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The late Mr. Paige, left, with writer-producer Ross Hawkins. Photo, Andre Champagne.
Casting director-motion picture archivist-producer Marvin Paige died on Nov. 13 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from injuries he received in an automobile accident on Laurel Canyon a month earlier.
On Sunday, Jan. 26, Mr. Paige’s birthday, his life will be celebrated at a 2 o’clock memorial service at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd.
According to actor Edward Ashley, Mr. Paige hosted a radio talk show in New York prior to becoming a casting director.
His first job as a casting director in 1961 was on Blake Edwards's “Breakfast at Tiffany’.”
Among the other feature films, he was casting director for “Jump,” “Chomps,” “Star Trek, the Motion Picture,” “Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask,” with Woody Allen, and “The Revengers,” starring William Holden.
For several years, Mr. Paige did the casting on television’s popular soap “General Hospital.” Among the many actors he cast in the show were Anne Jeffries and Demi Moore. He was also casting director on such television shows as “Combat,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Charley's Angels.”
Marvin told me that he convinced two-time Academy Award winning actress Luise Rainier to appear in a “Combat” episode as a French partisan during World War II. Ms. Rainier had left Hollywood in 1939 after feuding with Louis B. Mayer over the films she was being offered.
Ms. Rainier was the first actress to win the Academy Award two years in a row, first as Anna Held, Florenz Zigfeld's first wife in “The Great Zigfeld,” in 1936, and a year later as the Chinese wife of a landowner in Pearl Buck's “The Good Earth.”
I first met Marvin Paige in the late 1970s at an event honoring MGM. He may have had the most extensive collection of MGM memorabilia of any private collector on the planet. The inside of his house and garage were filled with movie posters, photographs, newspaper clippings, DVDs and 16 millimeter films. I was privileged to view this collection in 1992 when I was preparing to start production on “Culver City – The Reel Hollywood.”
I have been told that the collection will be inherited by the Motion Picture Academy.
When I was associate producer for the Screen Actors Guild Legacy Series opener with Henry Fonda in 1979, Marvin helped secure photos of Mr. Fonda's roles in several films, many from his days under contract at 20th Century-Fox.
For the Backlot Film Festival, Marvin helped secure the appearances of Mickey Rooney, Anne Rutherford, Terry Moore, Margaret O’Brien, Rosemarie, Lily Tomlin, Audrey Totter and Marie Windsor.
Mr. Paige also produced the Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs where he resurrected film noir classics that had all but disappeared.
I was his guest when he honored actor Kevin McCarthy for his roles in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “Drive a Crooked Road.”
In 2009, he arranged for me to interview Leslie Caron to appear in “Culver City – The Reel Hollywood.”
Mr. Hawkins may be contacted at rjhculvercity@aol.com
