The I Don't Care Girl

This semi-film within a film opens in the office of producer George Jessel, who never saw a camera he couldn't get in front of, who is holding a story conference to determine the screen treatment for the life of Eva Tanguay, and Jessel is unhappy with what the writers present him. He tells them to look up Eddie McCoy, Eva's one-time partner, for the real inside story on the lusty and vital Eva. Eddie's version is that he discovered her working as a waitress in an Indianapolis restaurant in 1912, where singer Larry Woods and his partner Charles Bennett get into a fight over her and both land in the hospital, and McCoy convinces the manager to put Eva on as a single to fill their spot. She flops, but McCoy arranges for Bennett to be her accompanist, and she goes out of his life. The writers look up Bennett, now head of a music publishing company, who says McCoy's story is phony, and it was Flo Ziegfeld who discovered Eva for his Follies. Then Jessel's staff comes up with a letter from Larry Woods with another version.