Drive-in Theaters Then And Now

By Author: David Andrews
Total Articles: 197
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Remember Grease? How about American Graffiti? The original tagline for the latter movie was "Where were you in '62?" Well, back in those days, if you were young and full of vim, chances were good that you were in a car. The glory days of America's automotive lifestyle fell on the 50s and 60s, the halcyon decade and a half that auto shippers remember well - where newly-affordable cars existed at the same time as still-affordable gasoline.

One of the peculiarly American products of the time was the drive-in theater. The concept was born in the fertile mind of New Jersey businessman Richard Hollingshead, back in 1932. Despite its later reputation as a make-out spot for teenagers, the original sales pitch for the new idea was oriented towards families with children, whose noisy antics would be problematic in an ordinary movie theater.

Over the following 2-3 decades, the business model was refined and specialized, and various technical issues were addressed with different levels of success. The problem of sound was one of the particularly acute, since the open-air nature of the venues made it difficult to deliver adequate ...
... sound to all parts of the theater. For a long time, theaters solved this problem by issuing individual speakers for each car; however, this led to problems of its own, such as theft and vandalism. In the waning days of the drive-in heyday, some theater owners began installing low-powered radio stations that would transmit the soundtrack to the immediate vicinity of the theater, in a way that could be picked up on car stereos, offering increased sound quality while eliminating the need for specialized equipment.

This is a solution still most frequently used today, although the Federal Communications Commission has declared FM transmitters to be illegal for drive-in use. Despite this, many theaters persevere at their own risk.

Another difficulty unique to drive-in theaters was that they could only show movies at night - movie projectors are simply not powerful enough to compete with daylight, and it's impossible to see a picture on the screen while the sun is up. Even at enclosed theaters, where overhead lights provide only the fraction of the brightness of sunlight, it's barely possible to see an image on the screen until they are turned off. A number of shielding options were attempted to adapt drive-in screens to daylight, but none of them panned out.

There were a number of things that led to the decline of drive-ins as entertainment. Increasing real estate costs in many parts of the country made it harder for them to offer competitive pricing, even with brisk concession business. High gas prices, giant multiplex theaters with airfield-sized parking lots, as well as the rapid increase in home-based entertainment options that was ushered in with affordable VCR's made drive-in theaters less attractive and more cumbersome as family entertainment.

In the 70s, theaters responded to the decline in family attendance by shifting their target demographics, marketing increasingly risky entertainment. This was the era of the cheap grindhouse film; these brought in thrill-seeking crowds, but served to worsen the reputation of drive-in theaters, lowering attendance even further.

The institution, consigned since the 80s to the status of a cultural fossil, has been seeing something of a comeback in recent years. The availability and low cost of projection technology has led to a revival of the drive-in scene, this time oriented mostly towards do-it-yourselfers and fans of independent cinema. Indie drive-ins are one of the few ways to see a limited-distribution movie on anything approaching a big screen. Armed with micro-radio transmitters and LCD projectors, "guerrilla" drive-in operators seek out quiet spots with large blank walls, where they can share experimental films and other alternative videos.

As a result of this unexpected revival, there are now a little less than 400 drive-in theaters in the United States. it seems that the uniquely American cultural tradition continues to live on.

This article was written by Patriot Auto Carriers, a auto shipper company that handles auto shipping.