Janis Paige, star of Broadway's 'The Pajama Game,' dies at 101
June 3 (UPI) -- Janis Paige, the redhead who starred in Broadway's The Pajama Game, the big screen's Silk Stockings and Santa Barbara on television over six decades until 2001, died in Los Angeles on Sunday. She was 101.
Paige, who changed her name from Donna May Tjaden, appeared in more than 100 movies, plays and TV shows, starting in 1944. She adopted her grandfather's name of Paige and her first name from Elsie Janis, who entertained troops in World War I.
"We're very sad to report that Janis Paige died yesterday, peacefully at home in Los Angeles," her Facebook page announced. "She was 101 and lived a life fuller than she could have imagined. She was grateful for everything, which is why she said her memory was so good. Please keep her in your thoughts and watch her performances, read her book, tell her stories, for that is how she will live on in the minds and hearts of all, for generations to come. May her memory be for a blessing."
She was discovered in the 1940s while performing at the legendary Hollywood Canteen.
"When you go on an audition as an actor, it's not about the job," she said in a 2005 interview for the Television Academy Foundation. "It's about the privilege of acting. Of working in front of somebody and acting."
Her first film was in 1944 in Bathing Beauty when she was 22. She appeared in Romance on the High Seas in 1948, which marked Doris Day's debut.
In 1951, Paige made her Broadway debut opposite Jackie Cooper in the mystery comedy Remains to Be Seen. Three years later she starred in the hit musical comedy The Pajama Game about Babe Williams as a union organizer in a factory who falls in love with the new superintendent.
"We were the happiest bunch of people you ever saw in your life," she said in 1990. "because everybody said we were going to be a flop. A show about a pajama factory? And we were a smash. It was a special time -- it will never come again."
Paige returned to Broadway three times, including starring roles in Here's Love in 1963 and Alone Together in 1984. In 1968, she played the title role in Mame as part of a replacement cast for Angela Lansbury.
In other films, she appeared opposite Day in Please Don't Eat the Daisies and with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in the 1957 romp Silk Stockings.
Doing Silk Stockings "was hard work, believe me," Paige said in a 2016 interview. "I was one mass of bruises. I didn't know how to fall. I didn't know how to get down on a table -- I didn't know how to save myself because I was never a classic dancer. Those are the tips you learn when you learn how to dance."
In television, she first starred in her own sitcom, It's Always Jan, for one year from 1955-1956 as a widowed mother. Paige played a sexy waitress who tempts Archie Bunker on several episodes of All in the Family in 1976 and 1978.
She played Richard van Patten's free-spirited sister on Eight Is Enough from 1977-1980, a hospital administrator on Trapper John, M.D. in 1985-1986, the daytime soap Santa Barbara 1990-1993 as Minx Lockridge and General Hospital as Iona Huntington from 1989-1990. Also, she was former flame of Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore show in 1976.
She guest starred on several television shows in the 1950s and 1960s: Lux Video Theatre, Shower of Stars, Wagon Train, The Fugitive and The Red Skelton Hour.
Her final credit was a 2001 episode of Family Law.
Paige was married to restaurateur Frank Martinelli Jr. from 1947-51; to Arthur Stander, who wrote and produced It's Always Jan, from 1956-57; and to Gilbert from 1962 until his death after open-heart surgery in 1976.
