Columbia Daily Tribune, Aug. 14, 1948 (quoted 50 years later): “Work on a new Columbia drive-in theater, to be called the "Broadway Drive-In,” is expected to get under way next month, Rex P. Barrett, Columbia representative for the Commonwealth Theaters Corp. of Kansas City, announced today. The theater corporation yesterday completed the purchase of 14 acres of land on West Broadway from Dr. Lloyd Simpson for construction of the $75,000 theater. The site which is part of the old Sneed farm, was purchased by Dr. Simpson from the Boone County Fair board. Located about one mile from town, the new theater will be located on a lot 1320 feet deep with a 400 foot frontage on West Broadway. It is situated south of the Boone County Fair grounds."
Boxoffice, March 30, 1940: “Colton, Cal. - M. A. Rogers and Thomas Burgess have been sued by Park-In Theatres, Inc., of Camden, N. J., on charges of patent infringement in connection with a Drive-In Theatre they operate here.”
Boxoffice, March 30, 1940: “Tucson, Ariz. - This community now lays claim to having the only woman manager of a drive-in theatre in the United States. Nelle Brock, formerly of Cincinnati, has replaced A. W. Bartlett as manager of the Drive-In Theatre here.”
The Fremont Tribune ran a story in May 2022 noting that Quasar builders Jeff and Jenny Karls are in the documentary “Going Attractions: Back to the Drive-In”. It was shot in the summer of 2021 as a sequel to the 2013 original “Going Attractions”.
The article called the Quasar a “540-car, single 85-foot screen” drive-in, so maybe CT could use that as the capacity figure.
The Manlius Art Cinema will have new operators next week, according to a story at Syracuse.com. Nat Tobin and Eileen Lowell are selling the place to Dan Chapman and Joe Ori, owners of A.W. Wander, a nearby restaurant. The article said the theater holds 200 seats and is the oldest cinema in Onondaga County.
The Hartford Courant wrote on June 1, 1949 that the Waterford Drive-In, capacity 750 cars, had opened. Corporation officers included president Michael Radin, vice-president William Rabinowitz, and treasurer Lorraine Forcier, all of Hartford. Sherwood Gloth was the drive-in’s manager.
Kenmore, you’re much better at reading these maps than I am. Looking at the elevation maps and seeing Coal Creek to its west and the Neosho River to its north and east, I can’t see any indication that the original Sooner site wouldn’t be flood prone. (Then again, my experience is tainted by my visit to Miami OK in 2019 during a serious flood.) What are you seeing?
1) WaterWinterWonderland wrote earlier this year that Ron Gross of MichiganDrive-Ins.com found a newspaper article about the Mikado’s grand opening. The article said it was near the old Mikado school building on what was then M-171, now F-41. I wish that WWW had mentioned the date of that article. Maybe someone could find it and post it here?
2) The 1951 Film Daily Year Book included the Mikado in its drive-in list. The 1952 Theatre Catalog listed it as Closed (capacity 125, owner J. Ellis.)
3) The Motion Picture Almanac drive-in theater list was often lame. I suspect that they only edited it when someone wrote or called to point out a change. In this case, the MPA carried the Mikado (capacity 125) through its 1967 edition. The drive-in’s omission from the 1968 list was one of the very infrequent updates during the MPA’s 1967-76 quiet decade. It’s likely that the Mikado closed earlier than 1967.
4) Seriously, what is a drive-in theater? My take is that it requires a permanent location. (That’s reflected here by CinemaTreasures' style of listing two drive-ins when one moves to a second location, even within the same city. See the Holiday in Boulder CO: here and here. But I digress.) If the Mikado never had a permanent screen or viewing field, how is it different than somebody showing movies in his back yard? Since the Mikado is listed in enough places, I guess it’s appropriate for CT to maintain an entry here, whether that was a “real” drive-in or not.
The Exhibitor, July 26, 1950: “Operators of the Greater Burnham Drive-In, located in Derry Township, pleaded guilty to three charges of showing movies on Sunday, and posted $125 bail for appearance on a fourth charge which they appealed. Fines of $50 on each of the three charges to which guilty pleas were entered, and charges of $26.10 were assessed against the operators. The charge appealed involved a Saturday night showing which police claimed ran over midnight into Sunday morning. This involves an interpretation of whether Daylight Saving Time or Standard Time is to be used in interpreting the law. The show ended on the Saturday night in question at 11:45 p.m. standard time. S. H. Rothermel is the drive-in owner.” The drive-in was again fined $50 for showing “The Prince of Peace” on Sunday, Aug. 5, 1951, per a story in the following week’s Huntingdon Daily News.
My guess would be that the drive-in opened in 1950. Burnham Drive-In Theatre Inc filed incorporation papers on May 12, 1950. The drive-in construction roundup that was published in the Feb. 17, 1951 issue of Boxoffice included the Burnham among those that had opened in 1950. It had a capacity of 750 cars and was owned by Sidney Rothermel. (He still owned the place in August 1961, when an adjacent barn burned down, according to a Daily News story.)
The last newspaper ad for the Burnham that I could find was in the Aug. 6, 1982 edition of the Daily News. The corporation is improbably shown as still active, and Helen D. Rothermel is its president. See: https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_pa/49763
The Austin Daily Texan, writing a couple of years later about a night at the Rebel, said that its opening date was July 11, 1979.
The drive-in was surrounded by a corrugated tin fence about six feet high. Sound was delivered via “cine-fi,” an AM radio system that required clipping a connector to the car antenna. The article (published Sept. 21, 1981) said that most of the Rebel’s 840 parking spaces were filled on a Wednesday evening.
On June 12, 1956, the Ludington Daily News, writing about the Baldwin Senior Girl Scouts, mentioned the Pine-Aire Drive-In. It didn’t show up in the Motion Picture Almanac’s drive-in list until the 1960 edition (capacity 265, owner Dorr Brown, Glenn Wallace Circ.), which spelled it Pine Aire. I believe its correct spelling requires that extra E at the end.
IMHO, the University site should be listed under Ann Arbor. It’s just a half mile from the city limits, was traditionally included in industry lists under Ann Arbor, and is within the Ann Arbor School District.
The site is within the Pittsfield Township under Michigan’s atypical government structure. The Ypsilanti post office delivers the drive-in site’s mail, but it’s two miles away from the Ypsilanti city limits.
WaterWinterWonderland, the apparent source of many of the images uploaded here for the Waterford, says that the drive-in opened on April 15, 1948. I wonder whether it opened as the Starlite.
Film Daily, July 1, 1948: “Detroit — Impatient at having films scheduled for the Starlite Drive-In at Pontiac delivered to the Blue Sky Drive-In, located a few miles away, Starlite owners have decided to change the outdoor theater’s name to the Waterford Drive-In. Now they hope prints are not shipped to the Blue Water Drive-ln, some 60 miles away.”
The 1949 Film Daily Year Book didn’t list any Waterford Drive-Ins in Michigan and still included the Starlite under Pontiac. The Oakland Press newspaper clipping that Granola uploaded here a few years ago advertises 1947 films shown at the right address with the Waterford name, so I just don’t know.
Beginning with its 1950-51 edition, the Motion Picture Almanac listed the Starlight under Waterford MI, capacity 600, owner Starlight Drive-In Theatres, Inc. In the 1962 edition, that changed to “Drive-In,” owner C & S Drive-In Theas.
Austin American-Statesman, July 3, 1956: “SAN SABA, July 3 (CTS) - Fire completely destroyed the Corral Drive-In Theater, a mile south of San Saba, about 2:45 p.m. Monday (2). The fire was thought to have started from the sparks of a nearby trash or grass fire. A spokesman for the theater said that it would be rebuilt and would be ready for use in seven or eight weeks.”
The closest Google Maps address I could find for the former Hwy 13 (now 80) and ‘N’ is 9348 N Cth, Marshfield, WI 54449. By a 1980 aerial photo, it appeared that pasture land had already reclaimed the former drive-in site, and I could find no trace today.
Walter Maxwell started building his drive-in, probably next to his hay fields, in August 1951. It used “blast type” loudspeakers, which caused the Industrial Commission of Wisconsin to shut it down as of June 29, 1953. (The commission’s code required in-car speakers.) A Sept. 20, 1955 letter to the editor in the Marshfield News-Herald lamented that the drive-in was closed because of that order.
He might have violated that order. In November 1955, the State of Wisconsin charged that Maxwell had done so “on 10 occasions in 1953 and 1954” and asked Wood County Circuit Court to issue a fine and require him to upgrade his screen supports, toilet facilites and the loudspeaker system. Maxwell fixed everything except adding in-car speakers, saying “they might soon be obsolete,” and got the commission’s permission to reopen in August 1956.
In March 1958, Maxwell was again charged “for failure to equip his establishment with an individual speaker for each car.” In January 1959, Maxwell won the case when the judge ruled that the commission had overstepped its authority by trying to regulate speakers. That year, the drive-in resumed advertising as “Maxwell’s Parkway.” By 1962, its ads were simply “Maxwell’s.” The last News-Herald ad I could find was in August 1964.
In August 1999, an Associated Press article described the Sky-Vue, apparently in its first season, as being in Weston WI. “The Sky-Vue is on a 6 ½-acre spread with space for 300 vehicles,” it wrote. Todd Gress was the enthusiastic owner.
In June 2000, the Sky-Vue was advertising in the Wausau Daily Herald with a note “Now 2 Screens”. Its address was listed as 6615 County Road J, Schofield, and as “8 miles East of Hwy 51, 29E & Hwy J Interchange”.
The Sky-Vue’s 2002 ad described its location as “the intersection of Hwy 29E and Hwy J, Weston”. The last ad I could find for the drive-in was on Sept. 28, 2002.
The Daily Herald wrote in May 2003 that the Sky-Vue was about to be torn down. “The 6½-acre gravel-filled lot … was vacated at the end of last summer by Tim Suick, who was leasing the property after the Bank of Wausau foreclosed in 2001 on the original owner of the drive-in. The bank sold the property and equipment last fall, Suick said … Todd Gress, the original drive-in owner, bought the property in 1999 to
provide inexpensive showings in an open-air setting.” In September 2003, the property owners donated the concession building to move it to nearby Kennedy Park for Weston’s recreation and park department.
Columbia Daily Tribune, Aug. 14, 1948 (quoted 50 years later): “Work on a new Columbia drive-in theater, to be called the "Broadway Drive-In,” is expected to get under way next month, Rex P. Barrett, Columbia representative for the Commonwealth Theaters Corp. of Kansas City, announced today. The theater corporation yesterday completed the purchase of 14 acres of land on West Broadway from Dr. Lloyd Simpson for construction of the $75,000 theater. The site which is part of the old Sneed farm, was purchased by Dr. Simpson from the Boone County Fair board. Located about one mile from town, the new theater will be located on a lot 1320 feet deep with a 400 foot frontage on West Broadway. It is situated south of the Boone County Fair grounds."
Boxoffice, Oct. 19, 1940: “Piedmont - A. B. Jefferis is now operating his new 400-seater.”
Boxoffice, Jan. 6, 1940: “Dick Lemucchi has opened the Arvin, a 650-seat house, on the site of a theatre burned to the ground some time ago.”
Boxoffice, May 4, 1940: “Johnstown - The Pix, a 200 seater, and the only theatre here, was opened recently by R. E. Heald.”
As another poster mentioned, before it changed to the 99, this place had its grand opening as simply Drive-In Theatre.
Boxoffice, March 30, 1940: “Colton, Cal. - M. A. Rogers and Thomas Burgess have been sued by Park-In Theatres, Inc., of Camden, N. J., on charges of patent infringement in connection with a Drive-In Theatre they operate here.”
Boxoffice, March 30, 1940: “Tucson, Ariz. - This community now lays claim to having the only woman manager of a drive-in theatre in the United States. Nelle Brock, formerly of Cincinnati, has replaced A. W. Bartlett as manager of the Drive-In Theatre here.”
The Fremont Tribune ran a story in May 2022 noting that Quasar builders Jeff and Jenny Karls are in the documentary “Going Attractions: Back to the Drive-In”. It was shot in the summer of 2021 as a sequel to the 2013 original “Going Attractions”.
The article called the Quasar a “540-car, single 85-foot screen” drive-in, so maybe CT could use that as the capacity figure.
The Manlius Art Cinema will have new operators next week, according to a story at Syracuse.com. Nat Tobin and Eileen Lowell are selling the place to Dan Chapman and Joe Ori, owners of A.W. Wander, a nearby restaurant. The article said the theater holds 200 seats and is the oldest cinema in Onondaga County.
The Hartford Courant wrote on June 1, 1949 that the Waterford Drive-In, capacity 750 cars, had opened. Corporation officers included president Michael Radin, vice-president William Rabinowitz, and treasurer Lorraine Forcier, all of Hartford. Sherwood Gloth was the drive-in’s manager.
Kenmore, you’re much better at reading these maps than I am. Looking at the elevation maps and seeing Coal Creek to its west and the Neosho River to its north and east, I can’t see any indication that the original Sooner site wouldn’t be flood prone. (Then again, my experience is tainted by my visit to Miami OK in 2019 during a serious flood.) What are you seeing?
1) WaterWinterWonderland wrote earlier this year that Ron Gross of MichiganDrive-Ins.com found a newspaper article about the Mikado’s grand opening. The article said it was near the old Mikado school building on what was then M-171, now F-41. I wish that WWW had mentioned the date of that article. Maybe someone could find it and post it here?
2) The 1951 Film Daily Year Book included the Mikado in its drive-in list. The 1952 Theatre Catalog listed it as Closed (capacity 125, owner J. Ellis.)
3) The Motion Picture Almanac drive-in theater list was often lame. I suspect that they only edited it when someone wrote or called to point out a change. In this case, the MPA carried the Mikado (capacity 125) through its 1967 edition. The drive-in’s omission from the 1968 list was one of the very infrequent updates during the MPA’s 1967-76 quiet decade. It’s likely that the Mikado closed earlier than 1967.
4) Seriously, what is a drive-in theater? My take is that it requires a permanent location. (That’s reflected here by CinemaTreasures' style of listing two drive-ins when one moves to a second location, even within the same city. See the Holiday in Boulder CO: here and here. But I digress.) If the Mikado never had a permanent screen or viewing field, how is it different than somebody showing movies in his back yard? Since the Mikado is listed in enough places, I guess it’s appropriate for CT to maintain an entry here, whether that was a “real” drive-in or not.
What a great photo! I found it at the Utah Dept. of Cultural & Community Engagement. It says that Shipler Commercial Photographers took the picture on Aug. 2, 1949, and that the digital version is © 2009 Utah State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.
The Exhibitor, July 26, 1950: “Operators of the Greater Burnham Drive-In, located in Derry Township, pleaded guilty to three charges of showing movies on Sunday, and posted $125 bail for appearance on a fourth charge which they appealed. Fines of $50 on each of the three charges to which guilty pleas were entered, and charges of $26.10 were assessed against the operators. The charge appealed involved a Saturday night showing which police claimed ran over midnight into Sunday morning. This involves an interpretation of whether Daylight Saving Time or Standard Time is to be used in interpreting the law. The show ended on the Saturday night in question at 11:45 p.m. standard time. S. H. Rothermel is the drive-in owner.” The drive-in was again fined $50 for showing “The Prince of Peace” on Sunday, Aug. 5, 1951, per a story in the following week’s Huntingdon Daily News.
My guess would be that the drive-in opened in 1950. Burnham Drive-In Theatre Inc filed incorporation papers on May 12, 1950. The drive-in construction roundup that was published in the Feb. 17, 1951 issue of Boxoffice included the Burnham among those that had opened in 1950. It had a capacity of 750 cars and was owned by Sidney Rothermel. (He still owned the place in August 1961, when an adjacent barn burned down, according to a Daily News story.)
The last newspaper ad for the Burnham that I could find was in the Aug. 6, 1982 edition of the Daily News. The corporation is improbably shown as still active, and Helen D. Rothermel is its president. See: https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_pa/49763
The Austin Daily Texan, writing a couple of years later about a night at the Rebel, said that its opening date was July 11, 1979.
The drive-in was surrounded by a corrugated tin fence about six feet high. Sound was delivered via “cine-fi,” an AM radio system that required clipping a connector to the car antenna. The article (published Sept. 21, 1981) said that most of the Rebel’s 840 parking spaces were filled on a Wednesday evening.
On June 12, 1956, the Ludington Daily News, writing about the Baldwin Senior Girl Scouts, mentioned the Pine-Aire Drive-In. It didn’t show up in the Motion Picture Almanac’s drive-in list until the 1960 edition (capacity 265, owner Dorr Brown, Glenn Wallace Circ.), which spelled it Pine Aire. I believe its correct spelling requires that extra E at the end.
IMHO, the University site should be listed under Ann Arbor. It’s just a half mile from the city limits, was traditionally included in industry lists under Ann Arbor, and is within the Ann Arbor School District.
The site is within the Pittsfield Township under Michigan’s atypical government structure. The Ypsilanti post office delivers the drive-in site’s mail, but it’s two miles away from the Ypsilanti city limits.
In his 2014 book “Michigan’s Drive-In Theaters,” Harry Skrdla’s list included the “Star-Lite” as the only drive-in in Waterford, capacity 280 cars.
WaterWinterWonderland says this clipping is from the Oakland Press. No date, but the movies were all released in 1947.
WaterWinterWonderland, the apparent source of many of the images uploaded here for the Waterford, says that the drive-in opened on April 15, 1948. I wonder whether it opened as the Starlite.
Film Daily, July 1, 1948: “Detroit — Impatient at having films scheduled for the Starlite Drive-In at Pontiac delivered to the Blue Sky Drive-In, located a few miles away, Starlite owners have decided to change the outdoor theater’s name to the Waterford Drive-In. Now they hope prints are not shipped to the Blue Water Drive-ln, some 60 miles away.”
The 1949 Film Daily Year Book didn’t list any Waterford Drive-Ins in Michigan and still included the Starlite under Pontiac. The Oakland Press newspaper clipping that Granola uploaded here a few years ago advertises 1947 films shown at the right address with the Waterford name, so I just don’t know.
Beginning with its 1950-51 edition, the Motion Picture Almanac listed the Starlight under Waterford MI, capacity 600, owner Starlight Drive-In Theatres, Inc. In the 1962 edition, that changed to “Drive-In,” owner C & S Drive-In Theas.
Austin American-Statesman, July 3, 1956: “SAN SABA, July 3 (CTS) - Fire completely destroyed the Corral Drive-In Theater, a mile south of San Saba, about 2:45 p.m. Monday (2). The fire was thought to have started from the sparks of a nearby trash or grass fire. A spokesman for the theater said that it would be rebuilt and would be ready for use in seven or eight weeks.”
In the 1955-56 Theatre Catalog, the only drive-in listed in Zapata was the Ramos, owner Felix Ramos, capacity 200. Same drive-in?
The closest Google Maps address I could find for the former Hwy 13 (now 80) and ‘N’ is 9348 N Cth, Marshfield, WI 54449. By a 1980 aerial photo, it appeared that pasture land had already reclaimed the former drive-in site, and I could find no trace today.
Walter Maxwell started building his drive-in, probably next to his hay fields, in August 1951. It used “blast type” loudspeakers, which caused the Industrial Commission of Wisconsin to shut it down as of June 29, 1953. (The commission’s code required in-car speakers.) A Sept. 20, 1955 letter to the editor in the Marshfield News-Herald lamented that the drive-in was closed because of that order.
He might have violated that order. In November 1955, the State of Wisconsin charged that Maxwell had done so “on 10 occasions in 1953 and 1954” and asked Wood County Circuit Court to issue a fine and require him to upgrade his screen supports, toilet facilites and the loudspeaker system. Maxwell fixed everything except adding in-car speakers, saying “they might soon be obsolete,” and got the commission’s permission to reopen in August 1956.
In March 1958, Maxwell was again charged “for failure to equip his establishment with an individual speaker for each car.” In January 1959, Maxwell won the case when the judge ruled that the commission had overstepped its authority by trying to regulate speakers. That year, the drive-in resumed advertising as “Maxwell’s Parkway.” By 1962, its ads were simply “Maxwell’s.” The last News-Herald ad I could find was in August 1964.
That’s a gorgeous Photoshop based on the original photo that Bill Huelbig uploaded here earlier. I love the twilight colors and neon restoration.
In August 1999, an Associated Press article described the Sky-Vue, apparently in its first season, as being in Weston WI. “The Sky-Vue is on a 6 ½-acre spread with space for 300 vehicles,” it wrote. Todd Gress was the enthusiastic owner.
In June 2000, the Sky-Vue was advertising in the Wausau Daily Herald with a note “Now 2 Screens”. Its address was listed as 6615 County Road J, Schofield, and as “8 miles East of Hwy 51, 29E & Hwy J Interchange”.
The Sky-Vue’s 2002 ad described its location as “the intersection of Hwy 29E and Hwy J, Weston”. The last ad I could find for the drive-in was on Sept. 28, 2002.
The Daily Herald wrote in May 2003 that the Sky-Vue was about to be torn down. “The 6½-acre gravel-filled lot … was vacated at the end of last summer by Tim Suick, who was leasing the property after the Bank of Wausau foreclosed in 2001 on the original owner of the drive-in. The bank sold the property and equipment last fall, Suick said … Todd Gress, the original drive-in owner, bought the property in 1999 to provide inexpensive showings in an open-air setting.” In September 2003, the property owners donated the concession building to move it to nearby Kennedy Park for Weston’s recreation and park department.