HIGH SCHOOL OF PERFORMING ARTS, YOU WANT FAME

Today, The Grandma has visited some old friends at High School of Performing Arts, informally known as PA, the public alternative high school established in 1947 and located at 120 West 46th Street in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, from 1948 to 1984.

In 1961, the school was merged with another alternative arts school, the High School of Music & Art, while each retained its own campus. Plans for establishing a joint building for the merged schools took many years to be realized. There was opposition to the loss of PA's individual identity, but both student bodies eventually moved into a shared building in 1984, christened the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School. 

Leaving behind PPAS, a middle and high school created in 1990 to meet the needs of two groups of students: those who wanted to pursue professional work in the arts as they earned a junior/senior high school diploma and those who wanted to study the arts as an avocation.

Many well-known performers were trained at the school, such as Eartha Kitt, Liza Minnelli, Jennifer Aniston, Ving Rhames, Lorraine Toussaint, acting coach Bernard Hiller and Suzanne Vega, Hwang Hyunjin.

The 1980 film Fame was set in the High School of Performing Arts, though the building was not used in filming.

This school was created in 1947 by educator and creative thinker Franklin J. Keller, as a part of Metropolitan Vocational High School, using his staff and administrators on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Under Keller's stewardship, it offered music and theater arts programs in addition to the traditional trade skills.

In 1948, the school occupied Public School 46, a disused 1894 public school building on West 46th Street in the Times Square area. The new school offered programs in music, dance, drama, and, for a time, photography. There were many professionals on staff, including the young Sidney Lumet in the drama department. His production in 1948 was The Young & Fair.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, the New York City administration announced plans to move PA out of its ancient building and into new quarters. These plans evolved to joining the student body with that of the High School of Music & Art M&A in a newly constructed building. A site in the Lincoln Square area was chosen, eventually settling to within the newly developed Lincoln Center complex.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held in 1958, where Mayor Robert F. Wagner and the City Council publicly promised completion by 1964. In anticipation of this, PA and M&A formally merged in 1961 as sister schools on paper while retaining their respective campuses.

In 1969, the combined institution was coined the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, named after the founder of M&A.

PA continued to audition, educate, and graduate students in its old location during these decades of uncertainty. 

In 1973, ground was again broken for a new building at Lincoln Center, but New York City's budget crisis forced all construction to be suspended until the early 1980s. 

Finally, in September 1984, the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts welcomed students from both schools into their new building.

In 1980 the motion picture Fame, based loosely on student and faculty life at PA, premiered. In 2009 a remake was released.

More information: New York Post

Fame is an American television series originally produced between January 7, 1982, and May 18, 1987, by Eilenna Productions in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television and sponsored by Yamaha musical instruments, which are prominently showcased in the episodes.

The show is based on the 1980 motion picture of the same name. Using a mixture of comedy, drama and music, it followed the lives of the students and faculty at the New York City High School for the Performing Arts  -a fictional establishment, but based heavily on the actual Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

Most interior scenes were filmed in Hollywood, California. In all seasons except the third, the show filmed several exterior scenes on location in New York City.

The popularity of the series around the world, most notably in the United Kingdom, led to several hit records and live concert tours by the cast.

Despite its success, few of the actors maintained high-profile careers after the series was cancelled. Several of the cast members were seen again briefly in Bring Back...Fame, a reunion special made for Channel 4 in the United Kingdom in 2008.

The series won a number of Emmy awards, and in 1983 and 1984, it won the Golden Globe Awards: Television, Best Series, Musical/Comedy. Actress, director and choreographer Debbie Allen, who had a small role in the motion picture, but played a major character in the television version, also won several awards.

More information: Shondaland

You've got big dreams. You want fame. Well, fame costs.

And right here is where you start paying: in sweat.

Lydia Grant