Stop That Shimmy

A giddy fever-dream of jazz-age propriety, Stop That Shimmy detonates like a firecracker in a prim parlour: chorus-girl dynamo Betty K. Peterson sashays into a sleepy seaside hotel, hips spelling Morse-code invitations that make the town’s starch-collared elders clutch their pearls tighter than their wallets. Dan Crimmins, a bashful pharmacist with a secret sideline in prohibition hooch, catches her eye; their courtship ricochets through hotel corridors, moonlit bandstands and a surreal courthouse where moral statutes shimmy harder than the heroine. Lee Moran and Eddie Lyons, a vaudevillian tag-team of scheming bellhops, peddle bootleg rhythm while Fred Gamble’s apoplectic mayor tries to outlaw the Charleston itself. Elsie Cort floats through as a melancholic heiress, her silences louder than the brass section, and by the time the brass band marches into the surf, every character has danced on the precipice of public scandal and private liberation, leaving only foam, confetti and the lingering echo of snare drums.