Video: Watch as wind knocks down Van-Del screen

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Winds of up to 60 miles per hour knocked down one of the screens at the Van-Del Drive-In just north of Middle Point OH on the old Lincoln Highway, halfway between Van Wert and Delphos. Owner Rodney Saunders told WPTA, Fort Wayne IN’s News Leader, that the Van-Del is insured, and they plan to rebuild the second screen.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that the wind apparently spared the Van-Del’s primary, glorious old screen tower. (Besides the fact that no one was hurt, of course.) The screen that went down appears to have been built less than 20 years ago. Let me explain.

Around the turn of the millennium, film distributors began requiring longer commitments to show summer blockbusters. For example, theaters might have to promise to show a given movie for at least four weeks. Some drive-ins responded by adding auxiliary screens to help burn off “leftover” weeks while keeping the main screen available for newer releases. By 2009, the Van-Del had added two more screens, one in back of the main viewing field and one next to the Lincoln Highway. They still had all three in 2019, but by 2020, they were advertising movies on just two of them, on Screen 1 and Screen 3. Looking at old aerial photos, I’d guess that Screen 2 was the one that had been next to the highway.

As I noted in my virtual visit in 2017, the Van-Del has been through a lot of ownership changes. To summarize its CinemaTreasures listing, the drive-in was built by J.W. and C.N. Christopher, opening in June 1948 as the Star Lite. They sold it three months later to Paul Staup, who renamed it the next spring as Staup’s Auto Movie. Staup leased the theatre to Carl H. Schwyn for five years, and that’s who finally renamed it the Van-Del Auto Movie. Thomas Epps bought the drive-in from Staup at the start of the 1967 season. After the 1998 season, Epps sold it to Jim and Joyce Boyd, who added the extra screens. Saunders bought the place in 2020; maybe he was the guy who took down Screen 2.

That brings us to today. As we wait for the rebuilt, improved(?) second Van-Del screen, here’s some video of the aftermath, courtesy of WANE, Fort Wayne IN’s other News Leader.

Video: Kanopolis finds new owners

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It all started this week when I noticed that the Kanopolis Drive-In was posting remodeling photos and video on its Facebook page. Then I saw a comment there that the new owners were doing a good job of bringing the restrooms to the modern age. And that’s how I learned that Tyson Moyer and his wife, Jessica Eagle-Moyer, had puchased the drive-in last November from Josh and Amanda Webb. That story was covered very nicely by the Ellsworth County Independent-Reporter.

Putting on my historian hat, I can tell you a little more about this drive-in than when I first virtually visited years ago. On CinemaTreasures, someone posted a personal visit in 2010 with then-owner Irene Pacey, who said her father, Anthony Blazina, built the place in 1952 and owned it ever since. That mostly lines up. Reports show that Blazina opened what was then the Lakevue Drive-In in Kanopolis with just 186 in-car speakers. He also (still?) owned the Kanopolis in 1976 when he announced he’d show The Story of O, then decided against it. A Salina Journal article in 1988 quoted Blazina, still the owner, as saying he built the drive-in himself “in the dead of winter … with an old Ford tractor and a scoop.” The article said that opening day was May 23, 1952.

On the other hand, some reports in Boxoffice point to other owners, or at least operators, in between. Commonwealth Theaters transferred Frank Dodson to manage the Kanopolis Drive-In in early 1955, and he bought out Commonwealth’s share the following summer. Dodson leased the Kanopolis to Thomas Miller in 1960, and that’s where my magazine trail goes cold.

Blazinga passed away in 1994, and Pacey took over. The Kanopolis closed after the 2006 season (not sure why), and stayed dark until the Webbs bought the drive-in and reopened it in 2011. As described in the above video (from KWCH, Wichita’s News Leader), a windstorm damaged the screen and other equipment in December 2021. The drive-in stayed dark for another year, then reopened again in 2023.

The Independent-Reporter article said that the Webbs would be helping out this season to make sure the Moyers learn the ropes. I’m always happy to hear stories like this about new, appreciative caretakers who are maintaining the drive-in tradition for new generations.

Video: South El Monte’s Starlite sign to be restored

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First the Bad News: KB Home, which bought the South El Monte CA site of the old Starlite Drive-In in the last year or two, has taken down the old marquee, as shown in a January 2025 Google Street View.

Now the Good News: KB Home announced this week that it’s building “Astaire and Harlow at Starlite” and will restore the marquee to its former glory to “serve as a beautiful entrance monument.” If you enjoy such things, you can read the press release.

The Starlite had a historic pedigree. It was built in 1950 by Ford Bratcher, his brother Carl, and Byron Congdon, who already ran the Mount Vernon Drive-In in San Bernardino. The architect was J. Arthur Drielsma, who designed a lot of the better drive-ins in California. The Pacific drive-in chain got at least a piece of the action in 1951, although a 1953 Boxoffice note mentioned that a Bratcher was still there too. Those drive-in ownership structures are often beyond me.

When exactly did the Starlite close? I haven’t nailed down that date yet. CinemaTreasures says the screen was demolished in 1997, so it had to be by then. But the sign and the concession stand remained, the better to hold weekend flea markets. The Google Street View camera caught an active day in 2018, then a 2021 image showed the property for sale. Maybe the flea market was another victim of the pandemic.

I flipped through a few photos to try to provide some idea of what the old marquee was like. The black and white picture I chose (below) shows how interesting that sign was when the Starlite opened. For a better look at its recent state, as well as a sense of its scale, I added the YouTube video at the top of this post. I hope that soon we can add the new, restored version to this set of images.

from the Feb. 3, 1951 issue of Boxoffice