Eva Tanguay - Early life, Career

Actress, born in Marbleton, Canada. A whirlwind of energy on stage, she was an oversized vaudevillian with a big voice (1901–24), who delighted in shocking audiences with outrageous costumes and lyrics. Her signature song was ‘I Don't Care’ from The Chaperones (1903).

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."

Early life

Eva Tanguay's family moved from Quebec's Eastern Townships to Holyoke, Massachusetts before she reached the age of 6.

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. 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.

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.