with apologies for cross-posting.
Does anyone know if there are any recordings of music hall artiste Eugénie
Fougère?
She first appeared in the United States in 1894 and was active through
roughly 1910. She apparently attempted a comeback around 1920. I don't know
when she died.
Precisely because she was a dancer I suspect that her singing voice may not
have been up to snuff for purposes of recording. And I haven't encountered
her name in American
recording rolls from 1894-1910. However, I was thinking she may have
recorded in France, Germany or Portugal where she was also popular. Her big
song was Joseph E. Howard's
"Hello Ma Baby;" she was filmed singing it by American Mutoscope & Biograph
in 1899. Of course, if she had done it with the Edison company you might
inquire as to whether a recording
was made at the same time, as was the case in a few known instances. But
AM&B was not in the record business, sorry to say.
Eugénie Fougère was not her real name, and apparently no one knows what it
really was. There was also a demimondaine by the name of Eugénie Fougère,
and at one point they lived
on the same street in Paris. The demimondaine Eugénie Fougère was murdered
in 1903, allegedly in a plot by her housekeeper to relieve her of
her jewelry. This has led to some confusion,
with some thinking the entertainer being the victim. In 1910, she was
banned in Montréal after just one performance, owing to local standards
regarding indecency.
best,
David N. Lewis
Lebanon, OH
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