Starlite Drive-In
2200 Harvard Street,
Sacramento,
CA
95815
2200 Harvard Street,
Sacramento,
CA
95815
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An update on this particular drive-in…this was the second drive-in theatre for the Sacramento area, not counting the El Rancho Drive-In in West Sacramento that opened before the Skyview in South Sacramento. Cinerama Theatres (a division of Pacific Theatres) was the last owner of this drive-in, and after researching advertisements in the Sacramento Bee, this drive-in continued operating way past 1979. It closed around mid- or late-1981. The last known recorded message announced it was “closed for repairs”. Yeah, right. In actuality, KOVR-TV (a local Sacramento TV station) reported the truth about the Starlite–it had closed for good, the property being sold to hotel owners. This property would eventually become a Hilton Hotel. A few years after the Starlite closed, I took a visit to Old Sacramento and an antique store, which had the neon Starlite marquee salvaged…at least at that time. I do not know what happened to this sign, or its fate today.
The KCRA archives has film of the Starlite Drive-in, circa 1970, back when it was still a single screen drive-in. It is part of a reel on Sacramento Theatres and Drive-Ins which is available on YouTube (just do a search of it and you’ll see this piece, which includes the brief footage of the drive-in in its 1970s heyday).
I too was a visitor to this drive in. I saw some Disney films, the James Bond film “Live And Let Die”, “A Piece of the Action”, and a 1979 re-issue of “Star Wars” at the Starlite. In fact, the final time I visited the Starlite was that “Star Wars” reissue with an early trailer for “The Empire Strikes Back” attached at the end.
In the last days of this drive-in, the Starlite was equipped with Cine-Fi Car Radio Sound. It was AM Mono, but still improved fidelity over your average in-car speakers.
Today, just picture in your mind driving along I-80 going past Arden Way the drive-in property, with the fence to the side of the theatre advertising movies for other sister theatres from the Blumenfeld chain (the Tower & Esquire theatres and Fruitridge Drive In). Then, coming back, imagine the back side of the Main Screen 1 with the words Starlite and below the words “where shopping is a pleasure…Town & Country Shopping Center”. The KCRA footage on YouTube shows the back of the screen with only the partially damaged Starlite logo and a separate marquee showing the attractions to come.
I wish more photos and/or film footage of the Starlite would resurface…but thankfully the existing KCRA footage is the best we have of the Starlite.
RIP Starlite Drive-In
1950-1981
Sacramento Bee, Oct. 8, 1949: “A drivein theater, estimated to cost $20,000, was under construction today at South Fourteenth Street, Arden Way and the North Sacramento Freeway. A permit to build the theater was issued by the county board of supervisors last month to Wilbur B. Baptist of 4425 Franklin Boulevard, representing the Allied Theaters Corporation. The show house will be named Starlite Drivein Theater and will be managed by a San Francisco firm which operates similar theaters in San Francisco and Belmont.”
The grand opening, almost a year later, featured Jack Carson in “The Good Humor Man” and Jon Hall in “(On) The Isle of Samoa.”
After the grand opening (posted above), every ad I’ve seen spelled it Starlite. By the following week, it was packaged with the El Rancho and Fruitridge drive-ins.
Boxoffice, March 31, 1958: “A $60,000 fire that destroyed the screen at the Starlite Drive-In March 12 may have been started by three boys, according to deputy sheriffs. A 13-year-old boy has admitted that he and two other boys, both 14, set fire to a fence running alongside the theatre the day of the screen fire. The boys said they tried to put out the fence fire with sand, then fled when this method failed to work.”
Site is now a Hilton Hotel.
Second screen added in 1973. Closed in 1979. 975 cars.
Here is a 1957 aerial view:
http://tinyurl.com/yd2scbf