Posted on 06/17/2017 4:49:03 PM PDT by drewh
Last year, while visiting national parks in Colorado, I happened upon a real treat: Star Drive In, an outdoor theater that opened in 1955 in the southern part of the state. But my delight didn’t end there.
Next door, I found the Best Western Movie Manor Hotel, where you can look out a big window and watch the Star’s outdoor screen … from your bed! Each room is named for a movie star. Booking a night at the motel was a no-brainer. I checked into my no-frills Mel Gibson room and crawled into bed for the feature.
According to Wheeler Winston Dixon, a film expert at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the first drive-ins appeared in 1933 in Camden, N.J. They hit their peak midcentury with about 4,000 locations, roughly one-quarter of the nation’s total movie screens. Now, he says, they account for just 1.5 percent.
“Like so many things, it belongs to the past,” Winston Dixon says. It was tough for all the theater operators to run a business dependent on weather, he notes; the fuzzy projection and tinny sound from the window speakers didn’t help.
“Today’s audiences want a huge screen, enormous chairs and surround sound,” he says. “They want a more immersive experience.”
But moviegoers who long for nostalgia and low-cost fun are in luck. A few hundred drive-ins still exist, and we’ve highlighted a few of our favorites. Remember two things: Use your parking lights when entering and exiting, and please take a moment to enjoy the stars on the ceiling.
(Excerpt) Read more at floridadiary.com ...
I’m in!
The BEST part of a Drive In...
The Back Seat!
Wow! Some great Americana still exists!
There are still two drive-in theaters operating in our neck of the woods. The Skyline near Shelton and the Rodeo near Port Orchard (western WA).
When I was a teenager my friends and I figured out we could drive our small cars diagonally through the exit of the local drive-in and the wheels would just fit between the two sets of tire spikes blocking each lane. As soon as the last feature started the box office would close and in we went. Fun times.
We have a drive-in our town. They couldn’t show first run movies because of competition to the megaplex of 6 screens. They did a study and found that 94 percent of patrons were out of the area, and were granted first run status. They mortgaged their house and upgraded to digital. A real success story, and they are very busy.
Right down the street from me in Georgetown, Indiana is the Georgetown Drive-In...still going strong!!
I love the old drive in movies. Circa 1965 with a date in my 1958 GMC pickup. Dammit, pickups did not have a back seat back then. On occasion we actually watched the movie. If I was lucky my grandfather would let me use his 1960 Buick Le Sabre. It had a back seat the size of Dallas.
I miss those days. The popcorn was good also. I do not think we every finished a bag of it.
That’s fantastic! Here’s to many more years of success!
I’d love to attend a drive-in again. Good place to show off and see classic cars.
Hmmm. I thought the last functioning drive-in theatre closed about a decade ago. IIRC, it was in Califonia.
Here's the USA Today link:
You would not have been able to do that at the MoonLite
Drive-In Theater in Moorhead, MN or the StarLite Drive-In
Theater in Fargo, ND. I worked at them in the summer of 1970
and parked my car by the exit. I flashed my lights to any car trying to drive in that way. None ever got through!!
The previous year I worked as a painter/maintenance person at the StarLite. What great jobs. A husband and wife managed both; my first bosses-I have never had any better.
The Night of the Living Dead is the one I remember the most.
It was scheduled for only a few days, but was so popular, it stayed for about 10 days.
I vaguely remember seeing South Pacific in a drive-in theater. The fat lady dying in the storm scared me lol, I was very young.
How about my
1959 Two-Door Ford Station Wagon
Watching Clockwork Orange at the
Campus Drive-In here in SanDiego
With Sharon!
I watched many movies in my old Galaxy 500.
Sadly the two drive-ins in my area re now a Lowe’s hardware store and a massive empty lot.
Mom and dad put us in PJs, and spread blankets in the back of the station wagon because we would never make it through the movie, and honestly for me it was more fun eating popcorn and people watching, or watching Star Wars with no sound playing on another screen across the lot!
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