Category Archives: Michigan

Carload’s grand re-opening

Posted on by
Driving America drive-in type sign at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn MI

This Douglas Auto Theatre sign spent over 30 years at a Kalamazoo MI drive-in. Now it hangs at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. Photo by PunkToad

In case you haven’t noticed, Carload.com is active again. The graphics are prettier, the news is as timely as ever, but there are a few changes.

Carload began as a way to keep track of what was showing at Colorado drive-in theaters. Way back then, there were 12 active drive-ins in the state, most of them didn’t have web pages, Facebook didn’t exist, and long-distance calls cost money. Listing the theaters and what they had planned for the weekend was helpful.

Now that’s all different. At this writing, only one drive-in in the US or Canada doesn’t have its own site or at least a Facebook page. Everybody’s got a cell phone, and long distance is free or dirt cheap. Having one more site with movie listings isn’t helpful any longer.

Instead, Carload has been redesigned as a mobile-first site. The front-page emphasis on drive-in news is still strong, but now we also keep track of every active drive-in in the US and Canada. If you’re still curious about what’s showing, just call the phone number or click through to the theater’s official web page.

Thanks for your support during this transition. If you have a great drive-in photo, please add it to the Carload Flickr Pool.

How to define the drive-in theater

Posted on by
Blue Moonlight Drive-In at night

The Blue Moonlight Drive-In (Galesburg IL) at night. © DepositPhotos / sgtphoto.

What is a drive-in theater?

That’s not a rhetorical question. Over the years, I’ve called out Things That Are Not Drive-Ins. The most common example of Not is a movie night in a park where everybody sits in chairs or on blankets and the organizers can’t resist calling any outdoor movie a “drive-in.” But the line between Drive-In and Not is getting thinner.

Consider what a drive-in theater requires. It must have a permanent location, although that location can shift. A “pop-up drive-in” that visits various parking lots doesn’t count.

A drive-in theater must have room for cars. Additional pedestrian seating is okay, but you can’t have a drive-in without drivers.

A drive-in needs a screen, but now the line starts to get blurry. Does it need to be a permanent screen? Consider the Blue Starlite Mini Urban Drive-In in Austin TX. As you can see by this photo, the BSMU used a very temporary-looking screen. Other such parking-lot drive-ins have used the side of a building as a screen. Should that disqualify it? I’d say no, so screen permanence isn’t a requirement.

I can’t think of any other requirements, except perhaps that it needs to be open to the public. Whether it uses film or digital, new movies or old, mainstream or porn; whether it’s got a concession stand, food trucks, or nothing; if cars can drive to a particular place to watch movies on a screen, that’s a drive-in theater.

Here’s a related question: When is a drive-in “active,” as opposed to permanently closed? Most cases are obvious. Many drive-ins are dormant over the winter, but like leafless trees in December, that doesn’t mean they’re dead. When a drive-in stays dark through summer, or announces that it won’t reopen, then it’s closed.

Turns out that there are some marginal cases. Consider Manistique MI’s Cinema 2, a single-screen theater named for US Highway 2. The Cinema 2 closed in 2001. Fifteen years later, its screen and buildings were amazingly still in good shape, so civic charities sponsored one-shot movie nights twice in 2016. (The most recent was covered here.) For now, I’d still call that one closed, but if they ramp up to once a month or more, I’d reconsider.

Then there’s the Hilltop in Chester WV. Struggling with the conversion to digital movies, it was closed all summer until it found a film distributor and reopened this month. Was the Hilltop “closed,” or was it just dormant? I’m just glad it’s back now.

There will always be cute little stories about fake drive-ins, like the Kansas elementary school that built one in its gym. These offshoots illustrate how deeply the idea of a drive-in is ingrained even for those unfortunates who haven’t experienced it. Drive-ins are here to stay, and Carload will be here to tell you about them.

Grand opening photo takes us back to 1950

Posted on by

Cars facing a narrow drive-in screen at the Meadow Lark Drive-In in 1952.

The Meadow Lark Drive-In (Wichita KS) in 1952.

Over in The News-Herald of Southgate MI, guest writer Wallace Hayden starts with the 1950 grand opening photo of the Fort Drive-In in nearby Wyandotte. Then Hayden, the historical librarian at the Bacon Memorial District Library, weaves a thorough, interesting tale of the Fort in particular and drive-ins in general.

(You’ll have to click the link to see that photo along with Hayden’s great story. I didn’t have any other photos of the Fort available, so I used the opportunity as an excuse to share another great photo from the 1952 Theatre Catalog. This one is from the Meadow Lark Drive-In (Wichita KS), which might have been the first to convert from a single screen to two of them. Don’t you just love that narrow screen? But I digress.)

Hayden provides a lot of great background information for his story. “Today this is the site of the Meijer’s store in Southgate,” he wrote. “However, at that time the area was mostly open land in Ecorse Township that was experiencing rapid development. In the years from 1946 to 1950, more than 2,000 homes were built in the township.”

He continues by painting a full picture of the drive-in experience back then, with its gravel lot, teenagers in the trunk sneaking in for free, and indoor booths at the concession stand. Hayden even adds an interesting historical footnote. “In 1951, the Fort received national attention when Boxoffice magazine cited it as an example of a drive-in showing adult material.”

Aha! I wonder if Hayden has the original source material, a really good memory, or the same Drive-in Theaters book that I do. According to author Kerry Segrave, in fall 1951, a Boxoffice writer found this ad in the Detroit Times: “Fort Drive-In – Three adult hits … The Burning Question, Guilty Parents, and How to Take a Bath. … Exposing the stark naked facts of life!” Most folks now know that first movie as Reefer Madness, and the other two were similarly “shocking” pseudo-educational short films made in the 1930s.

Not only does Hayden do a great job of telling us the story of the Fort and other nearby drive-ins, he sticks the landing. “Like the favorite doll or toy truck from childhood, most of these roadside attractions vanished unnoticed while their clientele grew older and concerned themselves with other interests. But, like those things of childhood, drive-ins still live on in memory.” For much, much more of this great writing plus that grand opening photo, you already know that you need to go read it!