Janis Paige, Star of Broadway's The Pajama Game, Dies at 101
(Photo by Friedman-Abeles/New York Public Library)
Janis Paige, who starred as Babe in the original 1954 Broadway production of The Pajama Game, died in her Los Angeles home on June 2. Her death was confirmed by longtime friend Stuart Lampert. She was 101.
Paige was born Donna Mae Tjaden in Tacoma, Washington. Having begun singing in public at age five in local talent shows, she moved to Los Angeles and was first seen by movie audiences in 1944’s Bathing Beauty, subsequently landing her first leading role playing a singer in 1946’s Her Kind of Man. Following her role in Two Gals and a Guy (1951), she left Hollywood for Broadway, making her debut that year in the comedy-mystery Remains to Be Seen.
In 1954, she played the feisty union leader Babe in the Broadway musical The Pajama Game opposite John Raitt. Doris Day replaced her for the movie adaptation.
After several screen roles, including a widowed nightclub singer in her own CBS television series It’s Always Jan, Paige returned to Broadway in 1963 in Here’s Love. In 1968, Paige replaced Angela Lansbury in the Broadway musical Mame. "She is making an excellent job of it," said the New York Times critic Clive Barnes. "She looks glowingly well, and sings, dances and acts with a sweet enthusiasm... She is less of a character but, as some compensation, perhaps more of a performer."
Paige admired the character, saying in an interview, “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."
Paige went on to appear in touring productions of musicals such as Annie Get Your Gun, Applause, Sweet Charity, Ballroom, Gypsy and Guys and Dolls. In 1984, she performed for the last time on Broadway, in Alone Together. Subsequent screen credits included TV’s Mission: Impossible, the soap opera General Hospital and Caroline in the City. Her final screen appearance was in an episode of Family Law in 2001.
Paige was married three times and divorced twice. No immediate family members survive.