Janis Paige

 Janis Paige, born Donna Mae Tjaden (September 16, 1922 – June 2, 2024)

With a career spanning nearly 60 years, she was one of the last surviving stars from Hollywood's Golden Age. Born in Tacoma, Washington, Paige began singing in local amateur shows at the age of five. After high school, she moved to Los Angeles, where she became a singer at the Hollywood Canteen during World War II, as well as posing as a pin-up model. This led to a film contract with Warner Bros., although she later left the studio to pursue live theatre work. She continued to alternate between film and theatre work for much of her career. Beginning in the mid-1950s, she also made numerous television appearances, as well as starring in her own sitcom It's Always Jan. Paige appeared on Broadway, and she was a huge hit in a 1951 comedy-mystery play Remains to Be Seen. She also toured successfully as a cabaret singer. Stardom came in 1954 with her role as Babe in the Broadway musical The Pajama Game.

After six years away, Paige returned to Hollywood in Silk Stockings (1957), which starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, the comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960), and as a love-starved married neighbor in Bachelor in Paradise (1961) with Bob Hope. A rare dramatic role was as Marion in The Caretakers (1963). Paige returned to Broadway in 1963 in the short-lived Here's Love. In 1968, when after nearly two years Angela Lansbury left the Broadway production of the musical Mame to take the show on a limited U.S. tour, Paige was the star chosen to be the first Broadway replacement. She later appeared in touring productions of musicals such as Annie Get Your Gun, Applause, Sweet Charity, Ballroom, Gypsy: A Musical Fable, and Guys and Dolls. In 1984, she was back on Broadway with Kevin McCarthy in a nonmusical play, Alone Together.

Paige made her live dramatic TV debut June 27, 1957, in "The Latch Key" on Lux Video Theatre. She appeared on episodes of 87th Precinct; Trapper John, M.D.; Columbo; Night Court; Caroline in the City; and in the 1975 television movie John O'Hara's Gibbsville. She also appeared on a season 11 episode of Happy Days, as a roadside diner waitress named Angela who may or may not be Fonzie's long lost mother. Paige was married three times, and had no children. Paige turned 100 on September 16, 2022, and died at her Los Angeles home on June 2, 2024, at the age of 101.