EGN NEWS DESK
Janis Paige, an entrancing singer, dancer and actress who starred within the authentic 1954 Broadway manufacturing of the hit musical “The Pajama Game,” died on Sunday at her dwelling in Los Angeles. She was 101.
Her dying was confirmed by a longtime buddy 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 following seven years left her with little greater than a group of minor magnificence titles, like Miss Wingspread and Miss Naval Air Reserve. When she ran away to attempt the New York stage, nonetheless, it took her solely three years to change into the toast of Broadway.
She was forged as Babe Williams, the feisty, romance-resistant union chief in “The Pajama Game,” reverse John Raitt. The manufacturing — involving theater luminaries like George Abbott (guide), 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 a minimum of one massive Hollywood identify was wanted. So whereas a lot of the New York forged, together with Mr. Raitt, made the transition to movie, Ms. Paige was changed by Doris Day.
Broadway continued to be form 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 Times, wrote that Ms. Paige had made “a wonderful 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.” (Asked 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 War I entertainer Elsie Janis; Paige was a household identify on her mom’s aspect.)
She studied singing in Washington State and carried out in native beginner reveals 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 function within the movie “Hollywood Canteen” might need been her film debut, however two different photos she made — “Bathing Beauty,” a musical comedy, and “I Won’t Play,” a struggle drama with music — have been launched earlier in 1944.
Ms. Paige had her personal tv sequence, “It’s Always Jan,” for one season (1955-56) on CBS, taking part in a widowed nightclub singer. She usually accompanied Bob Hope on his abroad journeys entertaining American troops.
Her final function movie was “The Caretakers” (1963), a hospital drama starring Joan Crawford. But she made frequent visitor appearances on tv sequence by the Eighties, and had recurring roles on the daytime dramas “General Hospital” and “Santa Barbara.” Her closing display look was in a 2001 episode of the CBS sequence “Family Law.”
Ms. Paige was married thrice 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 Always Jan.” In 1962, she married Ray Gilbert, the film composer. He died in 1976. She had no speedy survivors.
If critiques steadily talked about her curvaceous determine as usually 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 Nineteen 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 house in Los Angeles. She escaped, she wrote, by biting him and working down six flights of stairs.
Mr. Bloomingdale died in 1982.
“Maybe there’s a particular place in hell” for males like him, she mentioned within the essay. She added, “Even at 95, I bear in mind all the things.”
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
