A Driving Force

Human beings have a talent for combining things: Clocks and radios, washers and dryers, Brittany Spears and mental illness. Sometimes by accident. I can't tell you how many times I used to walk down the street with an open container of peanut butter only to run into someone with a big slab of chocolate. But every time it happened we both thought, "Hey, these are two great tastes that taste great together!" And so in the history of cinema it wasn't long before someone thought to themselves, "Boy people sure are lazy. There's got to be some way I can show them a movie without them even having to step foot out of their car. I've got it!" That eureka moment came to Richard Hollingshead of Camden, New Jersey. On June 6, 1933 he opened the Camden Automobile Theatre with a showing of Wife Beware starring Adolph Menjou. According to Patrick Robertson's Movie Facts and Feats (1988, Guiness Publishing, p 190) the screen measured 40 ft by 30 ft and the 10 acre site held 400 cars. And there were no car speakers. Nope, the sound came from massive ultra-loud screen speakers. It was another five years before there were even ten in the country and here they are in the order they appeared, courtesy of the Drive-In Theater website, whose history section also elaborates on the information given above. Enjoy.

1. Drive-In Theatre: Camden, New Jersey. June 6, 1933

2. Shankweiler's Auto Park: Orefield, Pennsylvania. April 15, 1934

3. Drive-In Short Reel Theater: Galveston, Texas. July 5, 1934

4. Pico: Los Angeles, California. September 9, 1934

5. Weymouth Drive-In Theatre: Weymouth, Massachusetts. May 6 1936

6. Starlight Auto Theatre: Akron, Ohio. Summer, 1937

7. Lynn Open Air Theater: Lynn, Massachusetts. July, 1937

8. Providence: Providence, Rhode Island. July 21, 1937

9. Miami Drive-In: Miami, Florida. February 25, 1938

10. Detroit Drive-In: Detroit, Michigan. June 2, 1938