Lamont Drive-In
11800 Main Street,
Lamont,
CA
93241
11800 Main Street,
Lamont,
CA
93241
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Additional Info
Previously operated by: Sero Enterprises
Architects: J. Arthur Drielsma
Previous Names: South Lamont Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In
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Opened in 1950 as the Lamont Drive-In. In 1955 it was renamed South Lamont Drive-In was owned by Jim Banducci, who also operated theaters in the San Joaquin Valley towns of Arvin and Oildale.
Los Angeles architect J. Arthur Drielsma designed the theater to include a restaurant, located under the screen tower, which could serve both theater patrons and outside customers, who were provided with a separate parking lot. By 1963 it had been renamed Thunderbird Drive-In. It was still open in 1966 operating as the Lamont Drive-In. It was closed in 1976.
Contributed by
Joe Vogel
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
Drive-ins.com notes that the theater was demolished to make way for a housing development.
Approx. address for this drive-in was 11800 Main Street.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think this may also have operated under the name Thunderbird Drive-In. Can anyone from the area confirm this?
Boxoffice, Nov. 14, 1966: “The Lamont Drive-In Theatre, Lamont, Calif., has been taken over by Cecil Carlton, who has been operating the Crest Drive-In, Bakersfield, for the past 15 years. Also in his chain are the Mount Baldy Drive-In, Pomona; Magnolia Drive-In, Riverside, and others in Arizona and California.”
NYozoner is right. We need to add Thunderbird Drive-In as a previous name. Plus, its final name was the no-direction Lamont Drive-In, so CT style says that should be the name for this page.
The 1963 Los Angeles film exchange directory included the Thunderbird Drive-In in Lamont, run by Sero Amusement.
The drive-in was advertising in the Bakersfield Californian as the Thunderbird by September 1960, and those ads continued into September 1966. By December 1966, it was advertising as the Lamont Drive-In. The last Lamont ad I could find in the Californian was Nov. 1, 1968. That one featured Spanish-language films, so it’s possible that the drive-in continued to operate without advertising in an English-language newspaper.
The Motion Picture Almanac was often slow to respond to changes. The MPA drive-in list entries serving Lamont changed from Lamont (1950-54), to South Lamont (1955-62), to Thunderbird (1963-76). When the MPA rebooted its list in 1977, there was nothing active in Lamont.
The MPA listed owners as Karr & Kendig (1950-55), then spelled Karr & Kendic (1956-61), then C. E. Langford & Assoc. (1962), then Los Angeles Drive-In Thea. Co. (1963-66). MPA did not include owner info in its 1967-76 drive-in lists. All of these entries showed a capacity of 450 cars.