100th Birthday Tribute: Janis Paige
TCM, Beginning at 7 a.m. Actress/singer Janis Paige, one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s golden age, turns 100 today (she was born Donna Mae Tjaden in Tacoma, Washington, on Sept. 16, 1922). Now retired, Paige had a lengthy career on the stage, and big and small screens, that stretched from 1944 to 2001. Her feature-film appearances from the
mid-1940s into the early ’60s comprised a comparatively smaller part of her work compared with theater and television roles,
but she still managed to be a big-screen
scene stealer even in supporting roles, as you can see when Turner Classic Movies celebrates Paige’s birthday with a seven-movie marathon. The lineup features, in order: the film noir Her Kind of Man (1946), the actress’s third feature film; Winter Meeting (1948), a drama led by Bette Davis; Romance on the High Seas (pictured) (1948), the Oscar-nominated musical romantic comedy that marked co-star Doris Day’s film debut; One Sunday Afternoon (1948), a musical directed by Raoul Walsh
and co-starring Dennis Morgan; the 1949 comedy The House Across the Street; Silk Stockings (1957), the Fred Astaire- and Cyd Charisse-led musical romantic comedy that marked Paige’s return to a film role after a six-year absence; and one of Paige’s final film appearances before she turned her focus more toward TV and the stage: in Paradise (1961), a romantic comedy co-starring Bob Hope and Lana Turner.