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 The
Midway Twin
Originally designed by famed
architect Jack Vogel, the Midway had featured the last standing sleek
blue screen tower designed by Vogel. This screen tower was destroyed
by a storm in December 2000. The new screen 1 screen-tower is a large
Selby tower. The screen tower in the 1997 pictures below is no longer
standing. There is still evidence that this was a Vogel-design - the
diamond & flags sign is similar to the signage Vogel used at the
still-standing Winter and Bengies Ozoners. |
 The
Mayfield Road
Opened in 1945 the Mayfield Road has a new single screen with a
capacity of 350 cars. The original screen was lost to a wind storm in
1993.
Photo with old screen. |
A
Little Drive-In Theatre History - YEAR 2008 MARKS 75 YEARS OF THE
DRIVE-IN THEATRE INVENTION.
A young sales manager by the name of Richard
Hollingshead who worked at his father's Auto Products Store, had an
idea to invent something that combined his two interests: cars and
movies.
Richard Hollingshead's vision was an open-air movie theater where
moviegoers could watch from their own cars. He experimented in his own
driveway at 212 Thomas Avenue, Camden, New Jersey. The inventor
mounted a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car, projected onto
a screen he had nailed to trees in his backyard, and used a radio
placed behind the screen for sound.
The inventor subjected his new drive-in to vigorous testing: for sound
quality, for different weather conditions (Richard used a lawn
sprinkler to imitate rain) and for figuring out how to park the
patrons' cars. Richard tried lining up the cars in his driveway, which
created a problem with line of sight if one car was directly parked
behind another car. By spacing cars at various distances and placing
blocks and ramps under the front wheels of cars that were further away
from the screen, Richard Hollingshead created the perfect parking
elevation for the drive-in movie theater experience.
The first patent for the Drive-In Theater (United States Patent#
1,909,537) was issued on May 16, 1933. With an investment of $30,000,
Richard opened the first drive-in on Tuesday June 6, 1933 at a
location on Crescent Boulevard, Camden, New Jersey. The price of
admission was 25 cents for the car and 25 cents per person.
The design did not include the in-car speaker system we know today.
The inventor contacted a company by the name of RCA Victor to provide
the sound system, called "Directional Sound." Three main speakers were
mounted next to the screen that provided sound. The sound quality was
not good for cars in the rear of the theater or for the surrounding
neighbors.
The largest drive-in theater in patron capacity was the All-Weather
Drive-In of Copiague, New York. All-Weather had parking space for
2,500 cars, an indoor 1,200 seat viewing area, kid's playground, a
full service restaurant and a shuttle train that took customers from
their cars and around the 28-acre theater lot.
The two smallest drive-ins were the Harmony Drive-In of Harmony
Pennsylvania and the Highway Drive-In of Bamberg, South Carolina. Both
drive-ins could hold no more than 50 cars.
An interesting innovation was the combination drive-in and fly-in
theater. On June 3, 1948, Edward Brown, Junior opened the first
theater for cars and small planes. Ed Brown's Drive-In and Fly-In of
Asbury Park, New Jersey had the capacity for 500 cars and 25
airplanes. An airfield was placed next to the drive-in and planes
would taxi to the last row of the theater. When the movies were over,
Brown provided a tow for the planes to be brought back to the
airfield. |
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