Janis Paige, Hollywood and Broadway Star Who Worked with Fred Astaire and Bob Hope, Dead at 101

Paige moved to Los Angeles during World War II and began starring on the big screen in 1944

Janis Paige, a longtime Hollywood and Broadway performer, has died. She was 101.

Paige's longtime friend, Stuart Lampert, confirmed news of her death with the Associated Press. She died on Sunday, June 2, of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, per Deadline, The New York Times and The Hollywood Reporter.

Paige is credited with over 100 screen acting roles on IMDb that date back to 1944; she additionally performed on Broadway in five productions between 1951 and 1984, as well as performed at the 60th Tony Awards in 2006, according to Playbill.

The late actress was born in Tacoma, Wash., on Sept. 16, 1922, as Donna Mae Tjaden — she and her sister moved to Los Angeles after graduating high school and quickly booked work as a singer at the Hollywood Canteen, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Paige made her onscreen debut in 1944's Bathing Beauty and appeared in over a dozen films prior to 1950; she then made her Broadway debut in 1951's Remains to Be Seen and starred in 1954's The Pajama Game, the latter of which won five Tony Awards in 1955.

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While Paige costarred with actors like Fred Astaire and Bob Hope in films like 1956's Silk Stockings and 1961's Bachelor in Paradise, she maintained a consistent presence on Broadway through the latter half of the 20th century.

Paige starred in 1963's Here's Love and famously replaced Angela Lansbury in Mame in 1968, two years after Lansbury herself won a Tony for playing the musical's title character.

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Paige returned to the Broadway stage in 1984 for a production of Alone Together. Her other notable screen credits include the mid-'50s television series It's Always Jan, the 1960 movie Please Don't Eat the Daisies and a role in the series Santa Barbara in the early 1990s. Paige last appeared on screen in a 2001 episode of Family Law, per IMDb.

As the Me Too movement took the entertainment industry by storm in 2017, Paige wrote a personal essay for The Hollywood Reporter in which she recalled that Alfred S. Bloomingdale, an heir to the Bloomingdale department store chain, attempted to sexually assault her after a date when she was 22 and still new to Hollywood.

"Maybe there’s a special place in hell for the Alfred Bloomingdales or Harvey Weinsteins of the world and for those who aid and then deny their grossly demented behavior," Paige wrote at the time. "At 95, time is not on my side, and neither is silence. I simply want to add my name and say, 'Me too.' "

Paige was married three times: first to restaurateur Frank Martinelli Jr., from 1947 to 1951, then to film producer Arthur Stander from 1956 to 1957. In 1962, the actress married composer Ray Gilbert, who died in 1976. When Gilbert died, she took ownership of his company, Ipanema Music Corp., as multiple outlets reported. Per The New York Times, no immediate family members survive Paige.

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