Babe Egan

Mary Florence Cecilia Egan (May 1, 1897 – February 7, 1966), who performed as Babe Egan, was an American jazz musician. She was a ragtime violinist and the band leader of the all-female vaudeville ensemble Babe Egan and The Hollywood Redheads.

Biography Egan was born on May 1, 1897, in Seattle, Washington, the youngest of seven children. She was the granddaughter of Irish immigrants to America.

In 1919, Egan moved to Hollywood, Los Angeles, California,

In 1924, Egan formed the all-female vaudeville ensemble Babe Egan and The Hollywood Redheads. Members of the ensemble were to be unmarried redheads as well as "collegiate, glamourous, and a little sexy, but "proper enough for family entertainment in America's heartland." banjoist and guitarist Billie Farley and clarinettist Juanita Klein.

Babe Egan and The Hollywood Redheads toured the vaudeville theater circuit across the United States and Canada from 1926, which included a performance with Ginger Rogers, meeting President Calvin Coolidge, and an encounter with a Ku Klux Klan rally, before performing in Europe in 1929 and 1930. They also performed on Broadway with Thelma White, the leader of another all-woman band, and on the RadioKeith-Orpheum (RKO) Pictures circuit. Another performance was held at the Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris, France.

Egan was bisexual and had a relationship with an actress who she met touring Europe.

Egan lived her final years in the Rockhaven Sanitarium in Glendale, California, where she died of a stroke on February 7, 1966, aged 68. She was buried at Resurrection Cemetery in South San Gabriel, California.

Egan is the subject of the 2022 book Babe Egan and the Hollywood Redheads by Jeannie G. Pool.