Mitski Shows Shines Light on School’s Show Biz History

When Mitski wraps up a five-night residency at Hollywood High School this weekend, it will conclude an engagement that follows in a very limited tradition of rock or pop stars doing shows in the school’s 1,900-seat auditorium, preceded most famously by Elvis Costello in 1978 and Morrissey in 2013.

But in a broader sense, the run of concerts can be seen as a reinforcement of the 123-year-old school’s epic history of almost certainly being the learning institution most associated with the entertainment industry, including but not limited to a list of alumni that can nearly read as a who’s who of  20th century show-biz greats. The fact that the school’s mascot and teams are the Sheiks — named after Rudolph Valentino’s pop-culture-shaking role in 1921’s “The Sheik” — is just one small piece of evidence of how much Hollywood High has been entwined with the industry that also informally bears the Hollywood name.

In a principal’s office that has framed magazine covers or sheet music of Judy Garland and Lana Turner greeting anyone who’s waiting at the front desk, principal Samuel Dovlatian spoke about why he believes as big an artist as Mitski chose Hollywood High for one of just two underplay residencies she is doing in the U.S. to promote her new album, “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me.”

“Her idea of coming to a classic-looking high school, where you see the auditorium with the wooden chairs and the proscenium and the red curtains, is a tribute, a throwback andan honor,” said Dovlatian. “She’s bringing the audience into a place that is familiar to them, putting themback in that place of attending a high school assembly concert… albeit really at that professional level with Mitski’s beautiful songs and lyrics touching the hearts of the listeners, who are enjoying it in a place where most artists get their start.”

Mitski herself has had a couple of different explanations for why she chose Hollywood High. (Her equivalent six-night New York residency could not have been in a more different facility — the modern, nine-figure arts center the Shed. Any of these places counts as an unusually intimate space for Mitski, whose last L.A. shows, in 2024, consisted of three nights at the 6,000-seat Shrine followed by one at the 17,500-seat Hollywood Bowl.)

On the first night of the residency this past Monday, Mitski told the audience that the setting brought up raw emotions about being a youthful misfit. “Can I tell you something, though? When I first got here, I slightly regretted having this at a high school, because I was immediately triggered,” she told the crowd. “I don’t know about you all, but … oh, my God. As soon as I set foot on campus, my brain immediately scanned and clocked all of my exits and places I can hide.”

By Thursday night’s show, she was cheekily describing inflicting those feelings on the audience as deliberate. “We’re basically bringing y’all to possibly one of the most traumatizing places, to get you all in emotional turmoil, sit you down, and then unleash this music on you. Ha ha ha ha,” she said, literally laughing out loud. “I got you primed. You know, it’s dark in here. No one can see you. You can cry! I’m crying, on the inside.”

While Mitski’s material can be as emotion-stirring as a statement like that can promise, if there was any crying going on, it might have been from the sheer devotion and gratitude of having made it through the ticket lottery to secure a place at the shows at all. Or, in the case of the Hollywood High students on hand, having gotten tickets Mitski’s management donated to the school, in a contest; 46 students were given a pair to see a show, after racking up 96% attendance rates, out of 168 who entered the competition.

Many of the students at Hollywood High are undoubtedly more impressed by Mitski than they are by the stars of yesteryear whose names or images are painted or peppered throughout the school. But for anyone of a certain age stepping inside the campus, which takes up a full, good-sized city block, it can be about as impressive a museum of Hollywood history as any in L.A., even before you get inside the school’s actual museum, which is only open on special occasions.

The corridor nearest the main office sports an alumni Wall of Fame, with stars and names painted by the classes of 1991-92. Among the A-listers who merited a star at that time: Garland, Turner, Carol Burnett, John Ritter, James Garner, Mickey Rooney, Robert Carradine, Barbara Hershey, Meredith Baxter, Scott Baio, Alan Hale Jr., Gloria Grahame, Jason Robards, Mike Farrell, Ione Skye, Donovan Leitch, Rick Nelson, Stephanie Powers, Sherree North, Nanette Fabray, producer Glen Larson, L.A. Times publisher Norman Chandler and U.S. judge John Aiso (who has a street named after him downtown).

When Dovlatian unlocks the doors to the school museum, that’s when a much deeper dive into Hollywood High alumni begins. But first, the principal points to a photo of the school as it was originally constructed in its current form, surrounded by seemingly nothing, let alone an In-n-Out. “This is what Hollywood High looked like when it was first built in 1920s. a lot of farmland, with orange groves and poinsettias,” he says. “And one of the complaints from the farmers was, why are we building such an expensive high school when we don’t even have high school-aged kids around? So what we had to do was put out newspaper advertisements calling for families with high school student-aged kids to come to Hollywood, so that we could have enrollment.”

Another anomaly, inside the museum door: a class picture from the 1940s that has nothing but girls’ legs lined up in the front row. “If you take a look, you’ll notice that the majority of the students in the picture are our girls, because of World War II. The guys were all drafted or enlisted in their own right and were ready and willing. We have a whole war memorial upstairs that is a tribute to all of our soldiers and generals.”

But as much as the school can claim major government, business and military figures, the actors are the main draw for most visitors. The museum includes individual entries that include some figures whose fame was too recent for them to have been painted onto that wall in the administration building in the early ‘90s, from Rita Wilson to Lawrence Fishburne to writer-director Frank Darabont.

There are some non-marquee names whose place in the museum will delight Hollywood aficionados, from composer Earle Hagen Jr. to famed film noir director Edward Dmytryk. (The latter filmmaker shares a portion of one wall with his wife, actress Jean Porter; they were in the classes of 1926 and ’39, respectively, but didn’t meet and fall in love till they were on-set in 1945.) Others celebrated with their own framed photo and blurb include Linda Evans, Swoosie Kurtz, Carole Wells, Marge Champion and John Phillip Law. Brandy Norwood gets a nod, although perhaps not as big as she might’ve if she were an actual graduate; a magazine article in one corner of the museum mentions her mom pulling her out when she didn’t get the lead in a school play. (Brandy doesn’t lack for her due, though, being one of the figures pained on the Highland Ave.-facing façade of the school auditorium.)

Non-actors getting their due in the school museum range from famed sculptor Beatrice Wood to former attorney general Warren Christopher to one-time FCC chairman FCC chairman William E. Kennard.

But when it comes to students who took an unusual path toward fame, nothing may beat the next exhibit Dovlatian points out: “The Ken doll, as you can see, was modeled after our student, Ken Handler, at the time. If you see the ‘Barbie’ movie, of course, there’s reference to him in there, and here we see the variations and iterations of the Ken doll over the decades and how he changed from the original.” The principal also pulls out a shink-wrapped Hollywood High board game that was somehow licensed in the 1980s.

A trip to the school’s historic library includes a massive horizontal mural that was commissioned in the mid-1930s as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), portraying the history of the arts. “You see the gentleman in the toga and the columns of the Greco-Roman era’s amphitheaters, and move onto the right with the ladies and their flowing dresses and the lyre… all the way up to the flapper era and the Spanish influence of Southern California on the architects, back architecture changing to the landscape of the desert and so forth, and all the way on the right you end up with the gentleman who is looking through a viewfinder. At the time of this painting of the mural, the film reel camera system was the latest technology at that time, and so we go from the Greco Romans’ oration in amphitheaters to filmmaking in the ‘30s.”

Hollywood High at present is trying to keep up with the technology of the ‘30s… the 2030s, assuming all keeps going to plan.

“This is the auto body shop that I’ve converted into a multimillion dollar studio,” says Dovlatian, stepping into a space on the western end of the campus that has students stationed at Macs in a darkened room on one side of a wall and a green-screen set and cameras on the other side. “With all the studios in town, I probably have equipment that they don’t even have,” the principal boasts. “You can do music videos and news broadcasts here, multi-camera with teleprompters and everything else. In the other room you have the control deck and the editing room for post-production. And we have community members, instructors from the industry, who come and support our projects.”

Dovlation is proud of what’s been accomplished during his 10-year tenture at the school, five as principal, following another five as vice principal. It’s not all about taking advantage of the interest that comes with proximity to the entertainment biz… although plenty of it is.

“I run Hollywood High School much like a college, with four majors that students pick from when they initially enroll,” he says. “The choices are the Teaching Career Academy, which prepares students for the child development career pathway. These students learn theory, meaning they learn Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Piaget, all the child development theorists, and they take that theory from the classroom and are big brothers and sisters to our neighboring elementary schools and see what the theories that they are learning look like on the playing field… Another major is the School for Advanced Studies, where this year we have really focused on the biotechnology career pathway. and students have an opportunity to learn the intersection between biology and technology.

“Another, of course, is the Hollywood Performing Arts Magnet, and this is the academy that prepares students to be on stage doing acting, dancing and music, and in behind-the-scenes theater design, set lighting and sound. We partner with community members in the industry who come and advise and prepare our students. … Last but not least, we have the New Media Academy Magnet, which not only won a Fistinguished Magnet School Award for Excellence Award, but we are up for national recognition as well. We take students from zero to introducing them to the career of filmmaking where they learn on high-end professional cameras. These aren’t just toy cameras, but we’re talking Sony, RED, Blackmagic, the types of cameras used into industry…”

On this particular visit to the campus, many of the students are dressed formally, although that’s not an indication of any sort of prep-school severe dress code. The principal explains, “Today’s one of the most important days of a senior’s life at Hollywood High School, because you will see my seniors dressed up in their suits and formal wear because they are presenting their senior dissertation, which they have to do in order to qualify to walk on the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, where our graduation is held.”

He stops a girl, Farah, on campus to ask about her dissertation. It happens to be a presentation having to do with show business, but not in any aspirational way. “My research question is, how does abuse in the entertainment industry affect potential child entertainers?” she explains. “As y’all know, in Hollywood there’s a lot of exploitation and physical, psychological, emotional and mental abuse. So, I’m touching on that topic and getting you guys to understand the child’s POV of how glamorous Hollywood looks, versus the dark side that really comes with it. … Definitely when I was younger, I used to want to be a Disney child actor, but my mom always rejected it, and I never understood why until I got older and really got to do my own research. So really that’s what made me pick this topic for my senior project. I’m very excited, and very nervous too.”

On stage in the auditorium where Mitski will soon perform, the cast for a student production of “Into the Woods” is rehearsing as student crew members work on the set design. This will all disappear at the beginning of spring break so that Mitski’s crew can come in and replace the Sondheim with the production needed to stage “Where’s My Phone?” and other hits.

This is an unusually high-level residency for Hollywood High, the last major one being Morrissey’s 13 years ago, which was shot for a DVD. (Costello’s show in 1978, meanwhile, was the basis of an EP that was included along with the ’79 studio album “Armed Forces,” finally released in full more than three decades later, in 2010.)

“A big name like Morrissey is gonna draw attention and media, but we have also other lesser-known artists throughout the years, independent artists and just people who are looking to rent a venue and put together a show,” Dovlation says. “I’ve had many cultural programs and shows, from Far East/Indian to children’s ballet shows, dance shows. The venue is flexible, available on the weekends, when it doesn’t conflict with our own productions. And I’m happy to rent that out to concerts, shows, performances, theater. I even have a church group in there on Sundays. So, we are community-friendly and want to support the entertainment industry.”

Sources say all the sound and lighting had to be brought in from scratch for Mitski, at her team’s considerable expense. Goldenvoice, the promoter, even taped seat numbers onto every seat in the auditorum, which usually doesn’t require such niceties. Will it be worth it, when an artist of her magnitude could easily go into a venue that is more ready-made for this high-tech a production?

Mitski tends to be press-shy, and wasn’t up for doing any interviews about the Hollywood High residency. But in a recent interview with the public radio program World Café (the only one she’s done in the U.S. about her new album), the artist explained why, even before a school was picked, she honed in on doing something outside the norm.

“It goes back to my very first intentions for this album,” she said. “Even though we ended up adding a whole bunch of orchestra and other instruments, at its core, the intention was, I want to get back to the feeling that I had 10 years ago — or earlier, 15 years ago — where I felt like I was in a room with a few people and we were really connecting… (where) it felt more raw and right down to basics, both in terms of performance and gear and everything, but also the basics of human interaction…

“I wanted it to feel like an experience I wanted to recreate… the feeling that I had going to going to DIY shows, punk shows,” where “I would think I’m experiencing something that is not like anything else, that I’m going to remember. You know, like going to an abandoned firehouse and watching a band. Obviously the scale is different, but I wanted to recreate that feeling of, I feel like I’m having an experience.”

When the “World Café” host asked about the logistics of bringing all that audio and video gear into a high school, Mitski responded, “I think you should ask my managers that, because it seemed terrible. I feel really bad, actually. God bless them.” Not mentioned was having to slot the concert dates into the school’s spring break, the only time something this elaborate could have been staged in a public school. (The school’s downstairs cafeteria, meanwhile, was converted into a combination merch booth and highly stylized photo-op space.)

But, as Mitski well recognizes — and was obviously able to convince management and booking — the 8,000 or so mostly young people who were able to attend over the course of a week won’t likely ever forget being this thoroughly schooled.