Double Feature Under the Stars: A Night at the Drive-In

Dad had backed the station wagon into a perfect spot on the gravel rise – and always with the nose up so everyone could see over the top of it. The crackling from the car radio speaker filled the air as well as popcorn wafting from inside of a nearby concession stand, and there was that nervous sensation in your belly to let you know this would be an exceptional night. Never mind that you’d be asleep in your pajamas before the second feature started. That was part of the plan too.

Invented in a driveway in New Jersey

This is some trivia you’ll want to keep handy; the “drive-in” wasn’t created by a Hollywood studio. In fact, it was developed for this purpose by one man – Richard Hollingshead of Camden, N.J., solving a family problem: his mother found movie-theater seats miserably uncomfortable. So Hollingshead put up a bed sheet between two trees in his backyard and positioned a projector on the hood of the family car. Then he sat there in the driveway working out the geometry, moving the car forward and back until the picture looked right from the front seat.

He got a patent in May 1933 and opened the world’s first drive-in theater in Camden that June. The sixth of June, if you want the date for your next trivia night. That’s opening month in the photo above. Admission was 25 cents for the car and a quarter a head after that, but never more than a dollar no matter how many kids you stacked in the back. And his slogan — I love this — was: “The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are.” Show me a multiplex that will put that on the marquee.

The ritual

Every family had their own way to do things; and every family thought they were doing it the right way. Our method (if you’ll allow me) was as follows: Early supper. The children were bathed and buttoned into pajamas before we even left the house, because anyone above the age of nine knew full well that the younger ones would be fast asleep somewhere during the middle of the second movie. There wasn’t any arguing about this either. Blankets and pillows were stowed away in the back seat, while lawn chairs were set up for adults who wanted to enjoy some fresh air. On very humid August evenings someone lit a mosquito coil on the dashboard, and that smell – punk smoke & popcorn & cut grass – is the summer of 1959 in my mind’s eye.

Then came the most sensitive part, the speakers. You lifted that big metal speaker box off its pole and hung it across the top of your rolled-down window and then find the volume button through all that static noise to turn up or lower it. And every night, somewhere on this lot, would come the sound that never ceased to be humorous; somebody heading home started the car and drove off with the speaker still attached. The cable would snap tight and the whole lot would groan and laugh at the same time. The pole always won; always.

“Let’s all go to the lobby!”

Between features came the intermission reel, and go ahead, sing it. You know the tune. Dancing hot dogs, singing popcorn boxes, a clock in the corner counting down ten minutes while half the lot made a run for the snack bar. The theater owners barely broke even on the movies; the chili dogs were the whole business, and bless them for it, because those chili dogs were glorious. I have eaten in some fine restaurants in my time and I am telling you nothing served on china ever beat a paper tray balanced on the glovebox door.

The fancier lots made the experience even better. There were playgrounds in front of many of the screens for the children to run around in until it got dark. Many also offered pony rides for some extra fun. On the Fourth of July, they would have fireworks as well. In reality, while people thought they were going to a movie at the drive-in, what was really happening is that a whole town was being invited out to watch a movie together with their neighbors.

The teenage chapter (you know the one)

We’d be lying by omission if we skipped it. For teenagers the drive-in was the date, full stop. Cheaper than the hardtop theater downtown, more private than the living-room couch with your mother walking through every eleven minutes. And then there was the trunk trick. Two paying customers at the box office, four attending the show. It was attempted nightly across America with varying degrees of success and dignity. The owners knew, of course they knew. Some of them charged by the carload precisely because they’d given up counting. If you ever rode in a trunk, you may now admit it. The statute of limitations has expired, and anyway your kids would be proud of you.

Ten minutes to showtime! Let’s all go to the lobby, to get ourselves a treat!

Dusk falls, the screen glows on

What killed the drive-in? People like to say television, but that’s not really it. It was real estate. All those acres under the screens turned out to be worth more as shopping centers than as theaters, and the owners were sitting on land their fathers had bought for a song. Daylight saving time hurt too — later sunsets meant later showtimes meant sleepy kids on school nights — and the air-conditioned multiplex and the VCR finished the job between them. From more than four thousand screens down to about three hundred.

But those three hundred are out there right now. Tonight, some of them. Gravel lots, glowing screens, a lot of them run by the third generation of the same family, stubborn in the best way. If there’s one within an hour of you, load up the car some Friday. Bring lawn chairs. Bring bug spray. Buy the chili dog — they need the snack bar money same as they always did, and anyway, you need the chili dog.

Now you: What was your hometown drive-in called — the Starlite, the Moonlite, the Sky-Vu? What do you remember seeing on that big screen? And did you ever ride in the trunk? Tell the truth. We’re all friends here.

The very first drive-in theater, Camden, New Jersey, 1933 — public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.