Jimmie Tramel

Tulsa World Scene Reporter

ELMORE CITY — It was just a little blurb in a newspaper. But that’s what got the ball rolling for a small town in Oklahoma to become part of motion picture history.

In case you didn’t know it: “Footloose" was inspired by events that occurred in Elmore City, a Garvin County town with a population of 700-plus.

Because of a ban enacted pre-statehood, public dancing was forbidden in Elmore City. During the 1979-80 school year, students at Elmore City High School lobbied for, and won, the right to have a prom. Cue Ren McCormack (Kevin Bacon) dancing onto movie screens to help make “Footloose” the seventh-biggest motion picture of 1984.

Dean Pitchford, who wrote the film and was a co-writer on every song on the soundtrack, agreed to a 2024 intervie

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