Brewmaniac

I read this and thought it was interesting and decided I would share with all.

I know when I was in highschool we used to go all the time, we would drink beers and eat crappy drive food, or I'd take a date and never watched the movie.

Here's the history...


A young sales manager by the name of Richard Hollingshead who worked at his father's Auto Products Store, had an idea to invent something that combined his two interests: cars and movies.

Richard Hollingshead's vision was an open-air movie theater where moviegoers could watch from their own cars. He experimented in his own driveway at 212 Thomas Avenue, Camden, New Jersey. The inventor mounted a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car, projected onto a screen he had nailed to trees in his backyard, and used a radio placed behind the screen for sound.

The inventor subjected his new drive-in to vigorous testing: for sound quality, for different weather conditions (Richard used a lawn sprinkler to imitate rain) and for figuring out how to park the patrons' cars. Richard tried lining up the cars in his driveway, which created a problem with line of sight if one car was directly parked behind another car. By spacing cars at various distances and placing blocks and ramps under the front wheels of cars that were further away from the screen, Richard Hollingshead created the perfect parking elevation for the drive-in movie theater experience.

The first patent for the Drive-In Theater (United States Patent# 1,909,537) was issued on May 16, 1933. With an investment of $30,000, Richard opened the first drive-in on Tuesday June 6, 1933 at a location on Crescent Boulevard, Camden, New Jersey. The price of admission was 25 cents for the car and 25 cents per person.

The design did not include the in-car speaker system we know today. The inventor contacted a company by the name of RCA Victor to provide the sound system, called "Directional Sound." Three main speakers were mounted next to the screen that provided sound. The sound quality was not good for cars in the rear of the theater or for the surrounding neighbors.

The largest drive-in theater in patron capacity was the All-Weather Drive-In of Copiague, New York. All-Weather had parking space for 2,500 cars, an indoor 1,200 seat viewing area, kid's playground, a full service restaurant and a shuttle train that took customers from their cars and around the 28-acre theater lot.

The two smallest drive-ins were the Harmony Drive-In of Harmony Pennsylvania and the Highway Drive-In of Bamberg, South Carolina. Both drive-ins could hold no more than 50 cars.

An interesting innovation was the combination drive-in and fly-in theater. On June 3, 1948, Edward Brown, Junior opened the first theater for cars and small planes. Ed Brown's Drive-In and Fly-In of Asbury Park, New Jersey had the capacity for 500 cars and 25 airplanes. An airfield was placed next to the drive-in and planes would taxi to the last row of the theater. When the movies were over, Brown provided a tow for the planes to be brought back to the airfield.


The craziest thing we did was one winter they had a beach movie marathon and if you wore a bathing suit you got in free, so my best friend, his sister and I wore them under our clothes. We went into the snack bar and we got something free, don't remember what it was, but I remember they took pictures and we froze our asses in the snow.

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Ourcrazymodern?

Drive-ins were FUN.

Where did they go?

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paddyjoe

look around man, you'll still see a few....


great story, brew...

Psycho Dad

When we were kids, coming home on the bus more than once we were treated to the sight of the gratuitous tits and ass on the big screen as the bus passed the drive in. Good times.

My buds and I went to a Cheech and Chong marathon at the drive in once. Still good times.

A few years ago we went with some friends who were also in the minivan stage of their lives and we pulled the rear seats out of our vans, sat in them and watched the show enjoyed some beer. More good times.

I miss the drive in.

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ngdawg

Not in NJ
We still sometimes will stand outside on a cool summer night and call it 'drive-in weather'. Sadly, we had to explain that to the kids.

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Brewmaniac

ngdawg, your cartoon is funny and oh so true! I logged many back seat miles in my younger days!

I'm sorry I didn't post the link in my OP, I found this drive-in last night after taking my sleeping meds and I barely remember even posting this.

I just may go there this summer it's only about 45 minutes away from me.

http://www.triwaydrivein.com/index.html

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JStrider

theres one here in lubbock texas

http://www.driveinusa.com/

always meant to go earlier.

GG and I just tried to go the other day and got there with 30 minutes to spare, and the line was so long we didnt get in in time. was a bummer.

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paddyjoe

Well damn, that a shame, dawg. Tell you what, this one's about 45 minutes from here:

http://www.charcoalcorral.com/

so c'mon up this july and i'll take you.........

World's King

There's a hotel somewhere in Colorado where all the rooms have giant windows that face a drive in next door. Each room has a speaker and a volume control on the wall so you can listen in too.


I went there as a kid with my parents. No idea if it's still around.


EDIT: Found it...

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Psycho Dad

Happy searching people.

http://www.driveintheater.com/drivlist.htm

I need to take my niece to a drive in this summer. According to the link above, there is one about a couple of hours away.

Edit: Make that an hour.

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rogerroger7

I would lov eit if there were a drive in near me. The theatres here suck!

Grancey

Excellent links. Thanks a bunch. Has anyone been to the Starlight Six in Atanta?

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Willravel

Very cool story. Much appreciated!

pan6467

Very cool.

The family of a good friend of mine in high school owned Springmill and Sunset Drive Ins in Mansfield. I remember he used to say the only way his family could keep it open was to have the "weekend special features" but insurance costs and property taxes were high and being open only 3-4 months at most they had to fill the lot almost every night because they had to pay for the property even when not in use.

One thing they did was have flea markets there.

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BadNick

Thanks for the interesting info, Brew, and for sparking some flashbacks.

I remember stuffing a few guys in the trunk so we could get them in without paying, though we did get caught a couple times ...sometimes they had one price for a carload. Since I grew up in Philly right across the river from Camden NJ, and frequenting all the local active drive-in's back then, I did know that they started locally. Right about when we were late-teens the drive-ins started showing XXX movies so that gave us more incentive to go, just a bunch of guys and a couple cases of beer; I don't know anyone who took their girlfriend to the X rated drive-ins; first saw Deep Throat, Misty Beethoven, Fritz the Cat, and a couple other "classics" at the drive-in.

Leto

I am constantly amazed at the innovations and inventions that Americans have come up with that we all take for granted. This is one of those.

Much of my highschool weekends were spent going to the Barrie Triple Drive-in (Ontario) with a 2-4 of brew in my buddy's Chevy van.

Even before that my parents would take the family and go to some of the 5 or so drive-ins that were in and around the Toronto area.

Childhood memories included playing on the swing sets waiting for dusk and the anticipation of the double bill movie (usually a lame Disney flick - I seem to recall such as That Darned Cat, or Bedknobs & Broomsticks) and the cheap food (fries and pop).

I did take my girlfriend to see some when I was older - Heavy Metal, the 4 movie Horror-Rama (Boogens!, Prom Night, Terror Train...and I think we were steaming windows most of the time). And yes, we could fit 3 people in the trunk of an Olds Delta 88 (1979 model).

Little known fact: until the 1960's there were no drive-in theatres in Quebec. It wasn't until the Quiet Revolution, that the religious control of society gave way to secularization and these types of theatres became acceptable. (this is from my Gr 10 History).

At present there is a new Drive-in theatre (double screen) that just opened in Toronto, at the Docks, right downtown by the harbour:

http://www.toronto.com/movies/listing/100067

Brewmaniac

I found this in Psycho Dad's post offering a search for Drive-ins. I had never heard of Project Silver Screen,
This project was started in 1948, when a connection was made between debris from the 1947 Roswell Crash and Drive-In Theaters.

I guess I'm not up on conspiracy theories and this is the first I read connecting drive-In's to UFO'S.

Is this common knowledge or is this someone having fun with the whole thing? Not that I believe in little green men or anything. Do we have any UFO experts here?
The rest of story is here:

http://www.driveintheater.com/security3.htm

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blahblah454

Please tell me you read that link Brewmaniac!! That was hilarious!

And there is a drive in theater right across the street from my house, no more than a 2 minute walk. Too bad it never comes on anymore

Cynthetiq

aaaah good times as a kid.. good times as an adult.....

last time I went it was Skogafoss' first time, we saw Signs. Ahh good times, the very next day, quardo2000's dad tried to kill me....oh the joy, oh the fun in Glen Falls, NY.

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quadro2000

Hey, he only tried to kill you because I told him you wouldn't shut up during the movie!

That drive-in is still there, and still with reasonable prices. I haven't been back, though. If I went back, I'd want to go back in a truck or something where I could back in and sprawl out in the back. Watching a movie with a wheel between your legs is annoying!

Great article.

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Grasshopper Green

One of my favorite memories of childhood is my parents waking me up one night, getting into the car in my nightgown, and going to to drive in to watch Superman 2. Ironically, the last movie I saw at a drive in was Superman 5 (the last one Reeves did, the horrible one). There is actually one here in Salt Lake, and every summer my husband and I decide that we'll go there; perhaps this will be the summer that we actually do.

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alicat

Leto: Was that a 2-4 of Elsinore? Sorry, couldn't resist, hubbies favorite movie.

Here in our area of West Michigan there's only one drive-in and every year it seems like it's dying the same death that most others have.

My family didn't have much money when I was a kid, so going to the drive-in was a treat. I remember that my Dad would pop and butter enough popcorn to half fill a brown paper bag for us to eat that we'd "smuggle" in. He'd also fill a cooler with our Diet Pepsi's and buy a big box of Jujube's to take.

I was always jealous and salivating at the smell of all the fried and fast food smells in the "intermission" stand when I went to use the bathroom.

The last movie I remember seeing part of as a kid was the re-make of "The Thing" with Kurt Russell. Glad I was 11 and fell asleep. It was the second movie of a double feature or I might still be traumatized. Funny how cheesy it's seems now in retrospect.

Ali

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troit

They still have one in operation in the small town I grew up in.

http://www.westromedrivein.com/

I will have to make a point to check out a movie this summer.

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m0rpheus

There's one about a 20 minute drive from my place.

http://www.mustangdriveinguelph.ca/

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darquegk

I miss drive-ins. There used to be one near me to show Rocky Horror Saturdays, but alas, no more.

Leto

ya eh?





http://www.losergeek.org/~niklas/bob.../bdsounds.html

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/walkoffame/strangebrew.html

tenniels

I'm kinda bummed because I've never gotten to experience a drive-in theatre

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