Centinela Drive-In
5700 W. Centinela Avenue,
Los Angeles,
CA
90045
5700 W. Centinela Avenue,
Los Angeles,
CA
90045
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The Centinela was in Westchester, not Inglewood. Centinela Ave. doesn’t become part of Inglewood until you pass La Cienega, nearly a mile away. Ladera Heights and Fox Hills are on the north side of Centinela, and the theater was on the south (Westchester/LA) side of the street.
It always seemed to be viewed by most locals as the “lesser” drive-in, in comparison to the Studio Drive-In in Culver City, but both are very much missed today.
I enjoyed projecting movies here. The drive-in was easily spoted from the freeway. You couldn’t miss it while driving by.
It was a sad day when I noticed this theater was gone. Though I only saw one film there when I was a kid (some werewolf flick), we used to always pass it on the way to the Fox Hills Mall. It was a welcomed site in a world of McDonald’s and megaplexes.
Strange but true: I have pieces of the pavement from the Centinela Drive In in my garden! Back in the late 1980s and ‘90s, I had developed a habit of taking pictures of the various drive in lots and marquees before they were demolished. My brother and I ran out one day to get pics of the Centinela, fearing that it wouldn’t last much longer. When we arrived, there were tractors parked in the lot and parts of the pavement had been ripped into small segments. We loaded a bunch of pieces into the back of my car, and to this day they line parts of my backyard garden. Like its sister theater down the street (The Studio Drive In), this one is really missed!
The Centinela Drive-In was located at 5700 Centinela Ave. and it had a car capacity of 1025 cars.
At one point the MTA was going to use the property as a bus equipment lot in the area.
The Centinela, operated by Pacific Theatres, closed in 1993 and sat vacant for several years. It was used for a location shoot in the 1995 film “Heat”, and was unceremoniously demolished in 1998. The former site is now home to an apartment complex. Nothing remains of this Drive-in.
This Drive-in was closed in 1993 and demolished in 1999. The former site is now home to apartments. The Centinela was a location for many firms, including “Heat” with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino.
This was a Pacific Theater and I clearly recall the drive-in employees in their white coats with flashlights walking around while the films were running. Some of the classic sci-fi movies my family would go to see there were “Target Earth” (1954), “Creature With the Atom Brain” (1955), and one of my all-time favorite sci-fi movies, “THIS ISLAND EARTH” (1955) which was particularly memorable because it was a big-budget studio film in Technicolor and the effect of seeing this movie on a warm starry summer night was really awesome, while watching the flying saucer speed through stars in space up on the giant movie screen. This was a first-class family drive-in during the 1950s. “Let’s go to the snack bar!”