Have you ever driven into a movie theatre?

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When you think of American drive-in movie theatres you may think about the 1950s: the golden age of in-car cinema. One of the first of these, however, was opened 80 years ago this weekend in the city of Miami, Florida. According to the Miami Daily News, the cinema charged admission of 35 cents per person. That supposedly was more than the average ticket price at an ordinary theatre, and so they soon had to reduce the admission price to 25 cents.

There were no in-car speakers yet, as demonstrated by the lovely Natalie Wood on the picture above. Wood starred in Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story and must have been seen on the drive-in screen and be heard through the in-car speakers herself very frequently. 80 years ago the sound for the movies was provided by large speakers next to the main screen.

Drive-in theatres became a hit after the War, and by the early 1950s, over 800 of them were in use across the US. By the late 1950s there were some 4,000. Detroit’s Bel Air drive-in cinema, built in 1950, became famous due to its size, being able to have more than 2,000 cars at a time. From 1956, Baltimore had Bengie’s drive-in, which claimed to have the biggest movie screen in the United States: 52 by 100 feet. Real estate prices have made them too expensive these days. Nowadays only about 330 are operating in America. At least six of them are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

(Words editor, picture archive)
 

Originally published on February 22, 2018

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