The I Don't Care Girl

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!

This movie has been shown recently in England,so liking musicals,I decided to watch it.Curious mixture of voice overs,flashbacks and a film within a film,all packed tightly into less than 90 minutes.Mitzi Gaynor is astounding.The film works because of her.Although the period setting is earlier in the 20th Century,the dazzling production numbers are pure 50's.Paintbox bright colours are prevailant.Mitzi's costumes are spectacular.One wishes it was longer and more detailed,but it's an extremely agreeable way to spend 80 odd minutes.An entertaining curio.

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.

...why Mitzi Gaynor, certainly one of the most talented ladies in the business, never became a major movie star. here's your answer: too many movies like this. Taking a RASHAMON approach to the life of Eva Tanguay is certainly a novel idea, but right from the start post-production butchery is all too obvious and the remaining seventy-nine minutes make little or no sense what so ever. I truly believe someone was trying to do poor Miss Gaynor in with this one. Characters appear and disappear randomly, the score is mediocre at best, and the production numbers - where Miss Gaynor should really shine - are executed in such a sloppy, slap-dash way that it is hard to believe this film was released by a major studio. Gaynor shines during the first rendition of "I Don't Care" which is done in true (movie) vaudeville style and gives some glimpse of what the real Miss Tanguay must have been like as a performer, but the other numbers (I suppose those conceived by Jack Cole)are a mess, totally out of period, including a hep cat version of the title tune that has Mitzi dancing in a chug-chug style that does nothing to display her very real dancing talent. During this number her two male co-stars keep turning up in different guises long after one of them has left the story. Huh? Looking at a quartet of films (this mess, THE BLOODHOUNDS OF Broadway, DOWN AMONG THE SHELTERING PALMS, and GOLDEN GIRL) designed to make Miss Gaynor a star, one wonders what the powers that be were thinking. No wonder Marilyn arrived on the scene shortly there after and staked out the Fox lot for herself!

It begins, even before the credits, with an onstage production number in which Mitzi, as famed vaudevillian Eva Tanguay, emerges hoarse and uncertain onstage, thus forcing the stage manager to ring down the curtain. AND IT NEVER COMES BACK TO THIS. That's how ineptly cut this Fox backstager is, leaving a major plot thread unacknowledged for the next 78 minutes. Along the way we get some clichéd show-must-go-on situations, the unappealing Oscar Levant (especially unappealing when deprived of good dialog, which Comden and Green provided him the same year in "The Band Wagon") plunking away on some classical piano, David Wayne in what first appears to be the leading-man role but turns into an inconsequential supporting part, the pleasant-voiced Bob Graham as Mitzi's love interest, George Jessel playing himself pretending to be a nice man, and several big, big production numbers. These have nothing to do with the vaudeville milieu and are set to undistinguished music, but the color's great, and Gwen Verdon gets to do some sinuous Jack Cole choreography in one of them. The whole thing's framed in a desperate-looking "Citizen Kane" conceit, as two studio boys are exhorted by Jessel to "come up with the REAL Eva Tanguay story," but the movie never wanders anywhere near the real Eva Tanguay story -- maybe it just wasn't that interesting. Worth looking at for the blazing Technicolor, the dances, and Mitzi, who's never less than professional, and never more.