Totowa Drive-In
701 Union Boulevard,
Totowa,
NJ
07512
701 Union Boulevard,
Totowa,
NJ
07512
2 people
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Showing 21 comments
An server farm now stands on the drive-in site.
This opened as the Route 6 Drive-In theatre on May 28th, 1948. Around 1950 or later it was listed as the Totowa Drive-In. Grand opening ads posted. Directions read: “on Route 6, two miles east of the Paterson Plank Road next to Kiddieland”.
The Totowa Drive-In opened its gates by the Eastern Drive-In Corporation chain on May 28, 1948 with “Her Husband Affairs” and “On The Old Spanish Trail” (unknown if any extras added).
The Totowa Drive-In closed on September 17, 1974 with “Working Girl” and “Single Girls”, and was last operated by General Cinema.
Was open as early as 1948, closed in September 1974.
Approx. address for this drive-in was 244 U.S. 46.
Part of the drive-in is occupied by Hoffman La Roche Printing.
Old postcard:
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Still open as of 1971 – thanks again Bill:
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Michael: I for one would love to see them, especially the Los Angeles ones which I’ve never seen. Thanks!
I too enjoy seeing the old newspaper ads, and am in agreement regarding the inability to keep track of recent postings made to existing theater entries. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I emailed the site editors the suggestion of adding a “more comments” link underneath the ten theaters on display in the margin (New Theaters and Updated Theaters have this option, so why not the Recent Comments, especially since the Recent Comments is the most popular of those three categories). This way, a longer list can be viewed which is helpful to those of us who do not live on the site 24/7. One visit a day or even every now and then would provide an opportunity to see what recent comments have been made. The way it is set up now, once a theater’s latest comment becomes the eleventh most recent comment, you’re out of luck.
A couple ways of getting around this: (1) select the email option so that when someone replies you’ll know about it (this applies only to those threads in which you contributed), and (2) go to your own profile (or someone elses) and click the theaters listed in an attempt to see if any new posts have been made.
Re the newspaper ads… Between Bill Kallay and myself we have hundreds of these things, some simply for our collection and most because of some particular form of research. I find it better to make a photocopy rather than simply taking hand-written notes while the microfilm is loaded (though this method is more expensive and results in a space and filing issue). We have ads for every advertised 70mm release over the past 50 years for the New York and Los Angeles regions plus many ads from other special process and roadshow type films and lots of theater grand openings (and scattered ads from other regions).
Bill and I never figured on posting these things, but if there’s sufficient interest…
There’s real showmanship on display in these ads. Look how many things are happening on any one of these pages: Free Coffee Served, Free Color TV Lounge, Ladies' Night, Guys' Night Out, Children Under 12 Free, etc.
Compare it to today, when you’re lucky just to be able to see a halfway-decent movie.
What I like best about the ads are the ones that are personalized by the theater owners or managers, with ad copy specific to the movies being shown. Like these for the Century’s Paramus and Pearl River Theaters:
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Another thing I find interesting about the ads, especially from the late 60s, is that they do not look very different from the ads I grew up with in the 70s. It appears that back in the 50s, the theaters were divided up by the owner of the circuit: Brandt, Century, etc. Then, around the mid 60s, it looks like that changed to simply listing the theater by location. The latter option obviously makes more sense, at least to me.
Bill, I also have work to do which unfortunately keeps me off the site for hours at a time. So someone might post a cool ad and by the time I get back to the site, it’s off the recent comment listing. And another thing is my company’s firewall prevents me from viewing these ads at work. I have to write down where they’ve been posted and take a look when I get home. What’s so cool is that the people posting these ads are doing them for the places I grew up with on Long Island AND where I now live (northern NJ). I get the best of both.
Here’s a shortcut to the ads I recently posted. Go to my profile:
/users/82
and the first 7 or 8 theaters in the Comments column have new ads posted. I also recently posted some for the Lafayette in Suffern and the Fox and the Oritani in Hackensack that you might not have seen.
CConnolly – I’m having the same problem you are, because I keep searching around for comments and reactions (like yours) to the ads I’ve posted! The only way I’ve been able to do it is to look in the Recent Comments column and if the theater’s in North Jersey, it might be what I’m looking for. But the Recent Comments column fills up so quickly now that the site is very popular, so that method often doesn’t work. I think your idea about a separate section for the ads is an excellent one – that’s probably the best solution.
Ok…to RobertR, Bill Huelbig and anyone else who has been posting these old movie ads…
First off, I LOVE these things! It’s brought a whole new level of interest to this site. I can’t wait to see where any new ones have been posted.
BUT…it’s driving me nutty clicking on all these theaters trying to determine where they are.
Is there any way we could get the site administrator to set something up so we can have easy access to these? As much as I like trolling around on the various sites and it’s fun to stumble on to a newly posted ad, it’s time consuming.
But please, PLEASE keep doing it. We all must be of the same mind set because we’re getting a kick out of these ads!
Bill: here is your 1953 ad which shows a lot of the area drive ins:
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On this date (7/17/63) the Totowa was playing one of my favorite low-budget horror movies:
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This ad is from 1963, when the Totowa Drive-In was showing one of the best movies ever made:
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My memory might be off, but I believe the entrance was on Route 46 Eastbound, across the highway from the where the Totowa Cinema was and right about where the “The Lantern” char-broil used to be.
Where exactly on Route 46 was this located?