Jan Miner

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.

[4] 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";[5] 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.

[6] As radio drama faded with the popularity of television, Miner turned to the theater and made her New York City debut in the 1958 melodrama Obbligato at Theatre Marquee, adapted by Jane Hinton Gates from the novel Une Ombre by Paul Vialar; Miner starred as a spinster in romantic competition with her younger sister, played by Carol Vandermeir.

[7] In 1960 she made her Broadway debut in Viva Madison Avenue!, a comedy about the advertising world by George Panetta, at the Longacre Theatre.

[16] The two often appeared together onstage, including in The Gin Game at the Missouri Repertory Theater,[1] (later renamed the Kansas City Repertory Theatre), as well as in Night Must Fall, High Spirits, and what Miner called their favorite play together, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Byrdcliffe Theater in Woodstock, New York.

Miner in Hilltop House (1953)
Miner as Madge, the manicurist in the Palmolive commercials