Happy 100th, Janis Paige

Regrets?  I've had a few.  Damn few actually.  But one of them is that I never saw or met Janis Paige.  I've met or seen more than my fair share of famous folks but I'd trade in a couple of them to have had a chance to meet this multi-talented, effervescent lady.  Oh, how I liked her.  I know there will be many who would say who's Janis Paige?  Of course most of that crowd would not be reading this blog in the first place.

Before we move along, tomorrow is Janis Paige's 100th birthday and I hope she's celebrating in style.  I'll bet she still has that twinkle in her eye, that glorious laugh and her infectious enthusiasm, it seems, for just about everything.  Let's wish her a happy birthday.  It is quite a milestone.

The period of time when she worked the most in movies, when she gathered most of her fame, was approximately from 1944 to 1949, the length of the time she spent at Warner Bros.  Can there be any wonder why she would not be well-known to many?  After 1967 she worked primarily in television.  She has filmed nothing in the last 21 years.  I had no idea what she was up to and admit I now and then checked IMDb to make sure I hadn't missed any vital information.  And I was so happy I hadn't. 

I'd seen most of her B movies at WB and I loved who I thought she was.  She always knew how to make an entrance, a statuesque beauty who wore stunning gowns in many of her movies and was a knockout with her padded shoulders and hair piled high upon her head.  

She always loved to talk and was most accomplished at it.  I see her as a person who paid good attention to life.  I'm betting she never lost a sense of who she was.  She loved to laugh and I hope she still does.  She's been honest, forthright, savvy.

She had always regarded herself to be chiefly a singer.  She also did some dancing, was a bright and witty comedienne and handled drama quite well.  

She made about 15 movies for the studio and more often the second female lead than she was the leading female.  She excelled in other woman roles or at least was the threat.   Most of her films were musicals and/or comedies but there were westerns, noirs and others.

Jack Warner, in not renewing her contract said, I don't want to lose you but I don't know what to do with you.  There could have been a time toward the end of her WB stay that the studio could have put its massive star-making machine behind Paige but they opted to do it for its newest family member, Doris Day, instead.

She began singing in local amateur shows at the age of five in her hometown of Tacoma, Washington and a few years later she got the bug to be a musical performer while watching vaudeville shows.  These acts would be performed before and after movies were shown.  She received some training in bel canto and toyed briefly with becoming an opera performer.  She appeared in musical plays in high school.

After high school she and her mother and younger sister moved to Los Angeles.  Her father ditched his family when Paige was around four.  Her entree into the movie business came fairly easily.  She got a job singing at the famed Hollywood Canteen during WWII where show people sang, danced, talked and made sandwiches and drinks for visiting servicemen.

While there a talent scout noticed her and brought her to the attention of Warner Bros who put her under contract and into their film, Hollywood Canteen (1944).  In pigtails she played a messenger girl and shared most of her scenes with Dane Clark.  Two years later she played a nightclub singer in a crime drama, Her Kind of Man, opposite Clark again.  

WB was in the B musical movie business.  They didn't seem to even try to compete with the mighty MGM and its glorious A musicals but WB had some fine singing and dancing stars.  Paige joined this crew and made a bunch of musical-comedies.  She made seven films with Jack Carson and six films with Dennis Morgan and several movies costarred the three of them.  She claimed she learned a lot from both of them.

Most of her films with the studio were forgettable and there was a distinct sameness about them.  There was a laid-back appeal about them because they were so formulaic that one knew what to expect.  And Warners teamed the same people over and over again, another aspect of the formula.    A few movies did stand out.  

One Sunday Afternoon was first made with Gary Cooper and Fay Wray in 1933.  In 1941 the title was changed to The Strawberry Blonde and starred Jimmy Cagney and Olivia de Havilland.  The story of a turn-of-the-century dentist and his romantic problems had its original title restored in 1948 and starred Paige and Morgan along with Dorothy Malone and Don DeFore.

Winter Meeting is considered one of Bette Davis worst films at WB and there is no doubt it bombed.  But I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.  Paige plays a spunky secretary.

From left: Jack Carson, Paige, Joan Leslie, Dennis Morgan

Arguably her best film for the studio, also 1948, was Romance on the High Seas.  Today it is best-known as Doris Day's film debut.  Carson and DeFore are also along for WB's standard silliness but it did feature Day's popular version of It's Magic.  The actresses got on well enough but there was that competition.  And as said, WB poured its heart and soul into Day, something that fell short with Paige.  She couldn't have been happy about that.

The following year, 1949, Paige and Warners parted company.  It was amicable and she remained grateful to the studio for teaching her so much.  It was one of those wonderful things about her.  Some could say she had plenty to whine about.  She was a most talented lady but it went largely unappreciated.  She, however, always spoke as if the glass was half full.  She always spoke of her incredible good luck.

She then proceeded in two areas that showed a real indication of a stalled career... she went to Italy to make a film and she signed on for a couple at Universal-International.

In 1949 she thought she'd try something new... the Broadway stage.  While she made the rounds, she returned to something she knew well... doing those vaudeville shows at movie theaters.  She also started singing in some Manhattan clubs which would get swankier and swankier as time passed.  Again she felt lucky that she learned as much as she did from other vaudevillians.  

In 1951 she was hired as the leading actress for the comedy Remains to be Seen.  She and the play got good notices.  In 1953, the year June Allyson got the movie role, Paige had her first guest-starring role in a television series.  Despite future successes on both the large and small screen, she worked mainly in television for the remainder of her long career.

In 1954 she enjoyed her greatest Broadway triumph in The Pajama Game opposite baritone John Raitt.  Its concerns were labor problems and a little romance at a pajama factory.  

The following year Paige signed on for her own TV series, It's Always Jan.  She played a singer making the rounds and got to warble a song in every episode.  It was cancelled after the first season, shut out by the overwhelming success of... of... The Lawrence Welk Show.  Paige could never quite get over that. 

I'm not sure when she became a fixture in Bob Hope's USO shows but she frequently joined Hope's globe-trotting variety entertainments.  She was a dream performer for him, the show and all the soldiers.  Bosomy and statuesque (in the mold of Jane Russell and Marie Wilson and other Hope favorites), those tight gowns helped the boys forget their troubles, at least for a couple of hours.  And of course she could sing, dance and perform comedy routines and trade insults with the old master.  

Warner Bros in 1957 announced a film version of The Pajama Game.  Both Paige and Raitt were considered to repeat their roles but there was a proviso.  The studio wanted at least one huge name in the leads.  Paige had her issues with movies and Raitt had never had a lead role in a big film.  So the studio said that if they could get Sinatra for the Raitt role, Paige would be hired.  But Sinatra demurred.  Therefore Raitt would come aboard opposite... oh noooo!... Doris Day.  Paige consoled herself with her first Vegas gig.

Prolific MGM producer Arthur Freed caught some performance of Paige's and hired her on the spot for Silk Stockings (1957) which was to star Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse.  Paige hadn't considered she would actually dance with Astaire and when told of their proposed number, she was nervous, very nervous.  But she pulled it off magnificently and he thought so, too.  She managed to almost steal the show with her sexy number Satin and Silk.

Three years later she was back on the big screen in Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960), one of her best roles as the hoped-for other woman.  Day was the leading lady.  Paige says she absolutely loved working with David Niven.

Then there was the ultra-silly Bachelor in Paradise (1961) with Hope, Lana Turner, Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton in which Paige played the neighborhood vixen.  

Paige confronting Polly Bergen in The Caretakers

Although The Caretakers (1963) wasn't all that good, Paige, in a rare dramatic turn, was splendid as the former prostitute in a mental hospital.  Only she and Robert Stack came out looking good in a cast of some shameless over-acting, particularly by leading lady Polly Bergen.

In the mid-60s and lasting for 20+ years, Paige returned to Broadway, appeared in touring companies of many famous musicals.  I can certainly see her playing Margo Channing and Mama Rose and I wish I had.  She also did much television but only a few movies, none of which deserved her.  

In 1968 she again set the Broadway lights ablaze for two years when she replaced Angela Lansbury in Mame.  She was nothing short of a sensation in a role she was destined to play.  While describing the character, she could have been reflecting on herself when she said, She's a free soul.  She can be down but never out.   She's unbigoted.  She says what she thinks with a kind of marvelous honesty which is the only way to say anything.

In 1977 she played a waitress in All in the Family, who has a flirtation with Archie Bunker.  She even kisses him and that kiss caused twisted knickers with the female public who wrote to the network of the shamelessness of it all.  Two years later she was back.

 She had a recurring role in the final season of Trapper John, M.D. in 1985.  She acquired more fans not only because the show had been a success but because Paige was such a true performer.  She performed, you watched.  Ha, I could never take my eyes off her.

After almost six decades in show business, she retired in 2001.  It wasn't a whimsical decision, however.  That was the year she lost her voice... at first mainly her singing voice.  She found her voice cracking with nearly irreparable vocal chord damage.  She was not able to speak at all.  Ultimately both her speaking voice and singing voice returned.  Again she felt lucky.

In 2010 the indominable one, at the age 88, mind you, was out there performing in a one-woman, autobiographical cabaret show.  She sang various hit standards and candidly discussed memorable times from her life.  Reviews and word-of-mouth spread about her immense charm and vitality.  She had actually been performing this act for several years but after her health scare and her age, folks could not believe she still had that fire within her.

Paige was married three times... to a restaurateur, a television writer (who created It's Always Jan) and a composer/music publisher.  She was first married in 1947 and last married in 1976.  She had no children.

She is one of the great broads.  She had boundless energy, an ever-present smile and glamorous looks.  She was also one of those sassy, smart-mouthed actresses that I loved so much.  There was so much obvious talent as a singer, dancer, dramatic actress and comedienne in the movies, on television, the Broadway stage and stages around the world and in nightclubs... and she did it for six decades.  How many could say that?  And I think year after year of entertaining the troops shouldn't be forgotten either.

So, happy, happy 100th birthday, Janis Paige.  As your pal Bob Hope said... thanks for the memories... and they are vivid.  I know you know you are among the very last of Hollywood's Golden Age performers.  You think you're lucky?  I think we're lucky, too.

Next posting:

We're off to Stockholm