Today is National Drive in Movie Day. Ten facts about drive in movies:
This date was probably chosen as Drive in Movie Day because it was on 6 June 1933 that the first one opened, on Admiral Wilson Boulevard in Pennsauken Township, New Jersey. The screen was 40 by 50 ft (12 by 15 m) and there were spaces for 400 cars. The advertising slogan read "The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are."
The idea originated with a man named Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr. whose day job was owning and running a chemical plant. He spent some time experimenting in his back garden, nailing a screen to the trees and mounting a projector on his car. He tried out different sound levels.
Despite the popularity of drive in movies a couple of decades later, Hollingshead’s first drive in wasn’t a huge success. Possible reasons why his first effort didn’t go down so well may have been the choice of film. The first film ever shown in a drive in was a British comedy called Wives Beware, which wasn’t very good.
Another possible reason was that, because sound travels slower than Light, the sound wasn’t always in synch with the pictures and customers found that annoying. It wasn’t until the late 1940s that drive-in operators solved the issue, by offering individual speakers for each car, or by broadcasting the film’s soundtrack on FM radio.
The second drive in to open was in Orefield, Pennsylvania in 1934. This one is still open today and is the oldest drive in movie venue in the world.
The late 1950s and early 1960s saw the peak of the popularity of the drive in. In 1958, there were 4,000 of them across America. On the one hand, they were family friendly: you could take your kids to the movies in their pyjamas and not have to worry about annoying the rest of the audience if one of them threw a tantrum. You could take your own food. Some drive ins provided other family friendly stuff like playgrounds and even petting zoos. On the other hand, the privacy afforded by the car meant that young couples could go a lot further than they could in the back seat of a cinema. Drive ins were labelled “passion pits”, and sociologists even estimated that at one point, a quarter of the population of the USA were conceived at a drive in.
Towards the end of the 1960s, the popularity of drive ins began to decline as it was possible to get good quality entertainment at home thanks to colour TV and videos. There has been a surge in popularity in recent times, however, thanks to the covid plague. In 2020 it was the only way you could go out to see a film.
The largest operating drive-in in the United States, by car capacity, is the Ford Wyoming Drive-in in Dearborn, Michigan, which can hold about 3000 cars. The smallest is the Jericho Drive-in, Queensland, Australia. It only holds 36 cars.
The first drive-in theatre in Europe opened in Rome in 1954.
The most popular names for drive ins are “Starlite” or “Starlight” (there are 10 drive ins in the US with this name). The second most popular name is “Skyview” or “Sky-Vu”.
New!!!
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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