Drive-In Movie Theatre, USA

This abandoned Drive-In Movie Theatre was first opened in the 1940’s. This wonderful piece of Americana movie history thrived until the mid-1990’s, when the local town forced the closure. The owners fought several court sessions to overturn the order to close, but sadly they did not succeed. The cinema was briefly re-opened in 2000, when despite good attendance the town authorities forced its closure once more.

The “official” reason for the original closure is that the town deemed the adjoining main road to be too busy to allow safe entry/exit from the cinema. There was also a concern of cars queuing and blocking a lane on this busy road.

The town demanded that a police detail was used to manage traffic exiting/rejoining the highway, but the owners refused to continue paying for this after they accused some on-duty officers of sleeping on the job. The town also included a long list of “necessary improvements” to be made to the cinema to make it safe, which meant the new owners had to abandon their dreams of reviving the drive-in theatre.

History  of Drive-In Movie Theatres in America

In the early 1930’s Richard Hollingshead developed the first drive-in cinema. He would hang a screen between two tall trees across his own driveway, and project movies onto this from a hood-mounted Kodak projector. He would place a radio behind the screen to play the audio track. He took this idea to the patent office in 1932, and was granted a patent the following year.

Throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s these drive-in theatres being popping up all across America. By the 1950’s and 1960’s business was booming and there were over 4,000 drive-ins spread across America. For a small entry fee, a car-load of teenagers or a family could view a movie on the big screen. The drive-ins became very social areas for young people to meet. The idea of enjoying a movie in the privacy and comfort of your own car was a very popular one at this time.

In the early days of drive-ins, the soundtrack was provided from large speakers on the screen. This caused a sound-delay for cars parked at the back of larger theatres, as well as delivering poor sound quality. As technology evolved, small speakers were hung on each car window and connected to the cinema sound system with a wire. Later on, the sound was transmitted via AM or FM radio, allowing higher quality stereo sound through the cars own sound system.

Attendance numbers at the drive-in movie theatres declined after the 1950’s. With the invention of colour television, cable TV and VCR’s in the 1980’s, the drive-ins began to close down at an alarming rate.

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