John Marshall High School

The morning was still young. We were planning to take our Christmas photos on a particular painted flight of steps in a different neighborhood. For now, we were still in Los Feliz, having had some really great pastries from Twenty40...

A few minutes away was one of the most filmed high schools ever...

We're talking about John Marshall High School in Los Angeles. Why, it even featured prominently in one of my favorite movies (and 1/3 of the namesake of my blog), "Pretty in Pink" (1986). Trivia alert - this was the first movie that Bert and I watched in the theaters. Yes...THIRTY years ago. We were mere juniors in high school when we watched Molly Ringwald in her thrift store shabby chic spurn the advances of the very oily and snakelike rich kid Steff, effectively played by James Spader (who now looks like an inflated version of the dude that played the unmasked Darth Vader in "Return of the Jedi".

(this must be a production still since the movie clip doesn't fully show the high school's exterior facade)

Darth Vader:

And James Spader...

Hmmmm,  Darth Spader?

Younger audiences will recognize James Spader as Ultron in the most recent Iron Man installment. Or perhaps they might recognize him from the TV shows "The Practice" and "Boston Legal". For me, he will always be known as Steff, the asshole rich kid along with his brilliant roles in Steven Soderbergh's directorial debut, "Sex, Lies & Videotape" and as Susan Sarandon's love interest in "White Oleander".

Someone with a lot of time on his/her hands made a clip with all of Steff's scenes from "Pretty in Pink". The scene in front of the high schools (sadly, cropped out) is at :40 and again at 1:04

He was such a DICK!  "The girl was, is and will always be nada".

It was really cool to see a high school with architecture like this. I don't think there's anything in San Diego that comes close to this. The style is called Collegiate Gothic, a subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture that was popular in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Many colleges of that time frame utilized this style including Yale, U Penn, Princeton and Boston College.  It looks so imposing and formal.

Sadly, there is some sort of protrusion forming a hallway with what looks like scaffolding, but isn't. For whatever reason, this glass archway is now there and seems to have been there for at least two years.  Maybe more. But in older photos (linked in the articles at the end), you can see the exterior of the school in all of it's unsullied glory.


A look through the doors with cool cut out details.


In the archway. It really looked like scaffolding to me, but the exterior of each side has photographic images of trees.


View of the tower and also the side of the archway with tree/sky images.

I wish this glass archway wasn't there. It kind of ruins the look of the school.


On the northern front end of the school is the entrance to the auditorium.  Not pictures was a man sitting near the wall. His pet German Shepherd was bounding happily, unleashed and barking at squirrels up above. Bert saw a few climb up the tree and jump on top of the school's roof!

What a beautiful building this was.

As one who works in a high school, I am always interested in various area high schools and comparing how different they look depending on the neighborhoods.

Nearby, a statue of the Virgin Mary at St. Casimir Lithuanian Catholic Church on nearby St. George St.


Pretty tilework on the front arch.

Here's a fairly short video clip of the school's exterior:


Plus vlogger Adam the Woo's video from his 2nd youTube channel, The Daily Woo.  Footage of the school and a slight connection to a tragic murder clocks in at the 5:37 mark.


The school's exterior is seen briefly at the :04 mark in this clip from tween show, "iCarly" (a show on Nickelodeon TC used to watch and still likes; I made spaghetti tacos based on this show). It's super super quick. It's also the screen shot below.


While you can't see the exterior of the school in this clip, this memorable fight scene was actually filmed inside the halls. This is where Martin Blank attends his high school reunion and kills a would be assassin to the jaunty ska sounds of "Mirror in the Bathroom" by the English Beat.

The guy that John Cusack beats up is Benny Urquidez, a well known professional kickoxer.

Plus a link featuring the school in  Nightmare on Elm Street, the list goes on.

Articles:
"The most recognizable high school in the U.S. is in Los Feliz" LAist, Sept. 10, 2015
"Basically every movie ever was filmed at this high school" MTV.com, Aug 1, 2014
and a very informative post from IAmNotAStalker, Aug 25, 2008
plus a  link  from Hello Horror featuring the school in  Nightmare on Elm Street,.

John Marshall High School
3939 Tracy St.
Los Angeles, CA 90027

www.johnmarshallhs.org/fb page + this cool site, "Moviemaps.org

Glad that we were able to make a quick stop here. I'm sure the people in this neighborhood are used to lookie loos. Geek that I am, I already have a list of other high schools that were featured in movies that I want to visit including the one from "Donnie Darko" (Loyola HS),  "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (Van Nuys HS) and "Grease" (Venice HS was Rydell High!). Before I sign off, here is an older post where we visited Kalama High, featured in the first Twilight movie.