Yesterday here, we asked you, "What do all these people have in common?"

Desi Arnaz Jr., Jan Berry (of Jan & Dean), Jeff Bridges, James Brolin, David Cassidy, Sandra Dee, Annette Funicello, Judy Garland, Jack Jones, Werner Klemperer, Gary Lewis (son of Jerry), Lorna Luft, Betty Lynn, Roddy McDowall, Marilyn Monroe, Randy Newman, Frank Sinatra Jr., Nancy Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor.

The answer is that they are all listed, as are many others, as graduates of University High School — a school in West Los Angeles from which I graduated in 1969.

The only one of the folks whose names appear above who I know was there when I was was David Cassidy, who I knew ever-so-slightly. As I understand it, he was expelled from Uni — as everyone called it — for missing too many classes, then at some point a year or two later, he was back at Uni for a while, during which he auditioned for a talent show and wasn't selected. I was on the committee that rejected him.

That was our only contact. I never saw him again after that audition, not even a few years later when in one of my earliest writing jobs, I ghost-wrote a "David Cassidy Gives Advice to Teenagers" column for a teen fan magazine. I wrote the column, the publisher printed what I wrote, Cassidy — though he was a pretty big star by then — neither had nor wanted to approve what the magazine printed under his name.

The rest of the folks on that alumni list were either at Uni before I was there or they were never actually at Uni at all. Many of them were working at local movie studios and going to classes with tutors on campus. When it came time for them to graduate, their diplomas had to come from a real, full-fledged, run-by-the-L.A.-Board-of-Education high school so they were officially graduated from University High without, in most cases, ever once setting foot on its campus.

For years, I always assumed Marilyn Monroe was a Uni grad on that basis but every so often, someone on eBay or at some auction house sells a copy of the University High School yearbook for 1942 and her photo, as Norma Jean Baker, is in it. (Here's a link to one such sale.) By contrast, Betty Lynn, who as you may know was my neighbor when I was a kid, had a diploma from Uni but only attended classes on the lot of Fox Studios when she was a contract player there.

Anyway, I thought you might find this interesting. And tomorrow, I'll have another interesting (I think) story about Uni Hi.