Joy Page

Biography

Actress Joy Page (nee Joy C. Paige) received her exotic good looks from her father, actor Don Alvarado (real name Jose Paige), who played dashing Latin-lover types in silent films. Her mother was actress Ann Boyar (1908 – 1990). Following her parents’ divorce, Joy’s mother married Warner Bros. studio chief Jack L. Warner and it was this association that jump-started her acting career, with a minor role in what is often considered the greatest American film ever made: Casablanca (1942). Joy played Bulgarian newlywed Annina Brandel, whose virtue is on the line because, if her young husband (Helmut Dantine) keeps losing all their money at Rick’s roulette table, the only way they will get out of Casablanca is if she sleeps with Capt. Renaud (Claude Rains). Despite the meager role, she made quite an impression and it is still considered her best performance of the handful of films in which she’s appeared. Being the stepdaughter of such a powerful producer as Jack Warner should have produced better results for her, but it didn’t. In 1945 she married actor William T. Orr, whose own career was on the wane. Warner made him a producer almost overnight and later put him in charge of Warner Bros. Television. Film roles were few and far between after her auspicious debut and, other than Bullfighter and the Lady (1951) with Robert Stack in which she played a sultry senorita whom Stack tries to impress, the films were thoroughly routine. In 1959 she appeared in the first season of Walt Disney’s “Swamp Fox” series, then retired. She divorced Orr in 1970. Their son, Gregory Orr, is a TV writer and producer of documentaries.