Eva Tanguay
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Eva Tanguay (born August 1, 1879 in Quebec, Canada – died January 11, 1947 in Hollywood, California, United States) was a singer and entertainer known as "the girl who made vaudeville famous."
[edit] Early life
Eva Tanguay's family moved from Quebec's Eastern Townships to Holyoke, Massachusetts before she reached the age of 6. Her father died soon after. While still a child she developed an interest in the performing arts, making her first appearance on stage at the age of eight. With her parents' assistance, she pursued a show business career, working her way through a variety of amateur contests that eventually landed her a spot with a comedy troupe before making her vaudeville debut in New York city in 1904.
[edit] Career
Although she possessed only an average voice, the enthusiasm with which the robust Eva Tanguay performed her raunchy songs soon made her an audience favorite. She went on to have one of the most long-lasting vaudeville careers and eventually commanded one of the highest salaries of any performer of the day. After seeing her perform, English poet and sexual revolutionary Aleister Crowley called Tanguay America's equivalent to Europe's music hall greats, Marie Lloyd of England and Yvette Guilbert of France.
Eva Tanguay is remembered for brassy self-confident songs that symbolized the emancipated woman such as "It's All Been Done Before But Not the Way I Do It." In showbiz circles, she was nicknamed the "I Don’t Care Girl," after her most famous song, "I Don’t Care."
Interestingly, Tanguay only made one recording ("I Don't Care") in 1922 for Nordskog Records. In addition to her singing career, she also starred in two film comedies that, despite the limitations of silent film, used the screen to capture her lusty stage vitality to its fullest. The first, titled Energetic Eva was made in 1916 and the following year she starred opposite Tom Moore in The Wild Girl.
Eva Tanguay retired from show business in the 1930s and died in 1947 in Hollywood where she was interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
In 1953 Mitzi Gaynor portrayed Eva Tanguay in a fictionalized version of her life in the Hollywood motion picture, The I Don't Care Girl.
