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Chris Willman
Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic
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Chris WIllman/Variety 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.
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