Janis Paige
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Janis Paige (September 16, 1922 - June 2, 2024; born as Donna Mae Tjaden in Tacoma, Washington) was an American film, musical theatre and television actress. She began singing in public from the age of five in local amateur shows. She then moved to Los Angeles after graduating from high school and then got a job as a singer at the Hollywood Canteen during World War II.
The Canteen, which was a studio-sponsored gathering spot for servicemen, is where Warner Bros. saw her potential and signed her up. She began her film career co-starring in secondary musicals, often paired with either Dennis Morgan or Jack Carson. She later was relegated to rugged adventures and dramas in which she was out of her element. Following her role in the forgettable Two Gals and a Guy released in 1951, she decided to leave the Hollywood scene.
She then took to the Broadway boards and scored a huge hit with the 1951 comedy-mystery play, Remains to Be Seen, co-starring Jackie Cooper. She also toured successfully as a cabaret singer, performing everywhere from New York City and Miami to Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Stardom came in 1954 with the role of "Babe" in the Broadway musical The Pajama Game. (Doris Day went on to play the role on film.) After a six-year hiatus, Paige returned to films in Silk Stockings (1957), which starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, plus the Doris Day comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960) followed by a role as a love-starved married neighbor in Bachelor in Paradise with Bob Hope (1961).
One of her rare dramatic roles was "Marion," an institutionalized hooker, in the 1963 drama, The Caretakers.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Janis Paige, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Known For | Acting |
---|---|
Most Rating | 18.168 |
Birthday | 1922-09-16 |
Place of Birth | Tacoma, Washington, USA |
Also Known As | Janis Page, Donna Mae Tjaden, جانيس بيج, |
1949
The House Across the Street
4.5/4
Dave Joslin, the managing editor of a big-city newspaper, is demoted and moved to the Miss Lonely Hearts column-writing department by the newspaper's...
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The House Across the Street
1957
Silk Stockings
6.7/57
After three bumbling Soviet agents fail in their mission to retrieve a straying Soviet composer from Paris, the beautiful, ultra-serious Ninotchka is...
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Silk Stockings
1948
Romance on the High Seas
6.8/28
Georgia Garrett is sent by jealous wife Elvira Kent on an ocean cruise to masquerade as herself while she secretly stays home to catch her husband che...
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Romance on the High Seas
1948
Winter Meeting
6.5/6
A repressed poetess and an embittered war hero help each other cope with their problems.
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Winter Meeting
1944
Bathing Beauty
5.7/28
After breaking up with her fiancé, a gym teacher returns to work at a women's college, but a legal loophole allows him to enroll as one of her student...
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Bathing Beauty
1950
This Side of the Law
4.7/13
A man - trapped in a cistern - reflects on the dark events that lead to his lonely entrapment.
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This Side of the Law
1944
Hollywood Canteen
7.3/26
Two soldiers on leave spend three nights at a club offering free of charge food, dancing, and entertainment for servicemen on their way overseas. Club...
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Hollywood Canteen
1950
Fugitive Lady
4/3
A man drives his car off a cliff in an apparent suicide. One insurance investigator is not so sure it was an accident or suicide and gets 48 hours to...
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Fugitive Lady
1946
Her Kind of Man
5.8/6
A singer can't choose between a charismatic gangster and an honest newspaperman.
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Her Kind of Man
1960
Please Don't Eat the Daisies
6.15/70
Drama critic Larry Mackay, his wife Kate and their four sons move from their crowded Manhattan apartment to an old house in the country. While housewi...
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Please Don't Eat the Daisies
1961
Bachelor in Paradise
6.5/22
A bachelor author of sleazy books moves to a family-oriented subdivision where he becomes an unofficial relationship advisor to unhappy local housewiv...
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Bachelor in Paradise
1963
Follow the Boys
4.2/6
Four women create mayhem as they follow their Navy partners around the Riviera.
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Follow the Boys
1963
The Caretakers
6.2/11
This movie chronicles the trials of the mentally ill and their care-givers in an over-crowded ward of a hospital.
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The Caretakers
2003
Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There
7/6
Broadway: The Golden Age is the most important, ambitious and comprehensive film ever made about America's most celebrated indigenous art form. Award...
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Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There
1946
The Time, The Place and The Girl
5.4/5
The stuffy manager of lovely opera singer Vicki Cassel and her uncle, a classical conductor, is determined to close down the noisy nightclub next door...
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The Time, The Place and The Girl
1949
The Younger Brothers
5/1
Brothers who rode with a notorious outlaw gang led by Frank and Jesse James decide to go straight and try to get pardons so they can return to a law-a...
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The Younger Brothers
1967
Welcome to Hard Times
5/21
A sociopathic stranger all but destroys a small hardscrabble town but the 'mayor' convinces its survivors to stay and rebuild.
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Welcome to Hard Times
1946
Of Human Bondage
6/3
A medical student with a club foot falls for a beautiful but ambitious waitress. She soon leaves him, but gets pregnant and comes back to him for help...
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Of Human Bondage
1944
I Won't Play
5.8/12
In this Oscar-winning short film, a Marine, Joe Fingers, on a South Sea island during World War II, tells tales of the influence he's had on various p...
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I Won't Play
1947
So You Want to Be in Pictures
5.8/5
Aspiring actor Joe McDoakes blows his first part at Warner Bros. and has to settle for being a stand-in.
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So You Want to Be in Pictures
1948
Wallflower
6/6
Two stepsisters become rivals for the same handsome bachelor. Comedy.
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Wallflower
1947
Cheyenne
6.714/7
Slick gambler James Wylie (Dennis Morgan) is apprehended by the law and given the option to forgo a prison sentence if he poses as a bandit. His missi...
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Cheyenne
1948
One Sunday Afternoon
6/2
The third film version of James Hagan's play, this time with songs added, starring Dennis Morgan as a dentist who marries patient and loyal Dorothy Ma...
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One Sunday Afternoon
1946
Two Guys from Milwaukee
4.8/7
Balkan Prince Henry has two wishes, to meet Lauren Bacall and see the "real" America. He befriends cabbie Buzz Williams and, without knowing the micro...
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Two Guys from Milwaukee
1947
Love and Learn
5.5/2
A wealthy socialite bored with her life meets and falls in love with a struggling songwriter on the verge of leaving New York and quitting the music b...
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Love and Learn
1975
The Turning Point of Jim Malloy
0/0
The son of a small-town doctor returns to his hometown after being kicked out of Yale, and begins a new career on the town's newspaper.
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The Turning Point of Jim Malloy
1984
No Man's Land
6/1
Sheriff Stella Stevens uses her wiles and the help of her three resourceful daughters -- one by each of her previous husbands -- to rope in a notoriou...
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No Man's Land
1994
Natural Causes
5/2
An American links her mothers death in Bankok to a plot involving Vietnamese refugees.
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Natural Causes
1947
Always Together
6.667/3
An old millionaire, who believes he's dying, bequeaths his fortune to a young woman with a fanatical obsession with movie stars. But then the elderly...
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Always Together
1980
Angel on My Shoulder
6/2
A small-time Chicago hood, now deceased, gets a second chance at life by striking a bargain with the Devil to inhabit and attempt to corrupt a totally...
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Angel on My Shoulder
1951
Mister Universe
5/2
A gullible and honest "Mr. Universe" winner, Tommy Tomkins, gets added to the stable of a con-man and a wrestling prompter.
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Mister Universe
1980
Valentine Magic on Love Island
1/1
Janis Paige presides over the proceedings at a posh resort, using magical powers to help eight attractive, amiable vacationers discover one another, a...
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Valentine Magic on Love Island
1994
That's Entertainment! III
6.941/34
Some of MGM'S musical stars review the studios history of musicals. From The Hollywood Revue of 1929 to Brigadoon, from the first musical talkies to G...
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That's Entertainment! III
2017
This Is Bob Hope...
8/1
During his career, Bob Hope was the only performer to achieve top-rated success in every form of mass entertainment. American Masters explores the ent...
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This Is Bob Hope...
2021
Journey to Royal: A WWII Rescue Mission
9/2
WWII hero with the 4th Emergency Rescue Squadron, Lt. Royal Stratton, leads a deadly mission to save the lives of nine downed airmen adrift in enemy w...
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Journey to Royal: A WWII Rescue Mission
1983
The Other Woman
3.5/2
After losing his wife of 28 years in a skiing accident, widower Lou Chadway (Hal Linden) falls for and marries his daughter's sexy roommate but soon l...
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The Other Woman
2021
Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age
0/0
Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age explores the world of Broadway from 1959 through the early 1980s as recounted by a diverse cast of Broadway stars who...
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Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age
1988
Happy Birthday, Bob: 50 Stars Salute Your 50 Years with NBC
6/1
Stars celebrate Bob Hope's 50 years with NBC.
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Happy Birthday, Bob: 50 Stars Salute Your 50 Years with NBC
1951
Two Gals and a Guy
0/0
A singing couple gets their own television show, and the strains of putting on a TV show every week starts to jeopardize their relationship.
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Two Gals and a Guy
1976
Lanigan's Rabbi
0/0
In this pilot film, an Irish Catholic police chief and a Jewish rabbi join together to solve the murder of a housekeeper whose body was discovered by...
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Lanigan's Rabbi
1990
You're the Top: The Cole Porter Story
0/0
Biographical portrait of one of Broadway's most brilliant songwriters. Told through the use of archival material and interviews with the rich and famo...
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You're the Top: The Cole Porter Story
1975
Cop on the Beat
4.1/7
An aging street cop goes after a gang of toughs involved in several robbery-rapes on his beat in this pilot (a spin-off from "Police Story") for the 1...
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Cop on the Beat
1969
Roberta
5/1
Bob Hope returns to his stage role in this updated theatrical TV presentation of the musical
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Roberta
2003
Cole Porter in Hollywood: Satin and Silk
0/0
This documentary short subject details the making of the 1957 MGM musical, "Silk Stockings". Hosted by its star Cyd Charisse, the film gives behind-th...
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Cole Porter in Hollywood: Satin and Silk
1982
Love at the Top
0/0
Glynnis Kidwell is right where she wants to be. She is both an attractive, vivacious woman, and at the top of her career as a top lingerie fashion des...
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