Drive In Theaters

Not long ago the rage in movies was to drive there in your car and park it next to a speaker. You would hang the speaker on the driver side door of the car and watch the movie as it was being projected on a screen the size of a city building and listen to it from the speakers. This was the day of the drive in movie theaters from the 1950’s to the mid 1970’s. That was there heyday. From the mid 70’s to the late 80’s there was a huge decline in attendance as more people started going to indoor cinemas and the movies started coming into the home buy way of VHS rental tapes. To a generation who grew up watching movies on the really, really big screen it is a beloved memory. Most of the movies shown were 2nd runs of major hit films and on occasion an overseas film that was trying to crack the US market. One that I remember is Superargo. The English was dubbed in so the words and the actor’s mouths never matched and for a superhero Superargo walked pigeon toed. That term means that his feet pointed either outwards or inwards. There were two types and I remember this at that time I had that problem. Usually those films didn’t go any farther then the Drive In. One did make the big time. Dr. No! It was the first James Bond film. It did well in England but the theater owners didn’t think it would do well in America as Bond was British. So they sent it to the Drive Ins. When cars at those theaters were lined up around the block they saw it was a hit. Drive In theaters didn’t charge as much as walk in theaters so Dr. No was soon out of the Drive In business. A Bond film has never had its first run at a Drive In since. My memories of the Drive In would have Mom and Dad packing a picnic and placing it in the cooler. Mom and Dad thought the prices at the concession stand were too much and from the prices I see today I tend to agree. I always took a pillow in case I fell asleep in the back seat during the 2nd feature. Try as I must I don’t think I ever succeeded as I always remember my Dad carrying me in to the house to bed. Sometimes I woke up while he was carrying me. Other times I just woke up in bed the next day. At the drive in they also had playgrounds. Kids would play there before the movie started and in between the first and second feature. There was always one kid who would sit on top of the slide to watch the movie. In the early part of my drive in experience Mom and Dad would let me lay on the hood of the car and watch. Cars were built bigger back then and the sides of the hood were thick enough and strong enough to hold a person. I remember sometimes I would be on one side and Dad on the other. As time went on and cars got smaller this was rarely done. My cousin Rachel and I asked once if we could do it. We were told only if we didn’t move. Well you had to talk to the person next to you but Mom and Dad kept knocking on the window to not even turn to each other. You see with the size of the cars being smaller they didn’t think the center was strong enough to hold us. As we turned to talk to each other we were moving towards the center. All the fun was now taken out of watching the movie from that point of view. Times changed and I got older. I can’t remember the last time I was at a drive in but they became known as make out spots for teenagers. I never personally did this but since they only operated in the Spring thru the Fall there were a lot of “Closed for the Winter” jokes about teenagers and drive ins. The drive ins that we went to the most were the Florence Drive in and the Dixie Drive In. I remember the concession stand ads and the coming attractions for adult movies that I knew I would never see. For some reason the coming attraction of Diary of a Mad Housewife with Richard Benjamin has stuck in my head all this time. What I really liked about the coming attractions was the voice over announcers. That is now a lost art form. I remember watching a lot of Disney, Elvis and Jerry Lewis movies at those Drive Ins. There were a couple of times that we drove out before the movie was over. In one case it was before it started. The movie we drove out in the middle of was Little Big Man with a young Dustin Hoffman. There was a scene that they objected to. The scene was Dustin and his adoptive mother went in to the candy shop. Dustin is preoccupied with the soda he is drinking but then notices that his Mom and the store owner are gone. He starts to look for them and finds them “together” in the basement of the store. Our car and a few others left the movie. The other movie we left before it started was a Disney film. It was Candleshoe with David Niven. Dad called the Florence drive in to see when it was on as we had already seen the second one. The person at the drive in said that Candleshoe was the second feature. So we didn’t arrive till the second feature. Guess what. As the first movie was going off we saw it was Candleshoe. The person at the drive in got the schedule mixed up. Mom and Dad complained to the Manager. He gave us 3 passes to use for any movie that summer. Unfortunately, the rest of the summer was R rated movies that we didn’t want to go see. Till Candleshoe came out on video tape I never got to see it. The Dixie drive in became infamous during it’s tenure in the business. You see the movie screen could be seen from the expressway. If there was a nude scene in a movie there were a lot of car accidents because the drive was watching the movie instead of the road. There was a law that said that the Dixie Drive in could never show R rated films again as it was a traffic hazard. Most Drive In theaters are gone from the area. The Dixie and Florence were torn down years ago. The Florence Drive In site is now a neighborhood of condos. For awhile I thought of buying a condo there. I thought it would be ironic if one day I was watching an old movie and might be sitting in the very spot where I first saw that film. I tried to find a photo of the Dixie or the Florence but couldn’t find any. The one above is of the Dent Drive In that is in Cincinnati not too far from here. I never went to the Dent but it effectively conveys the feeling I have for destruction of my two favorites.