The Last Day of School: Leaving Rydell High

The Script

The day that the students and teachers were anticipating is finally here—but as in Blanche and Principal McGee’s misty, nose-blowing moment (“Oh, Blanche, stop blubbering!”), it is a bittersweet day. The shooting script’s concept was that the last day of school would be celebrated at “Wonder World Amusement Park.” Sandy’s transformation was to be set up with “Favorite Image Day,” in which the characters would come as the person they most admired or the thing they’d like to be, a takeoff on a “where are they now” montage.

The shooting script had big plans for the celebration of the last day of school: the crowd would be full of students being Davy Crocketts, Marilyn Monroes, even Frankenstein’s monsters and Draculas. Frenchy was going to show up in a dental hygienist smock. Putzie and Jan would have Mickey and Minnie Mouse masks. Marty would be wearing a WAC uniform and proclaim she was going to foreign countries with the USO “because the army needs men and so do I.” Rizzo and Kenickie would appear as bride and groom, and even Patty Simcox would have found her soul mate, Tom Chisum, both in matching “business suits.” We simplified.

The Shot

You might not recognize the students bursting out of the school’s doors on the last day of school. No one on set knew them until the day of the shoot.

It was another Allan Carr publicity stunt. He not only flew journalists in from different cities to play the teachers in the National Bandstand sequence, he also put on a nationwide contest for winning teens to be flown to Hollywood and have a role in the movie. He didn’t mention this to me until the day before they were to arrive. He told me to find a place in the movie to fit the thirty contest winners with the stipulation that they could not be cut out of the movie. I asked, “How can we guarantee that?” He said, “You’ll think of something.” That night, while racking my brain in the shower, I came up with the solution. Principal McGee announces, “But always you will have the glorious memories of Rydell High. Rydell forever! Bon voyage.” The next scene was going to be the carnival sequence. What better way to show that school was out for the summer than to film the contest winners blasting out of Rydell High.

Nationwide contest winners make it big.