Stoutor
It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.
Taraparain
Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.
Hayden Kane
There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
Kien Navarro
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
vincentlynch-moonoi
It doesn't appear that this film is anymore a true biopic of performer Eva Tanguay than most biopics from the 1930s through 1950s were. But, despite having only a smattering of accuracy in it, some of Mitzi Gaynor's dance routines are fantastic.I had never even heard of Eva Tanguay, although I was vaguely familiar with the old song "I Don't Care". It's interesting to read her bio on Wikipedia...preferably before you watch the film; in fact, the bio may be more entertaining than the film.While far from her best film, Mitzi Gaynor shines here, although I doubt production numbers at the turn of the century were this lavish.Oscar Levant is here as a fellow performer. He seems more ill-at-ease here than usually; this just wasn't the right kind of part for him.David Wayne is surprisingly good as a song and dance man who, at one time, teamed with Tanguay. Bob Graham is a singer with his eye on Tanguay...but my reaction was Bob who? It's interesting to see George Jessel, as Himself, as the producer of the very film you're watching.A rather disappointing outing.
boblipton
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.
robb marsh
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!
marcslope
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.