My parent were not fun people. We didn’t have people over. Didn’t take vacations. Didn’t eat out. Didn’t go to the movies much, but we did occasionally go to the drive-in, probably because it was cheap and comfortable. This would have been in southern California in the latter half of the 1950s.
I got to wear my pajamas in the car and I probably brought a pillow and blanket. Only child, so I had the whole back seat to myself. My father would hang the speaker on his partially rolled-down window. I think I got to go to the playground at the front before the movie, even in my jammies. Heck, I was around six or seven. We might have bought popcorn at the concession stand, or maybe we brought it from home.
In 1967 I went with a girlfriend and her father (huh?) to see Bedazzled with Dudley Moore and Raquel Welch. That was awkward, as I recall. I remember going in college (1969) with a guy when it was cold outside. Not good drive-in weather. He wanted to make out, but for me… ewwww. No way. The movie was The Sterile Cuckoo with Liza Minnelli.
Even as late as 1972-73, my first husband and I and a bunch of friends went when there was a special price on-- 99 cents per carload. We had a pickup truck (gift from his father) and we’d back it into the slot and hang the speaker somewhere along the side of the bed. We’d have a cooler of snacks–don’t think we had beer, probably just sodas. Everyone was broke, so I’m sure we didn’t buy concessions.
I remember seeing 20,000 Leagues under the Sea at a drive-in. Two families of 11 total went in two cars while we were in Florida. I assume that was during spring break (my father taught school). As the movie came out in Dec 1954, I guess this was March of 1955 so I would have been almost 6.
As a graduate student, I lived in a high-rise school owned building. My roommate had a telescope. We could see a drive-in screen out the window. Unfortunately I couldn’t read lips.
Back in the middle 50’s I took a date to a drive-in down near Morgan City, Louisiana. Don’t remember at all what the move was, but about half-way thru the move we both heard water splashing. A quick investigation (from the inside of the car) disclosed that a girl in the next car evidently had decided that going to the concession stand, where they had the rest rooms in back) would have taken way too long, so she was using one of the rear tires on their car as a target. Evidently worked like a charm.
Took my date and myself a little time to get back into the movie.
Remember the spike strips at the exit? They’d ruin your tires if you tried driving into the lot.
You could only exit from that area.
I didn’t get to go when drive-ins were nice. Playground for kids, bleacher seats if you wanted to get out of the car.
That was all run down when I went in the mid 70’s. It wasn’t family friendly anymore. The R rated movies had too much sex & violence. Couldn’t bring young kids.
i went to the drive in the 70s and 80s and some of the 90s … our last drive in closed in 95 after going to weekends only our 5.00 night was Wednesdays but over the years it went from 2 screens to one and then just weekends and i didn’t even know it was closing until i read in the paper about the last movies it showed ,
We used to go in the winter and be the only ones there … lady that ran it thought it was nuts but sometimes shed just give us stuff so it didn’t go stale … and since we brought out own it was heaven sooo much junk food … one time she even let us have pizza delivered ,
I remember my mother and grandmother dragging my brother and I along to see Nicholas and Alexandra at a drive in. I was probably 7 at the time. Three-hours-and-eight-minutes and about the only thing I remember is mom making me get down on the floor of the back seat at the end of the movie so I wouldn’t see all the Romanovs get shot.
I have occasionally considered watching the movie as an adult to find out what I missed.
Our family would go from time to time back in the 1960s and 1970s. The features were what we went to see, but there was also a B-picture, and I grew to love those. Wish I could find them today.
And the dancing popcorn and candy bars between the movies were always fun.
You have my parents! I tell my kids sometimes things about my childhood, such as that the first time I ate in a restaurant was when I was 16 and my sister way paying. We sometimes had hamburgers but it was always to go. We did take vacations, but my father was always really tense, so I don’t any have good memories of them. My sister simply stopped taking them as an adult. I was in my 40s before it hit me that people go on vacation because it’s fun.
Anyway, we went to the drive-in a couple of times. Once when I was really small, they took us to see Bambi and apparently it was pretty scary for a four-year-old. We may have gone another time after that, but for father who grew up in the depression on a dirt farm in central Utah, movies were a waste of money.
One benefit of having a doctor for a father was that we had specimen bottles so we didn’t have to make the restroom trek.
I can’t find a reference to it, but I do remember an intermission game where you were supposed to chase a moving light around on the screen (this was in the '50s when spotlights on cars were fairly common, IIRC to find house numbers on unlighted streets). Does this ring a bell and if so, does anyone remember the name?
In the '50s my parents had a station wagon, so my brother and I camped out in the back. We pretty much always fell asleep before the movie was over and woke up back home. No seat belts in those days.
The first movie I remember seeing in a drive-in was The Story of Mankind with lots of people including Grouch and Harpo Marx. I would have been not quite six.
We went fairly often.
I saw Star Wars for the first time in LA at a drive-in. When we went to the Thousand Islands we’d often take the kids to one on the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence. And there was one in San Jose which let you in for free or for very cheap after 10 pm or so. My daughter went to that one a lot.
Weirdest one: a drive-in NE of Philadelphia by US 1 showed either R or X rated movies. I saw skin, but we went by too fast to tell more. Weird that it was visible from the road, and there was also a motel with five or six stories, some of the rooms of which had a good view of the screen. Then they finished 95 and we went that way, so I don’t know when it got torn down.
My mom worked at a drive-in for awhile and so we got in for free and we could have all the popcorn and soda we wanted, as long as we brought our own containers.
This made us very popular with all the kids on the block.
It was great fun. We’d go every night that we could. After we’d seen the movie the first night, we’d just play at the playground on all the other nights until a new movie came out. I can’t recall all the movies we saw.
The only time our family went to a drive-in as a group was probably '66 or '67 in Baltimore. Mom and Dad loaded the 5 of us kids into the station wagon, with blankets and pillows, of course. I’m pretty sure it was a double feature, but the only one I remember was Cat Ballou. And pretty much all I remembered about it was a drunk Lee Marvin singing Happy Birthday and blowing out candles around the casket at the funeral. I thought that was hilarious!!
Years later, I saw the movie in its entirety - not exactly kid-friendly, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t care anyway.
When we lived in Jacksonville, in the mid-to-late 80s, there was a crappy drive-in (doubled as a flea market on weekends) that showed heavily edited porn. I’d never seen a porno, so one night, we went to see Debbie Does Dallas, taking our 1-y/o baby along. The movie was awful - maybe the original uncut version was better… who knows? The funniest part was my husband holding our daughter as she held on to the steering wheel, pretending to drive.
I just looked - it was called Playtime Drive In and it closed in 2008 - the end of an era.
I’m surprised drive-ins didn’t last. They had a lot of advantages over indoor theaters.
You could dress like you wanted.
Talk & joke around during the movie
Bring your own food and beverage, including beer
Kids could watch the movie until they fell asleep. You didn’t have to wake them up to go home.
And, dating couples liked the privacy of a car. Cough
And they can’t afford to be first run much anymore, either, because people bring their own food rather than count on the concessions.
Still, my wife and I go to the Ford-Wyoming once every year or so, and I can’t wait for my daughter to be aware of going to the drive-in. It was a frequent summer treat for my brother and I during the late 1970’s and very early 1980’s.
It was two movies instead of one, if we could stay awake. And, it let us stay up late. We did sometimes purchase from the concessions: foot-long hot dogs before Subway apparently stole the trademark. We always brought out own popcorn, though, popped on the stove and put into a large, paper grocery bag.
In 1996 my daughter was six years old and convinced me she was fine watching Twister (PG-13). She told me it was about weather, so how scary could that be?
She handled the movie just fine. But as a lead-in to the movie they played a siren sound effect and had a strobe light flashing. The announcer read this cheesy announcement about a tornado approaching the drive in. She freaked out over that, until I explained they were just goofing around.