Jan Miner — Acting | Biography, Movies & Career

Biography

Janice Miner (October 15, 1917 – February 15, 2004) was an American actress best known as the character Madge the manicurist in Palmolive dish-washing detergent television commercials from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Janice Miner was the daughter of a dentist and a painter, and had three brothers, Sheldon, Donald and Lyndsey. She studied at the Vesper George School of Art in her native Boston, then studied acting under Lee Strasberg and others. She made her stage debut in 1945 in a Boston production of Elmer Rice's Street Scene.

Miner then became established on radio, and worked through the 1950s in several series simultaneously. Among other roles, she was one of three actresses who played secretary Della Street on Perry Mason and one of five to play girlfriend Ann Williams on Casey, Crime Photographer. She also appeared as Mary Wesley on Boston Blackie.

Miner played featured roles in the anthology series Radio City Playhouse, in "Soundless", "Portrait of Lenore" and other episodes. Her appearance in the premiere broadcast of the series "created a minor sensation in the play Long Distance"; the episode proved so popular that she repeated her performance later in the season.

From circa 1948 through some time before the series ended in 1957, Miner starred as Julie Erickson, head of the titular orphanage in the soap opera Hilltop House, during most of the show's revival beginning in 1948. The series was sponsored by the Colgate-Palmolive Company, for which she later appeared in a famous, long-running series of television commercials.