Cooley High

For the high school in Detroit, Michigan, see Cooley High School. For the high school in Chicago, Illinois, see Cooley Vocational High School.
Cooley High

Theatrical poster
Directed by Michael Schultz
Produced by Steve Krantz
Written by Eric Monte
Starring Glynn Turman
Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs
Music by Freddie Perren
Distributed by AIP
Release dates
  • June 25, 1975
Running time
 107 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $750,000[1]

Cooley High is a 1975 American film based upon the real high school located on the near north side of Chicago, produced and released by American International Pictures and written by Eric Monte (co-creator of Good Times). The film, set in 1964 Chicago, Illinois, stars Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and features a soundtrack made up primarily of 1960s Motown hits.

The film is considered a classic of black cinema, and its soundtrack featured a new Motown recording, G.C. Cameron's hit single "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday". That song was covered in 1991 by Motown act Boyz II Men on the group's first LP, named Cooleyhighharmony in honor of this film.

Plot

The story explores the adventures and relationships of Leroy "Preach" Jackson (Glynn Turman) and Richard "Cochise" Morris (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), two black high school students at Edwin G. Cooley Vocational High School, in Chicago, during the 1960s, whose carefree lives take a turn for the worse through several twists of fate, including violent carjacking friends, drugs, failing grades, and girls.

Preach and Cochise decide to cut class and go to the zoo, despite the fact that Preach has missed an entire week of school, much to the chagrin of his history teacher, Mr. Mason (Garrett Morris). Nevertheless, they gather their classmates, Pooter and Tyrone, and play hookey. On their way back, Pooter is hit with gorilla feces, Cochise teaches some young new "turkeys" how to shoot a basketball, and they meet their friend Dorothy at a diner called Martha's, where she invites them to a quarter party, while Preach slips inside to gamble with associates Stone and Robert. Cochise, knowing that Martha will throw him out for gambling, warns him, just as Brenda (Cynthia Davis) tries to get past them to get to the washroom. After she leaves to get Martha, Preach makes a dollar bet with Cochise that he will sleep with Brenda before they break up. Martha then comes with a large butcher knife, threatening Preach and throwing him out of her shop. Cochise got a basketball scholarship from college.

At Dorothy's quarter party, Tyrone flirts with Dorothy to grant the guys access to the quarter party without paying her. At the party, Pooter tries to flirt with some other girls, but they all flock to Cochise instead, leaving him alone. Preach finds and tries to serenade Brenda with poetry. Outside, Cochise flirts with and kisses a girl during a slow dance in the dark. However, hotheaded Damon, a classmate, sees him kissing the girl, who turns out to be Loretta Brown, Damon's girlfriend.

Later, Preach, Pooter, Tyrone, and Cochise are singing and drinking wine on a street corner.

Stone and Robert pull up in a white-with-black-vinyl-roof Cadillac Coupe de Ville, and Preach and Cochise go along with them for a ride as they are eager to smoke with them. Preach claims to have excellent driving experience, and the others allow him to take the wheel. At an intersection, the group gets scared next to a police car, and they pull away, causing the squad car to give chase. The chase ends when they evade the police in a mostly empty warehouse, and then gently crash into the back of another vehicle. Everyone runs away from the car. Preach and Cochise stick up two prostitutes for money to go to the movies. The same day Preach,Cochise,Tyrone,and Pooter were at the movie theater watching Godzilla when the street gang called The Disciples starting a fight inside the movie theater and breaking the movie screen.

The next day at school, before their important history test, the police take Preach and Cochise out of Mr. Mason's class on a warrant for their arrest for grand theft auto.

Mr. Mason talks to the police, convincing them not to jail his students, who didn't steal the car, while Stone and Robert, who did, are jailed and stood for trial. When they eventually get released, they seek revenge on Preach and Cochise, perceiving them to be snitches.

Stone,Robert and Damon go searching for Preach and Cochise and end up beating Cochise to death. Preach visits his grave after the ceremony once everyone has left and pours some wine on his grave and reads one of his poems out loud. After that Preach says good-bye and heads off to Hollywood and becomes a screenwriter.

Stone and Robert both got killed during a gas station holdup, Damon became a sergeant in the U.S Army stationed in Europe, Tyrone got killed during a outbreak of racial violence at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, Brenda got married with three children and became a librarian in Atlanta,Ga and Pooter became a factory worker in Muncie,Indiana.

Cast

Background

Monte based the film on his experiences from attending the real-life Cooley Vocational High School (which is no longer standing) that served students from the Cabrini–Green public housing projects in Chicago. While the film was set in and around Cabrini–Green, it was primarily filmed at another Chicago-area housing project. Monte has said that he wrote the film to dispel myths about growing up in the projects: "I grew up in the Cabrini–Green housing project and I had one of the best times of my life, the most fun you can have while inhaling and exhaling".[2]

Reception

This movie ranked #23 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.[3]

Television adaptation

ABC planned a television adaptation of Cooley High, but the pilot was poorly received, and Fred Silverman, the head of the network, asked the pilot's producers, TOY Productions, to redo the show as a sitcom with new characters and with a new title so as not to confuse it with Monte's Cooley High. New writers were hired, cast changes made and a switch from one-camera film to three-camera delivered What's Happening!! to the network, where it ran from 1976 to 1979. The show and the production company were then purchased by Columbia Pictures Television in 1979 and ran in syndication for a number of years.

Release on DVD & HD

In 2000, Cooley High was released on DVD. In 2010, it was digitized in High Definition (1080i) and broadcast on MGM HD.

See also

References

  1. ↑ The dime-store way to make movies-and money By Aljean Harmetz. New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 04 Aug 1974: 202.
  2. ↑ Mitchell, John L. "Plotting His Next Big Break." Los Angeles Times. Friday April 14, 2006. A-1. Retrieved on February 11, 2009.
  3. ↑ "The 50 Best High School Movies." Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on February 11, 2009.

External links