Mabel Paige

Mabel Paige was virtually "born in a trunk"; both her parents were busy stock company actors. Paige made her own stage bow at age four, in a production of Van the Virginian. When Paige was 11, she was headlining her own Southern stock company; upon reaching adulthood, she established the Paige Theater in Jacksonville, FL. During her stay in Jacksonville, Paige appeared in a quartet of silent comedies, co-starring with her husband, Charles Ritchie, and up-and-coming Oliver Hardy. Retiring from show business in the 1920s to raise her family, Paige returned to acting on radio and on Broadway in the late '30s. In 1941, she was brought to Hollywood to re-create her role as an eccentric theatrical boarding house landlady in Out of the Frying Pan, which wouldn't be released until 1943, under the title Young and Willing. Because of the delayed release of this film, Paige's "official" talkie debut was as the Runyon-esque street peddler in Paramount's Lucky Jordan (1942). Usually heading the supporting cast, and generally cast as a tart-tongued "swinging senior," Paige was given one top-billed starring role in Republic's Someone to Remember (1943), playing a feisty old lady who resides in a college dormitory in hopes of being reunited with her long lost son. After completing her final film, Houdini (1953), Mabel Paige accepted brief roles in such TV series as Racket Squad and I Love Lucy, but illness and age had eroded her comic gifts.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide