Despite decades of neglect, open-air theaters are making a comeback.

Story by Willa Reinhard / August 15, 2001

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The Foothill Drive-In
(Adriene Biondo and John Eng, Los Angeles Conservancy)

Lately, on summer evenings, the Foothill Drive-In, in Azusa, Cal., 30 miles east of Los Angeles, is lucky if its lot is half filled to its capacity of 850 cars. The last historic drive-in on Route 66 west of Oklahoma, it will likely close at the end of the season. Azusa Pacific University, a private Christian institution adjacent to the 17-acre lot, wants to demolish the 40-year-old, single-screen drive-in to expand its campus.

The Los Angeles Conservancy, with strong support from Azusa Mayor Christina Madrid, hopes the theater will survive and become a significant Route 66 tourist destination. Sure, crowds have dwindled over the years, concedes Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the conservancy. "But it's too soon to tell what will happen at the Foothill. With preservation issues you never know what turns things will take."

Don't mourn the Foothill just yet, say supporters. Across the country, drive-ins are coming back. Today only 500 American drive-ins exist—down from a high of 5,000 in 1960—but in the last five years about 50 drive-ins have reopened.

Don Sanders, a drive-in enthusiast, is not worried about the mid-century icons disappearing from the country's landscape. "The drive-in will be around," says the 49-year-old Texan. Sanders has published two books on the subject and is releasing a documentary this fall. "They've got their niche. If they were going to go, they'd have been gone 10 years ago."

First Picture Show

In June 1933, auto-parts salesman Richard Hollingshead, looking for a way to bring more customers to his business, opened the world's first drive-in in Camden, N.J. He described his newest business venture as a place for the whole family, "regardless of how noisy the children are." Admission was 25 cents or $1 per family. More than 600 motorists attended the opening-night showing of the comedy Wife Beware, according to one newspaper account, and less than a year later a second outdoor theater—Shankweiler's Auto Park in Orefield, Pa.—opened. Then the rest of America caught on.

Five years after the end of the Second World War, the number of outdoor theaters rose from 96 to more than 1,700. The 1949 grand opening of the 66 Drive-In on Route 66 in Carthage, Mo., beckoned audiences, "Come as you are," and in the late 1940s and early 50s, families flocked to the silver screen in Chevys and Fords for the chance to watch films under a canopy of stars.

Theaters offered in-car speakers, heaters, and concession carts that brought food directly to your car. Pajama-clad kids found playgrounds, petting zoos, and train rides. The new theaters revolutionized not only entertainment but the culture of the car. "The drive-in theater was the ultimate automobile architecture," wrote Maggie Valentine in her book An Architectural History of the Movie Theatre. "Motorists no longer needed to leave their cars; the parking lot had replaced the building in importance [and] the cars themselves became the form, providing the shape, color, line, and structure of the space."

Drive-in mania peaked in 1960, but the next three decades saw a continual decline in popularity—the baby boom ended and daylight savings time, introduced in 1966, meant that showtimes began as late as 10:00 p.m., discouraging family attendance. With the emergence of multi-screen, air-conditioned indoor theaters, cable television, and VCRs, drive-in owners began to realize that their suburban theater lots were prime targets for developers. Family filmgoers were replaced by teenagers. "More schlockey movies and R-rated movies were played," says Sanders. "In the early '90s, theaters hit rock-bottom."

Some of the country's drive-ins were able to remain family-oriented. Cindy Deppe, 46, spent much of her childhood at the Berlinsville, Pa., drive-in her father, William D. Beck, opened more than 60 years ago. But beginning in 1971, her father began showing X-rated films in order to keep business going at Becky's Drive-In. One day in 1982, fed up with one too many dirty jokes by local disc jockeys about her family's theater, Deppe and her four brothers and sisters decided to buy the site from their parents. Six years later, the Beck children had restored the drive-in's reputation as a family destination, and the New York Times and USA Today recently named it one of the country's top 10 outdoor theaters.

Although the 450-car lot sold out every weekend in July, Deppe says, running a drive-in these days is not exactly lucrative. All of her siblings have full-time jobs, and a slew of nieces and nephews handles the refreshment stand. "The drive-in was my dad's livelihood," says Deppe. "For us it's more a labor of love."

Drive-Ins Stage a Sequel

When Hull's Drive-In, located four miles north of Lexington, Va., closed in 1999, after operating continuously for nearly 50 years, 300 fans of the outdoor theater quickly banded together, named themselves Hull's Angels, and vowed to rescue it. This year, the Angels opened Hull's for the first full season in three years, making it the nation's only community-owned, non-profit drive-in.

As summer sputters to an end at the Azusa Foothill Drive-In, Ken Bernstein and his brigade of Los Angeles County preservationists wonder if their theater will join the list of survivors. Last week, in an 11th-hour effort to establish protection for the open-air venue, the conservancy filed a nomination to list the theater on the California register of historic places.

"What if we had never preserved the ornate theaters of the 1920s? All kids today would know are the giant 10-screen theater complexes," says Bernstein, whose own childhood drive-in was reduced to rubble. "It's such a unique experience, the ability to load up a large car with friends on a summer night. And for couples," he laughs, "well, there's another nostalgic twist."