skiddoo

Stewart whose commercial flagships flanked City Hall; the iconic figures who were feted with tons of ticker tape in the Canyon of Heroes; the loiterers who gawked at skirts sent billowing by the wind tunnel that the Flatiron Building created at 23rd Street and were shooed away by cops who bellowed “23 skiddoo”; and the ghosts along the stretch of Broadway that undulates past Times Square, whose reputation for bright lights and shattered dreams were epitomized in its legacy as the Great White Way and the Street of Broken Hearts.

Lady turn around, turn around, turn around, Lady touch the ground, touch the ground, touch the ground; Lady show your shoe, show your shoe, show your shoe, Lady, lady, twenty-four skiddoo!

And what does “twenty-four skiddoo” mean, at the end of it?

There is a strong temptation to say "Catch-23, please skiddoo."

Has Anybody Seen My Gal is set in what is referred to as the Roaring Twenties, an era when, to judge from this picture, flappers in short skirts and college men in raccoon coats did little else but pour down bathtub gin, read Elinor Glyn's It, dance the Charleston, and indulge in such bon mots as "hot diggity," "the cat's meow" and "skiddoo."