LEST WE FORGET EVA TANGUAY
(August 1, 1878 - January 11, 1947)

"The I Don't Care" Girl: A Vivacious Soubrette

She first attracted the attention of the New York public in 1898 with her appearance in a burlesque of Rip Van Winkle. But it was not until her third major production, The Chaperons by Witmark, and the show's hit song, "My Sambo," that she became a star.    In 1904 she scored another hit as an American singer in Paris in The Sambo Girl. One of its songs, "I Don't Care," became a best-selling 'single' of 1905 and became her trademark.  One of the most memorable moments in the show came during a drinking song in which she "soaked her hair with champagne and probably ruined her dress."

For the next ten years she alternated between appearances in musical comedies and vaudeville on tour and in New York.  She starred in the Follies of 1909 and was distinguished by being the only performer ever to have her name advertised in letters as large as those of the show's title.    Her lavish and daring costumes brought gasps and applause from the audience and her songs "T-A-N-G-U-A-Y" and "I'm Here to Stay" got encores.

As a vaudeville performer she was noted for her contribution to the 1908 craze of the Salome dance when she "discarded all seven veils."  She was also well-known for her publicity stunts which included selling newspapers on street corners with a trained elephant, and, when Lincoln pennies were new, wearing a mail suit of them in her act, and throwing twelve hundred a day to her audiences.   Acknowledged as being full of the "true spirit of vaudeville,"  she had, like most of her contemporaries, risen to the top through persistence, personality, and performances that depended less on her actual talent than on her forceful and winning presence.

At the height of her career in 1910 she was the highest paid star of the day, making as much as $3,500 a week, which was said to be more than even President William Howard Taft was paid.

With Mae West, herself a great admirer of Tanguay, Eva was indeed the most imitated star of the day.  Her frizzy hair, energetic movements, piercing voice, and form-fitting outfits of spangles, lace, and feathers were favorite objects of parody. But no one could imitate her boundless energy. A pedometer once showed that she had covered over three miles in the course of her act.

Though a vital presence on the stage, her off-stage life was plagued by marital instability, monetary and health issues. She had married
John Ford in 1913 but it ended in divorce.  In the financial crash of 1929 she lost over two million dollars in real estate and stock. Her health had declined since a nervous breakdown and illness beginning in 1908.  After over twenty-five years as a headlining performer, she developed cataracts, and unknown to her audiences, she had to be led by the hand from her dressing room to the stage wings before her entrances.  She spent the last years of her life in near seclusion in Hollywood, supported by the charity of old vaudevillians and an occasional benefit performance.
As the "I Don't Care" girl she had brought a new spirit to the early twentieth-century American theatre--a refreshing, aggressive one that captured the hearts of audiences and exemplified the newly found independence of the woman of the age.

Resource: Notable Women in the American Theatre.  Noreen Barnes
Caffin, Caroline. Vaudeville. 1914
McLean, Albert F.  American Vaudeville As Ritual. 1965
Bordman, Gerald. American Musical Theatre. 1978
Gottfried, Martin. In Person: The Great Entertainers. 1985
Laurie, Jr. Joe. American Vaudeville: From the Honky Tonks to the Palace. 1953