One of the most important settings for "Grease," naturally, is Rydell High. The movie used three different schools to create one setting: Venice High School, Huntington Park High School, and John Marshall High School. Venice High served as the "face" of Rydell and is the building featured in establishing shots.
Alan B. Curtiss noted that the school's Art Deco facade and the park-like feel of its campus made it perfect for the role. "It really played well [for] the first day of school when the girls and everybody are arriving in the parking lot, and being able to do some nice walk-and-talks getting them towards the front of the building," he said. The "Summer Nights" and "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" scenes were filmed there. In 2018, Smithsonian Magazine reported that Venice High still celebrates the movie every September with a "Grease" party on the football field.
However, the high school didn't have some other features the producers wanted for the movie, and the principal wasn't as accommodating as the production would have liked. So school hallways, offices, and classrooms were shot at Huntington Park High — along with the "Greased Lightnin'" scene in the auto shop and the school dance inside the gymnasium (shot over five days during a heat wave). John Marshall's football field was used for the end carnival scene; Curtiss described it as more "photogenic" than the football fields at the other locations, which were also used for different scenes.
