The Classic Coming-of-Age Film "Cooley High" - Filmed in Chicago

The coming-of-age film followed four seniors in high school and was a significant hit at the box office.

Photo byJakob OwensonUnsplash

It's so hard, to say goodbye, to yesterday...

When you hear those lyrics, other than becoming overwhelmed with sadness, you think about the 1975 movie Cooley High. The film follows four seniors' lives as they prepare to transition into adulthood. At their Chicago high school, they had big dreams. However, what used to be the norm for them took a turn for the worse in their senior year.

Set in 1964, two of them got involved with criminals and eventually got falsely accused of stealing a Cadillac.

"We were friends a long time ago. Laughin', rappin', chasin' girls, obeying no laws, except the law of caring. Basketball days and high nights, no tomorrows, unable to remember yesterday. We live for today." - Preach.

It starred Glynn Turman as Preach, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as Cochise, Corin Rogers as Pooter, and Maurice Leon Havis as Willie. Most of the scenes were filmed in Chicago, and it was dubbed the "black American Graffiti."

Cooley High was written by Eric Monte, who based the movie on his experience attending the real Cooley Vocational High School in Chicago. The school closed in 1979, but it served students from the Cabrini-Green public housing project.

"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," Monte said to the Los Angeles Times in 2006.

"No one had seen anything like this imagination of black characters, and it captured the black experience from a particular time in a way that very few other black films have done."

Monte also co-created Good Times, a '70s show set in the ghetto of Chicago centered around a low-income family trying to keep their head underwater and making a way when they can.