Burnham Drive-In

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