Eva Tanguay (August 1, 1878 – January 11, 1947) was a Canadian singer and entertainer who billed herself as "the girl who made vaudeville famous". She was known as "The Queen of Vaudeville" during the height of her popularity from the early 1900s until the early 1920s. Tanguay also appeared in films, and was the first performer to achieve national mass-media celebrity, with publicists and newspapers covering her tours from coast-to-coast, out-earning the likes of contemporaries Enrico Caruso and Harry Houdini at one time, and being described by Edward Bernays, "the father of public relations", as "our first symbol of emergence from the Victorian age." Early life Tanguay was born in 1878 in Marbleton, Quebec. Her father was a doctor. Before she reached the age of six, her family moved from Quebec's Eastern Townships to Holyoke, Massachusetts. Her father died soon after. While still a child she developed an interest in the performing arts, making her first appearance on stage at the age of eight, circa 1886, at an amateur night in Holyoke. In her earliest days she was promoted through a small theater company operated by one Paul C. Winkelmann, a successful 16-year-old multi-instrumentalist who lived next door to her family and who used his influence to give a testimonial benefit show for her at the Holyoke Opera House, a venue which she would return to years later after establishing her own act. Two years later, she was touring professionally with a production of a stage adaptation of the popular Frances Hodgson Burnett novel Little Lord Fauntleroy. Tanguay eventually landed a spot in the Broadway musical My Lady in 1901. The 1904 show The Chaperons started her rise in popularity. In 1904 and 1905, her career reached new heights as she starred in The Sambo Girl, which debuted the song "I Don't Care," composed specifically for her. By 1905, she was also performing in vaudeville as a solo act, as she would do for much of the remainder of her career. Stage career Although she possessed only an average voice, the enthusiasm with which Tanguay performed her suggestive songs soon made her an audience favorite. She went on to have a long-lasting vaudeville career and eventually commanded one of the highest salaries of any performer of the day, earning as much as $3,500 a week ($ in dollars) at the height of her fame around 1910. After seeing her