Elmore City (Footloose)
Hit pop songs and Kevin Bacon jokes aside, 1984's Footloose gave the little town of Elmore City, Okla., a big reputation. In 1980, Elmore high school junior Leonard Coffee led an effort to convince local church and school-board officials to allow the school to hold a prom, technically an illegal gathering according to a local law from 1898 that outlawed public dancing. Coffee's then girlfriend Mary Ann Temple-Lee was the daughter of the school-board president, who vehemently rejected students' requests for dances year after year. This time, the students made a persuasive case and Temple-Lee's father cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of Elmore's first-ever prom. Reading this, it might not be difficult to guess the on-screen counterparts of these real-life students: Bacon's character Ren McCormack and Lori Singer's Ariel Moore were inspired by Coffee and Temple-Lee. Just like in the film, the real Elmore students celebrated their victory with a dance. The problem was that no one actually had any idea how to dance.