The gym/dancefloor/swimming pool in in "It's a Wonderful Life"

[Trailer Park Casanova]

Was that scene filmed at Beverly Hills High School?
I know the school is very old, and they have a gym floor that opens up to a swimming pool.

[jmizzou]

Yes (http://www.seeing-stars.com/Schools/BeverlyHillsHigh.shtml):

"It's A Wonderful Life" has become a Christmas classic, and part of that 1946 fantasy was shot here. Remember the scene where young Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed are dancing at a high school prom, when a hidden swimming pool beneath them slides open, and the dancers fall into the water? Well, Frank Capra filmed that famous pool scene here at Beverly Hills High. (What other high school would have a covered swimming pool in 1946?)

[Trailer Park Casanova]

Thanks for the reply and excellent, interesting link.

I've wondered that for decades.

I remember seeing the pool when I was a kid.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Yes (http://www.seeing-stars.com/Schools/BeverlyHillsHigh.shtml)

(What other high school would have a covered swimming pool in 1946?)



To be fair, I think Los Angeles HS also had a pool by then.

[Beware of Doug]

Did the phenomenon ever spread beyond Soutghern California (say to middle-sized towns and small cities in the northeast like the fictional "Bedford Falls")?

[waits]

And isn't that Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer who turns the key to open the pool?

[jmizzou]

I don't know about Spectre's or Doug's questions, but as for waits' (from the same site):

(A bit of Hollywood trivia: the student who made the pool open was played by Carl Switzer, the actor who was famous as 'Alfalfa' in the "Our Gang" comedies.)