The versatile and enduring performer Janis Paige, known for her starring role in the Tony-winning 1954 musical “The Pajama Game” and her scene-stealing performance in the 1957 movie musical “Silk Stockings,” has died. A key star of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Paige died Sunday of natural causes in her Los Angeles home, her longtime friend Stuart Lampert confirmed to the Associated Press. She was 101.
A redheaded triple-threat, Paige spent the 1940s as one of the busiest actors in Jack Warner’s stable. By the 1950s, she was as famous for her sex appeal as she was for her sass, on Broadway, television and touring nationally as a singer on the nightclub circuit. Born Donna Mae Tjaden on Sept.
16, 1922, in Tacoma, Wash., Paige was a gifted singer as a child, performing at local amateur shows. Her parents divorced during the Depression, and Paige’s mother raised her and her sister alone.
Paige performed in theater productions in high school, then after graduation she and her mother moved to Los Angeles to see if she could make it as a performer. She took a job serving sandwiches and coffee at the Stage Door Canteen in Hollywood and one night was asked to fill in for an absent singer. An assistant for studio chief Louis B.
Mayer saw her perform, and the next day she had a contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer — and a new name. Paige was immediately cast opposite Red Skelton in a high-profile dance number in the 1944 Esther Williams musical “Bathing Beauties.” As was cus.