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.
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.