Category Archives: Video

Dec. 24: Hyde Park Drive In Theatre, Hyde Park NY

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It’s Day 358 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. It took only about an hour to drive from the Fair Oaks Drive-In Theatre north of Middletown NY to the Hyde Park Drive In Theatre in Hyde Park NY.

This drive-in opened as the Hyde Park Auto Vision Theatre on July 28, 1950, owned by Sidney Cohen and his brother-in-law Phil Eisenberg. It’s stayed in the Cohen family ever since.

(Looks like that pair stayed busy. When Eisenberg and Cohen bought the Canaan CT Drive-In in 1952, Billboard magazine said the pair owned theaters in Lakeville and Millerton CT, and Pine Plains, Red Hook, Rhinebeck and Hyde Park NY.)

The International Motion Picture Almanac drive-in lists listed the drive-in as the Hyde Park Auto Vision” through the 1966 edition, then switched to just Hyde Park. By 1978, they listed Cohen as the sole owner.

The Poughkeepsie Journal, in a 2011 retrospective, recalled the time the drive-in was the high bidder for a lucrative movie. “In 1977, we won county rights to show ‘Star Wars’ and it became one our biggest successes,” Fred Cohen said. “We ran it for 32 weeks and it grossed as much the first week it showed than we made our entire first year in business.”

The next time the Hyde Park was in the news was when community groups came together to save it. The growing prosperity of the area caused property taxes to rise to unsustainable levels for the drive-in, and Wal-Mart was interested in buying the land. Scenic Hudson, a Poughkeepsie-based environmental group, bought the property and leased it back to the Cohen family. “Scenic Hudson bought the land because they didn’t want a Wal-Mart going in right smack across from the Roosevelt home,” manager Andy Cohen told The New York Times in 2008.

In July 2011, Scenic Hudson transferred ownership of the drive-in’s land to the National Park Service, which runs the FDR National Historic Site. At the time, the Park Service planned to use part of the land to build a larger trailhead for Roosevelt Farm Lane. As the Red Hook Observer pointed out in 2014, the Hyde Park is the only drive-in on land owned by the National Park Service.

As of an October 2014 BBC article, owner Barry Horowitz (Sidney Cohen’s son-in-law) had just completed converting to digital projection. Horowitz told them that patrons like the drive in because they “can sit outside their car, they can smoke, they can have a beer, just [in] the open air. People like to get outside, just like going to a park.”

The Hyde Park closed in mid-September this year. I’m glad it’s in such safe hands.

Miles Today / Total: 48 / 39663 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 200

Nearby Restaurant: On a snowy day with no drive-in to watch, I again went looking for a diner with comfort food, and that’s why I chose the Eveready Diner for lunch. My chicken pot pie was so much better than the frozen versions I baked decades ago, with peas and carrots that weren’t mushy and serious chunks of chicken. Add mashed potatoes, a salad, and a warm roll, and I was in my happy place.

Where I Virtually Stayed: The classic Roosevelt Inn was closed for the season, so the Hyde Park Quality Inn was my second choice. There were cookies and coffee waiting at check-in. My king bed room had all the modern amenities. Breakfast had scrambled eggs, sausage, and a fresh waffle. This place worked out.

Only in Hyde Park: Literally across the street from the drive-in is the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. It’s got everything you’d expect from a presidential library plus tours of FDR’s home and great views of the Hudson River. Admission tickets are good for two days, and many TripAdvisor reviewers report enough areas of interest to fill that time and more.

Next stop: Southington Drive-In, Plantsville CT.

Dec. 22: Laurel Drive-in, Hazleton PA

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xxWGQh-u7o

It’s Day 356 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. On a chilly, overcast day, I was glad it took less than an hour to drive from the Point Drive-In between Northumberland and Mechanicsville PA to the Laurel Drive-in in Hazleton PA.

The Laurel was built on the site of the Mount Laurel Race Track, and was so good it opened twice. Its associated miniature golf course and restaurant opened in early June 1950, then the drive-in’s first movie was on Saturday, June 24, 1950. However, the Laurel’s official grand opening was Friday, July 14. The Plain Speaker of Hazleton wrote that the “500-car” drive-in was owned by Charles V. O’Donnell and Anthony D. Sacco. It offered RCA in-car speakers and “an all-metal screen over 60 feet high.”

The Hazleton Standard-Sentinel wrote, “Sacco and O’Donnell began the Laurel Acres project three years ago.” The concession stand was “equipped with a large screen view window, speakers, a 100-foot snack bar, and rest rooms.”

There were more newspaper clippings about the Laurel over the next couple of decades. In July 1956, owners O’Donnell and Sacco announced a new sound system, extra speakers, and free mini-golf for drive-in patrons. In October 1959, O’Donnell and Sacco, “trading as Laurel Drive-In Theater” were in court about a theater in Tamaqua. A windstorm blew the roof off the concession stand and damaged the screen on Sept. 10, 1968, and about 50 speaker posts “were torn from the ground”. Sacco and O’Donnell were mentioned as joint owners then too.

The odd thing is that O’Donnell’s name is missing from everything but those contemporary newspaper accounts. The 1952 Theatre Catalog said the Laurel was owned by just Anthony Sacco, and the 1951-88 Motion Picture Almanacs all listed only a single Sacco as the owner. A March 2016 article in The Times-Tribune includes an otherwise good summary: “The Laurel Drive-In is a family-owned business owned by (manager) Steve Sacco’s father, Frank Sacco. Steve Sacco’s grandfather, the late Anthony Sacco, started the drive-in in 1950.” The MPAs changed the owner’s initial from A to F by 1980, so that could be about when Frank took over.

(For a really weird one, check out this 2014 Standard-Speaker photo caption. It said that today’s Frank’s founding father was “Frank ‘Chic’ Sacco”. A 1952 article in The Plain Speaker mentioned a “Chic” Sacco who chaired a church committee, but his real first name was John. Was that the same Chic? Why would anyone mistake him for Anthony? But I digress.)

In recent years, the Laurel has had trouble converting to digital projection. Based on its Facebook posts this year, for 2017 it opened in mid-May and closed in mid-September. As far as I can tell, except for two classic horror weekends, the film-only Laurel showed only three movies all season – Baywatch, Wonder Woman, and Transformers: The Last Knight. In my opinion, they ought to call the folks who run the Mahoning about finding interesting 35mm films to show in the absence of a digital projector.

A post on that Facebook page says, “We look forward to seeing you again next year.” I really hope they can find a way to keep this great family-owned community treasure going for another few decades.

The embedded YouTube video of the day is an aerial view of the Laurel. I’ve seen plenty of drone videos this year, but I can’t recall seeing another that gets quite that high.

Miles Today / Total: 52 / 39488 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 200

Nearby Restaurant: They told me that one of the best places in Hazleton for lunch is Jimmy’s Quick Lunch, one of the few restaurants in town that predate the Laurel. As Mod Betty at Retro Roadmap points out, it’s got a very cool vintage neon sign after dark, and it’s home of the Jimmy Dog, a weiner topped with chili and mustard and onion cubes. Great stuff!

Where I Virtually Stayed: Once again I stayed strong and bypassed a Hampton Inn to save money and prove I could do it. Instead I stayed at a Red Roof Inn for less than half the price. Apparently it used to be a Best Western, but it’s pretty nice right now. My clean room had all the modern amenities, and the continental breakfast was enough to fortify me to look for a real meal, with more than enough cash left in my pocket for any restaurant in town.

Only in Hazleton: Just north of Hazleton there’s a large lump of coal to commemorate the Lattimer Miners Massacre. On September 10, 1897, about 300 to 400 unarmed strikers marched to a coal mine at the town of Lattimer to support a newly formed union. The sheriff and 150 armed deputies opened fire on the crowd, killing 19 and wounding dozens more, almost all of them shot in the back.

Next stop: Fair Oaks Drive-In Theatre, Middletown NY.

Dec. 20: Pike Drive In Theatre, Montgomery PA

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It’s Day 354 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. I-80 is still there and I got to see more of it this day, driving over an hour and a half from the Super 322 Drive-In Theatre in the unincorporated community of Woodland PA to the Pike Drive In Theatre in Montgomery PA.

The Williamsport Sun-Gazette reported on Oct. 30, 1952, “Three city men have started construction of a modern, 800-car theater on the Montgomery Pike. They are Harry J. Miele, Harry L. Nixon and Benjamin Pulizzi. Mr. Miele said the theater being built at an estimated cost of $135,000, will open about April 1. Clearing work on the land, about 12 acres, started last week.” It opened on April 16, 1953, showing Son of Paleface.

Strange that he wasn’t mentioned in the 1952 newspaper article, but Billboard magazine reported a little after the fact on April 18, 1953, “Charles Collins and his partners are about ready to open the Pike Drive-In near Montgomery, Pa.” Both the Theatre Catalog and Motion Picture Almanac during those times listed Collins as the first owner.

After that, the only ownership information I could find was in those MPA annual lists. John Shade was listed as the owner in the 1961 edition. The Sportservice Corporation, which ran at least a couple dozen drive-ins in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, owned the Pike in 1976-82. Somebody named G. Tomka was the listed owner in 1984, and J. Farruggio closed out the MPA lists in 1986-88. That was probably Joe Farruggio, known to have owned the nearby Point and converted that drive-in from one screen to three.

According to the official history page at the Pike Drive-In web site, it also expanded from one screen to three “in the 1990’s”. HistoricAerials.com photos suggest that happened in the early 1990s, so maybe that was more of Farruggio’s work.

From that point, I’ve got nothing until the current owner arrived. According to his LinkedIn page, Joe McDade bought the Pike in March 2006. In 2014, he started showing retro horror movies to raise money for digital projectors for his three screens, a story described by the embedded video of the day from WNEP, Scranton’s News Leader. That station also had a nice video report in September 2016 about the positive results of the digital conversion, which had covered two screens by that point.

The Pike closed for the season in October. I’m glad it promised to reopen next spring.

Miles Today / Total: 93 / 39406 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: dark / 200

Nearby Restaurant: The Station House in Montgomery is another good example of an unassuming small-town restaurant, across the highway from the railroad tracks, with good comfort food. I stopped in for dinner and had a couple of grilled pork chops with veggies and a baked potato. What a friendly place!

Where I Virtually Stayed: Google said the closest hotels were just up the road in Williamsport. Just to prove I’m not a slave to the Hampton Inn, and to save about $35, I chose the Comfort Inn in town. There were cookies and coffee waiting at check-in. My comfortable room had all the modern amenities. Breakfast included meat, eggs and waffles. And best of all, I still had that extra cash in my pocket when I left.

Only in Montgomery: Just south of town in Allenwood is Clyde Peeling’s Reptiland, a specialized zoo that has what you would expect and more. The room full of parakeets is an interesting attraction, as is the chance to feed a tortoise. There are komodo dragons in an extensive habitat. And there’s original art for sale, painted by the creatures on display.

Next stop: Point Drive-In, Northumberland PA.