Janis Paige, a singing, dancing and comedy star whose nearly 60-year career spanned Broadway, film and television, has died at the age of 101, it was reported Monday.
Paige died Sunday of natural causes at her Los Angeles home, according to multiple media reports that cited her friend Stuart Lampert.
Born in Tacoma, Washington, Paige got her start during World War II as a pin-up girl and a singer at the Hollywood Canteen. She scored a film contract with Warner Bros., but reached some of her greatest heights on Broadway, including the smash hit “The Pajama Game” in 1954.
She followed Angela Lansbury in the lead role in “Mame” in 1968. Other stage work throughout her career included touring with “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Applause,” “Sweet Charity,” “Ballroom,” “Gypsy: A Musical Fable” and “Guys and Dolls.”
In 1955, Paige starred in her own sitcom, played a widowed mother and nightclub singer on “It’s Always Jan,” which ran for 26 episodes on CBS.
Some highlights of her movie career included roles in 1957’s “Silk Stockings” alongside Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, and the Doris Day/David Niven comedy “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” in 1960.
She sang in nightclubs with some of the biggest musical stars of her era, and performed on many of Bob Hope’s USO tours.
In later years Paige was a familiar face on television. One of her most high-profile roles was a two-episode arc on CBS’ popular “All in the Family” in 1976 in which she plays a waitress who nearly tempts Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker into an extramarital affair.
Paige also appeared on “Wagon Train,” “The Fugitive,” “Mannix,” “The Rockford Files,” “Happy Days,” “Too Close for Comfort,” and “Caroline in the City” among others — and on the soap operas “Capitol,” “Santa Barbara” and “General Hospital.”
Paige was married three times. Her third husband, composer and music publisher Ray Gilbert, wrote the lyrics to the Oscar-winning song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” from the Disney film “Song of the South.” After Gilbert died in 1976, Paige inherited his music company and many of his songs.
She suffered vocal cord damage around 2001. Her autobiography, “Reading Between the Lines: A Memoir,” was published in 2020.