The I Don't Care Girl

The life of vaudeville performer Eva Tanguay, and the people with whom she lived and loved, is given lavish treatment.

Mitzi Gaynor plays legendary vaudeville headliner Eva Tanguay, whose signature tune was the bouncy "I Don't Care". The film's actual producer George Jessel costars as "himself;" the gimmick is that Jessel wants to produce a biopic based on Tanguay, but can't get a handle on the story until he interviews all those who remember the lady. This throughline allows Gaynor to impersonate Tanguay without the added encumbrance of a plot. Well, there is a love story involving Tanguay and her vaudeville partner (David Wayne), and some welcome comic relief from "professional neurotic" Oscar Levant, but otherwise THE I DON'T CARE GIRL is more a revue than a movie. At the end, inveterate scene-stealer George Jessel shows up backstage during one of the flashback sequences, "Just to see how the story will turn out."