Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: This presentation, which includes illustrations and leave-behind materials, chronicles the creation of the Twentieth Century Fox biopic The "I Don’t Care" Girl (1953). Allegedly about the life of vaudeville’s biggest star, Eva Tanguay (1878-1947), the film instead ended up saying little or nothing about the actual life of the so-called “queen of vaudeville” -- and a great deal about Hollywood’s burgeoning culture of self-obsession. Based on analyses of studio memos and documents from the Production Code office, “Hollywood Misremembers Vaudeville,” not only sheds light on the disjuncture between the studio-era movie business and its variety-stage antecedent, it also illustrates an act of biographical forgetting, the kind which has led to the arbitrary enshrinement of certain stars from the past and the veritable erasure of others.