There's really a lack of cleverness in this "biography" of the forgotten "I Don't Care" girl Eva Tanguay who was a major vaudeville and musical revue star of the early 1900's. What had already been done (and much better) by Paramount with two films starring Betty Hutton about former stars Texas Guinan and Blossom Seeley became an imitation of her life which switched the facts around to make her more sympathetic than she probably was. Even with her as the leading heroine, she's not all that sympathetic, and pretty much a hot-tempered star who was notorious for her off-screen antics. In real life, Tanguay took a number away from the rising Sophie Tucker, while here, that is blamed on another star, played by Hazel Brooks, for doing the same thing to her.There's no sense in breaking the story down by producer George Jessel's attempts to film Eva's story by talking to two of the men who knew her best and trying to find the one she loved for years. David Wayne plays a drunken partner whose career fell apart as hers rose (think of a vaudeville version of "A Star is Born") and Oscar Levant an egotistical producer who claims his version is the truth. Other than the first version of the title song (performed as she ambles up from the stage to a box), the numbers are badly staged, the Ziegfeld Follies reprise of "I Don't Care" seeming more like something Marilyn Monroe would have turned down in present day character than something the real Eva would have done in 1906.There's not even enough novelty numbers to make this entertaining enough, even though Wayne does get to reprise "This is My Favorite City" which Dan Dailey and Betty Grable had done with more success in "Mother Wore Tights". In fact, there's really little story, and at under 80 minutes, this really never gets a chance to develop Eva as a real character and make her interesting beyond simply being an almost forgotten historical entertainment figure. Mitzi Gaynor does her best in the title role, doing what she's directed to do, but overall this ranks as one of her few disappointments.

In spite of its imperfections, the film contains one of the most inspiring performances of any song in any film. Mitzi Gaynor becomes Eva Tanguay, insists on coming out into the audience, hits a star quality personality in the song "I don't care" when she sings - "Let down the gangway, for I'm Eva Tanguay, and I - DON'T - CARE!!!" I have tried to find this on DVD, but it does not exist. CAn someone get this changed??? Does it exist on CD or MP3 anywhere? I believe that Judy Garland sang the song in the film "Good Old Summertime" but I can't find that either. I have been remembering this song for over fifty years now, which shows how memorable it is. Not many songs have this power to impress itself on the memory, and it is only because of the great performance of Mitzi Gaynor, who is apparently still going today with live performances!

The musical comedy biopic gets the Rashomon treatment in this faked-up biopic of Eva Tanguay, one of the great stars of turn-of-the-century vaudeville. Mitzi Gaynor, as always, gives a great performance and it's a pity that, with the exception of the movie version of SOUTH PACIFIC, she was always Fox's B musical star, doing whatever they gave her. The musical numbers are all overdone, as if choreographer Jack Cole is mocking the form; the semi-strip-tease to jazzed up Mozart (I'm not making this up! It's the most out-of-place dance number outside of Sally Forrest's weird one in EXCUSE MY DUST) and other numbers that recall LADY IN THE DARK -- all very modern for the era and absolutely bizarre in context.Oscar Levant plays the piano magnificently a few times and David Wayne gives a typically graceful performance in support.

It's a great pity but "The I Don't Care Girl" was indeed severely cut. Scenes and numbers were shuffled, scenes and numbers ended up on the cutting-room floor, scenes were re-filmed, Jack Cole was brought in (and even his 'I Don't Care' and 'Beale Street Blues' traded places so that the one designed to end the film, didn't, and the other one, with its scene to follow, did), until what was released (in 1953, rather than 1952) was the hodge-podge you see today. Yet despite all of the butchery the multi-talented Mitzi sets the screen on fire whenever she appears, whether it's in a dramatic scene or dazzling her way through those Cole-choreographed production numbers. Sadly we'll never see the complete version, or those cut numbers. Drat!