Category Archives: Video

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

Video: Ruskin Drive-In reopening after hurricane damage

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Great news for the Ruskin Family Drive-In Theatre this week. According to WFLA, Tampa’s News Leader, the Ruskin is about to reopen for another season. It had sustained damage from three (?!) hurricanes in its off-season and needed help to get back on its feet. The community rallied to support the Ruskin; I was the most impressed by TECO (née Tampa Energy Company), which donated poles for the refurbished screen.

The WFLA video embedded above is unusually nice for this sort of report. It’s longer than usual, and it ends with a personal appeal to patronize the civic treasure that is the drive-in. We get to see a lot of views of the Ruskin, along with some shots of the devastation. And we get a lot of commentary from owner Karen Freiwald, who stressed the inclusive nature of the Ruskin’s early days. (There were whites-only drive-ins in the Tampa area in the 1950s, as well as some catering to African-Americans.) I’ve seen a lot of drive-in news videos, and this is one of the best.

One thing that I rarely see mentioned is that the Ruskin was called the Rustic Drive-In for at least a while in the 1950s. My guess is that it opened as the Rustic, though I’ve never seen a grand opening ad. A 1957 movie flyer, posted at Cinema Treasures, used that name. When the Tampa Tribune widened its movie coverage in 1959 to include Ruskin’s drive-in, it was the Rustic. When Carl Floyd bought the place from Harry Jones in 1960, he changed the name (back?) to Ruskin after a bit of remodeling, probably to touch up a couple of letters.

Speaking of letters, I looked back to my virtual visit to the Ruskin during 2017’s Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, and that post was mostly interested in the animated double feature that night: Moana and Sing. At nine characters, that was close to the shortest drive-in twin bill that I’ve ever encountered: Epic and 42. Sure, there are theoretically shorter pairs of movie titles, but has there ever been another double feature at an actual drive-in with six characters or fewer? (Thank you, I already know that some of the things I care about are extremely trivial.)

Back to the present. Freiwald told WFLA that the drive-in had one its best years in 2020, when the pandemic made it the only entertainment spot in town. More recently, when the hurricanes knocked down the screen, long-time fans donated time, labor, and money to get it fixed. The Ruskin sure seems like a nice place, and it’s great that it’s so well-loved.

Video: Capri Drive-In added to National Register of Historic Places

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Time again for some good news. The Capri Drive-In Theater of Coldwater MI was added to the National Register of Historic Places this week. I took the opportunity to grab its very nice, drone-shot 60th anniversary video from last year. That follows up the 50th anniversary video that I embedded in my post on the Capri about eight years ago.

Back then, during my 2017 virtual visit, I wrote that the Capri was built by John and Mary Magocs and opened in August 1964. Back then it was a single screen serving up to 1000 cars. As the Capri’s story page relates, the snack bar at the time was leased to Auto City Candy Company of Detroit. Operating a Drive-In for the Magocs was a family affair. John and Mary, John Jr. and Tom, spent many a night making sure the show went off each night.

In 1977, the operation of the Capri Drive-In was leased to William Clarke of Coldwater while the Magocs resided in Florida. In 1980, Tom and John Jr. resumed operation of the theatre. One of their first decisions was to install AM radio transmission of the movie sound. All but 5 rows of speakers were removed.

In 1986, the Capri became a twin. Screen Two was added on the back side of theatre. Screen One’s car capacity was decreased to 550 cars, with Screen Two parking 300 more. That’s about the way it looks today.

In 2016, USA Today readers voted the Capri the second-best drive-in in the US, behind only the 99W of Newburg OR. It certainly deserves this latest recognition. Here’s a YouTube short with a few more recent details.