Summary
Santa Boobara, a sun-drowsy hamlet dozing between missions and orange groves, suddenly jolts awake when two symmetrical temples to vanity open their doors across the dusty main drag: J. Smythe’s pastel boudoir of a boutique, all organza and gossip, and Jackie Cameron’s revamped haberdashery, where chalk-striped suits and rakish fedoras promise a new century of self-invention. The street becomes a runway; the air itself crackles with ribbon static and the citrus tang of ambition. Smythe, a dandy whose measuring tape flirts more than it measures, falls thunderstruck for Jackie’s swagger in Norfolk jackets, so he slips her the frock already promised to Evelina Skinner—an heiress whose name alone curdles milk. The dress, a molten lamé number, becomes the MacGuffin of misidentity: two grubby kidnappers, casing the Skinner manse for velvet swag, snatch Jackie under the illusion that she’s the pampered heiress. From there the film pirouettes into a moonlit farce of ransom notes, mistaken silhouettes, and a cabin whose rafters creak with both menace and moth-eaten lace. Smythe, once a mere merchant of illusion, armors himself with a lantern and a six-shooter of pluck, storms the hideout, and reclaims his accidental beloved. Together they frog-march the larcenous pair back to town, pocketing Skinner’s bounty—blood money turned dowry—and sealing a partnership that feels less like marriage than a joint-venture boutique of perpetual reinvention.
Synopsis
When J. Smythe opens a fashionable women's shop in the little town of Santa Boobara, Jackie Cameron takes over her father's establishment across the street and converts it into an up-to-date haberdashery. Smythe, having fallen for Jackie, gives her preference over all his other customers and persuades her to buy a dress already promised to Evelina Skinner, daughter of the town's richest and meanest man. Two kidnappers, shadowing Evelina, mistake Jackie for her and hold Jackie for ransom. Smythe, learning of Jackie's disappearance and seeing the men enter the Skinner residence, follows them to their cabin and rescues Jackie. They force the kidnappers, who have robbed Skinner, to the sheriff's office, collect Skinner's reward, and decide to enter into a lifetime partnership.
Review Excerpt
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A Retail Riot in the California Dust
Picture, if you can, a town whose name sounds like a vaudeville punch-line—Santa Boobara—yet whose dusty camber carries the electric charge of nascent modernity. Into this half-asleep pueblo roll two competing cathedrals of consumption: J. Smythe’s frothy, chiffon-draped salon and Jackie Cameron’s angular, almost Bauhaus-ian men’s emporium. The camera loves the symmetry; every exterior shot frames the storefronts like dueling altarpieces, their plate-glass w..."
