The shot of Paige from ALL IN THE FAMILY also rings a bell, but that's about my total exposure to her. And while I was somewhat aware that she was a musical performer and entertainer, I didn't realize how much she'd done in that area-- and how much she missed out on.

    So it was a surprise and a delight to belatedly "discover" this beautiful and talented woman through this tribute! I'm stunned at how attractive she was no matter how her look evolved, and at the way she maintained her beauty all through her life, without looking "overly enhanced" like so many older stars!

    A great job, Poseidon! Thanks for remembering Janis Paige this way!


    I hope things are picking up for you! Love to all, and be safe and well, everyone!

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  4. BryonByron, thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed this "un-beefcake" post. Sometimes I have to keep it legit. LOL

    Rick, I don't know for sure about Paige's memoirs. She did, though, submit a magazine article several years back recalling her turn at bat with the "me too" movement. With such a long, varied career, it seems like she'd have had plenty of recollections and interactions to fill a book with....! Thanks.

    joel65913, you know what struck me about Janis' looks over the years? As a young lady, her eyes were HUGE! I mean, really big. And then as she aged they seemed to become smaller and smaller, almost squinty. It's really weird. But I thought she was generally attractive nonetheless. (As an aside, I've been told that as we age our faces keep growing... so people with large, round faces become moreso with time. So I tell young girls on the hunt to keep an eye on men with narrow faces became eventually they'll be very handsome! LOL) I thought for a moment that my old reliable site (ok.ru) might have the movie you're looking for, but no... I have since discovered that my work seems to have done something with web security that prevents me from accessing all those movies I want to see on that site. Last night, at home, I tried looking at it on my phone and all was well. AND... I was able to see part of one of my longtime bucket list movies which used to NOT be on the site, but recently appeared in a gorgeous copy -- "The Flying Fontaines!" I wasn't able to take time to see all of it, though. Thank you.

    hsc, thanks much! Maybe I missed my calling as an obituary writer! LOL I, too, was surprised at the length and breadth of Paige's career, though she seemed to be around on '70s TV a LOT. And, as you say, I agree that she looked really attractive at basically all stages of her long life and career. I'm glad that you and others enjoyed reading about her. It took me a WHILE to knock this out. My work is all ramped up due to the construction season kicking in. Physically, I'm doing quite a bit better nearly one month after my accident. Two tiny sores on my knee, which ought to be cleared up in another week. Finger is at 95%. And I'm walking pretty vigorously again. Not like I was, but closer with each passing day. Yesterday was a milestone in that I did 2 miles at lunch, then 3 more miles after work. Gotta keep the engine moving forward!

    Thanks very much to you all for reading and commenting! I'll be back when I can.

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  5. This was lovely and a big help. She got a big sendoff in the papers, and I was unfamiliar with her, Great point about her looking like Carol Cooke, although she really looks different in almost every photo. I really enjoyed this tribute and thought I knew all the dirt already on the Pajama Game stage to screen story.

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  6. Hi Poseidon,

    I noticed that about Janis's eyes too but thought maybe it was just my perception. I remember her in Romance on the High Seas being so wide-eyed (and her hair a marvel of construction) and shortly after seeing her on Super Password and her eyes seeming so much smaller, but then her hairstyle was very different by that point with the front meeting her brows so I thought maybe it was a trick of the camera. Speaking of hairdos I agree about Doris not being as suited to those elaborate hairstyles as Miss Paige though I loved her with the longer hair she started out with in Romance and My Dream is Yours before the short, stiff 50's New Look imprisoned women's hair for a good decade.

    Oh The Flying Fontaines with that adorable Michael Callan!! I enjoyed it even if it isn't a lost classic, but fit men flying through the air in skintight costumes is always worth a watch!!

    Yes I tried the ok.ru site in my search for Two Gals and a Guy. It's been a real gold mine at times (the day I found the one Linda Darnell movie I had left to see "Angels of Darkness" I was so happy I didn't even care that it was in Italian!) but even there some titles can't be found. It seems like so many of my favorite Golden Age actresses, excluding the really iconic ones such as Crawford, Davis, Hepburn etc., have one or two titles that aren't lost but are completely unavailable. I've hit that wall with Ann Sheridan, Kay Kendall, Eve Arden, Glynis Johns, Patricia Neal, Joan Bennett, Diane Baker, Lee Remick, Ruth Roman, among others, even Myrna Loy and Lucille Ball whose films you would think because of their degree of fame would be readily accessible have that one elusive Holy Grail title out there somewhere. But still I search in hope!!

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  7. Your tributes to the entertainers who gifted us with joy, wonder, excitement, and humanity are always amazing, Poseidon. Thank you for honoring Ms. Paige so kindly.

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  8. Poseidon, thanks for the update on how things are for you, and glad to hear that some things are picking up!


    And your tribute motivated me to check to see if I could find and watch one of her films you cited. It's an odd choice, too, with a bit of an "ulterior motive"-- the 1951 comedy MISTER UNIVERSE, which was the debut film of Vince Edwards, and which satisfies the "beefcake quotient" in this obituary post.

    Edwards-- bleached blond, body-shaved and more muscular than in his later career-- plays a good-natured, naive and incredibly honest bodybuilder who wins the "Mister Universe" title in the opening sequence, to the delight of an audience of screaming teen girls who act like they're watching Elvis or the Beatles. (One of them is an unbilled Joan Rivers, who's easy to spot in a group medium shot, despite having dark hair with a "Superman" forehead curl.)

    When Edwards' old military buddy-- con man Jack Carson, who gets most of the film's focus-- tries to get him out of the theater, the frenzied girls attack and strip Edwards down to his boxers, with one of them absconding with his pants AND the cash prize he'd just won to enable him to marry his fiancee. Worse, when Carson and Edwards dash out to the street to try to catch her, they promptly get arrested for Edwards' "indecent exposure."

    The newspaper coverage of the incident (including a photo!) attracts the attention of wrestling promoter Bert Lahr, who's looking for a new star and realizes that Edwards has the physique, looks and sex appeal to be a hit on TV. So Edwards becomes "Mister Universe," the "World's Most Perfect Man" who makes a grand entrance with a bevy of harem girls (based on real-life TV wrestling star "Gorgeous George") and takes on a series of then-popular real-life TV wrestlers, including "Delightful Dave," whose ring persona is an 18th-century "fop" in makeup and powdered wig.

    One HUGE problem-- Edwards can't be convinced to "fake wrestle" and always wins every pairing in a matter of seconds, simultaneously making him a star with TV audiences but a pariah with the behind-the-scenes bookies who take bets on the outcomes of the rigged matches. This leads to Carson and Lahr desperately trying to cause Edwards to get in the ring and lose, with wackiness ensuing.

    Janis Paige, alas, isn't given all that much to do as Carson's long-suffering fiancee, but she's an appealing presence-- sweet, perky but getting her own digs in from time to time, while mostly dutifully bailing out (literally, once) her constantly scheming man.


    This is pretty much not worth the effort if you're *only* watching it for Paige, but if you're in the mood for vintage lowbrow comedy, it's amusing-- and it does have vintage beefcake on display in the opening scene (including bodybuilder/character actor "Buck" Kartalian) and throughout with Edwards (although his opponents are a bunch of grotesques).

    And not long before this low-budget independent production was made in NYC, Vince Edwards had been working as a "physique" model for "Lon of New York" appearing pretty much as he does here, only with his natural hair color-- and with everything on full display in the "under the counter" shots!



    Thanks again for all you do, Poseidon! Love to all and be safe and well, everyone!

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  9. Hi Gingerguy! It does my heart good to know that NYC papers honored her with such coverage. Looking into her, she was certainly part of the stage community there over an expanse of years. She basically got zippo most other places. I was lucky to see a blip about her passing...! Thanks!

    joel65913, I'd forgotten about her stint on "Super Password" until you mentioned it! I still watch that here and there. My draw to "Fontaines" is Rian Garrick, whose cinematic output was minimal. I can't wait to watch the rest, not that Michael Callan isn't cute as a bug, too. You know one of my current MIA/Holy Grail movies? It's probably not even good, but that's hardly the point. When you want to see something, you want to see it...! It's called "Tiger By the Tail" with Christopher George and Tippi Hedren. Maybe someday. Thank you!

    SonofaBuck, thanks so much for your very kind remarks! I appreciate it.

    David Kenilworth, thank you. I intend to try my best. ;-)

    hsc, I feel like I saw a really poor copy of "Mr Universe" a few years back - or at least snippets. Young Vince was pretty dreamy. I've dug up a few unusual shots of him over the years, particularly at the Hollywood Athletic Club. Thanks much!

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  10. Unfortunately, since MISTER UNIVERSE was an independent production released through the small distributor Eagle-Lion just before they went under and got absorbed by United Artists, it almost certainly has been in PD status for decades, and bad copies are going to be the only way to see it.

    In case anyone's interested, the print I viewed on YouTube is soft and occasionally barely watchable full-screen, though it might improve a little if you watch it on a phone:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYqSmxAJ1W4

    One of the comments on this video mentions that MISTER UNIVERSE went practically straight to early TV showings and was local programming fodder for years. This video probably was a multi-generational copy of a 16mm TV print, and possibly was lifted straight from one of the "budget label" DVDs released.



    And here's another weird nugget about this film: a few months *before* it hit theaters in January 1951, it hit spinner racks in a comic book adaptation!

    There was a short-lived (only 22 issues from 1950-53) comic book, MOVIE LOVE, that adapted two movies as a "double feature in each issue," padded with featurettes on Hollywood stars. MISTER UNIVERSE got the ML treatment in issue #6 (dated Dec. 1950 but released earlier), where it was the "B-feature" to MGM's TWO WEEKS WITH LOVE, starring Jane Powell and Ricardo Montalban!

    The craziest part of this is-- while Janis Paige is featured in an inset smooch with Jack Carson on the photo-cover and gets "leading lady" billing in the story, her role in the comic is reduced even more than it was in the film!

    For some reason, the comic book takes it upon itself to rewrite the script to feature Edwards' fiancee-- who's briefly mentioned as a plot motivation but *never appears in the film*-- and gives this new character almost all the material Janis Paige has in the actual film!

    And even crazier, though this new character "Dorothy" is credited to actress Joyce Matthews-- who actually appears in the film in a non-speaking recurring bit as a mobster's moll-- artist Fred Guardineer's likenesses of all the actors are so vague (Janis "Page" looks like she and Carson are wearing "his 'n' hers" shiny black molded plastic wigs) that "Dorothy" might as easily be *Doris Day* horning in on a Janis Paige role yet again! LOL!


    You can see the entire issue on the "Digital Comics Museum" site that archives PD "pre-Comics Code" comic books (and some of these comics are jaw-dropping and unintentionally hilarious):

    https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/preview/index.php?did=31570

    and the adaptation starts here, on page 37 of a page-by-page document:

    https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/preview/index.php?did=31570&page=37

    (One caveat: this site is often a little sluggish and I've sometimes found it hard to access.)



    Thanks again for all you do, Poseidon! Love to all, and be safe and well, everyone!

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  11. Hi again Poseidon,

    Somewhere along the line I have managed to see "Tiger by the Tail" and you are right to not have your hopes set too high, I was looking for it more for the supporting cast (Glenda Farrell (ADORE her) and Dean Jagger especially) but having Tippi in it was a bonus. Surprise! surprise! I found it on YouTube!! and here's the link.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6cONQqzqLs

    I agree about the indifference often to whether a film you really want to see is good or bad when you have your own reason to seek it out. For instance the Kay Kendall film I'm missing "Abdullah's Harem" (or "Abdullah the Great") has all the earmarks of a stinker and which she appeared in strictly to get out of her Rank contract in order to pursue bigger opportunities in Hollywood. She never mentioned it with anything but disdain and it came and went in the blink on a eye in theatres with terrible reviews. I could not care less, I want to see that movie dammit!!

    Lucille Ball did much the same thing to finish her Columbia pact (on C.B. DeMille's advice) by agreeing to appear in the hilariously bad "The Magic Carpet" so she could be in his "The Greatest Show on Earth" for which the studio would not loan her out but was keeping her chained to them by only offering her junk to prevent her from completing her final obligation. She complied only to find out after the picture was made that she was pregnant with Lucie Arnaz and had to withdraw! That however is not the Lucy film I'm missing, that would be a 30's RKO low budget flick called of all things "The Farmer in the Dell"! Again not high hopes but Lucy's character at least has a name so I assume her character has some significance to the plot.

    Those two are in fact an example of the two levels of frustration when searching for those Grail films. With something like the Glynis Johns films I'm missing, they are English made (as was Kay's) from very early in her career so I can be realistic that my chances are slim because of those factors (same goes for Ruth Roman's Italian lensed "Desert Desperados") and it's more disappointing than frustrating that they aren't available. It's stuff like Lucy's film, or Ann Sheridan's "Just Across the Street" (produced by Universal), Diane Baker's "Tess of the Storm Country" (20th Century Fox) or Myrna Loy's 1931 version of "Body and Soul" (Fox Films), that also starred Humphrey Bogart and was restored a few years ago by MoMa to be shown at a festival and then tucked back in a vault (What's the point of that!?) where the search becomes truly maddening! I mean those are major studios productions, what are they doing with them? GRRR!

    Okay rant over, enjoy the film! :-)




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  12. Janis did indeed write her memoirs in the form of Reading Between the Lines: A Memoir which was released in 2020. Haven't read it myself but one of these days.

    Not that its a competition or anything but wow that Janis outlived even Bob Hope (him dying only 2 months after his 100th).

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  13. hsc, that comic book was a hoot... I had briefly forgotten how sometimes on old magazines like that, the printing would be slightly off and the colors wouldn't line up 100%, giving people an odd blurred look like the cover photo. I guess my favorite thing was the telegram telling the wrestler that because he was photographed "wearing shorts in jail" he was being fired by the YMCA! That was at a time when men swam nude at the Y! LOL I think jail would have been slightly more alarming to Mr. Otis than the shorts... The depiction of his opponents was hilarious, too. All hairy with teeth missing. (And you're right about the gal resembling Doris Day!) Thanks!

    joel65913, I was stunned to see "Tiger" in a nice print on YT. It went up last year after I'd given up on searching there. I had to watch it immediately and it really wasn't very good, so convoluted and vague. But what a gallery of faces! And Charo had a decent moment or two. It was neat to see Tippi from that time when she was not appearing in very many movies. Thanks for pointing out the upload and providing the link! I appreciate it. Oh, and I more than agree about restoring a movie solely for a screening and then not making it more available after...!!! >:-[

    Huttonmy710, thank you for clearing that up! I should think it's an interesting read. Hopefully, if I ever come across it.

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  14. I only ever saw her in The Caretakers recommended here by Mr Poseiodn and a doozy if you are into crazy unstable women some glamourpusses all acting like their in an actors blender.

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