Welcome to my rabbit hole

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A white rabbit sitting in a rabbit hole
© DepositPhotos.com / zannaholstova

Although no one asked for it, here’s a story of one day’s drive-in theater research. This morning was a typical session, so I’ll share it with you while it’s still fresh on my mind. It’s my journey down a research rabbit hole, which began with finding the location of one dead drive-in and led to the unearthing of a second.

CinemaTreasures is a frequent stop along my online rounds. In particular, I like to see whether another CT user has added a previously unknown drive-in to its long list. So it was this morning; “50sSnipes” had contributed the short history of the Lafayette Drive-In in Lafayette LA. I read that the drive-in had been somewhere on US 90, that it opened sometime in 1947, and that it closed in 1955.

Because of my long experience with certain tools, I wanted to help find more details about the short-lived Lafayette so I could contribute them to CT. First, I tried the University of Colorado’s link to an online Boxoffice magazine database, but that didn’t turn up much. (It’s missing a lot of issues.) Next, I swung by HistoricAerials to look for unaccounted-for drive-ins in old aerial photos and topo maps. That’s where I spotted a drive-in about two miles west of Lafayette on US 90. That was promising!

Then I dug into my subscription at Newspapers.com. Those folks happened to carry old copies of Lafayette’s local newspaper, The Daily Advertiser, and a local historian had already highlighted the drive-in’s grand opening ad from June 1, 1947. Great! However, that ad clearly showed that the drive-in was three miles east of town on US 90.

I needed more information, so I turned to another great source, the Media History Digital Library hosted by the Internet Archive. Searching on the Lafayette Drive-In, I found the following snippet from The Exhibitor magazine, March 9, 1955:

“The Lafayette Drive-In, Lafayette, La., will close for good advised E. R. Sellers, one of the owners. Hub Drive-In Theatres, Inc., operators of two other drive-ins in that city, the Hub and Twin.”

The Twin already had an entry in the CT list, but not the Hub. That must have been that drive-in west of Lafayette! Now I had to look elsewhere for the Lafayette Drive-In, and to gather more info about the Hub.

Back to The Daily Advertiser. The first appearance of the Hub Drive-In was in 1948, but that was a drive-in restaurant serving cold beer and sandwiches. The first mention of the Hub Drive-In Theater was in a year-end ad, Dec. 30, 1949, saying that it was under construction. Long story short, the Hub opened on March 21, 1950 on the “Scott Road” (US 90 west of Lafayette). Its last ad in the Advertiser was on Oct. 22, 1956. A year later, the former Hub’s land was listed for sale in the classifieds.

That was enough to submit the Hub Drive-In to CinemaTreasures. Later, I found another magazine note, from Nov. 21, 1956, saying that the Hub was still closed “for rebuilding of the screen tower which was flattened during a severe wind storm.” I don’t know the date of that deadly (to the Hub at least) storm; I couldn’t find a matching story in the Advertiser.

Then back to HistoricAerials to find the Lafayette Drive-In, the reason I started down this rabbit hole in the first place. As I learned from topo maps, US 90 didn’t really go east out of Lafayette, it was more south-southeast. Once I knew which road to follow, I got lucky again. Three years after the Lafayette closed, it was still in pretty good shape in a 1958 aerial photo. After matching the site with a modern-day address, I was able to post a comment outlining the exact location, along with those open and close dates.

Why did I spend so much time tracking down two Louisiana drive-in stories? I can’t imagine ever using them in any of my books. Maybe it started with curiosity, and then I felt a sense of responsibility to put my notes in the hands of some future historian who might write a Louisiana drive-in book. It’s satisfying to learn something that no one (at least on CT) had known about before. And it feels good to feel the fresh air on my face when I finally emerge from one of those rabbit holes.

“Christmas at the Drive-In” is not a great movie

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Screen capture from Christmas at the Drive-In, now showing on the Great American Family channel. You can see the drugstore-sized parking lot and the small, diamond McCarthy Drive-In sign.

Partly from fascination, partly so you won’t have to, I watched the entirety of “Christmas at the Drive-In” (CatD) over the weekend. The movie is competent and has a few good lines, but it’s not what I would call good.

At some point between the original synopsis (quoted in my previous post and on The Cinemaholic site) and the movie, the producers made a couple of changes. Instead of the Chesterfield Drive-In in Chesterfield NY, the focus of the movie is on the McCarthy Drive-In in Brenington, no state mentioned. Those names sound real, but from what I can tell, there has never been a drive-in theater named McCarthy nor a city named Brenington. (I hope that’s how to spell Brenington, since it was only mentioned and never displayed.)

I could go on a very long rant ticking off CatD’s many shortcomings, but that wouldn’t benefit anyone. The most relevant issue was the drive-in set itself, which was about the size of a Walgreens parking lot. In a fictional show, I know I should allow for a certain suspension of disbelief, but the viewing field held maybe two dozen cars. Since part of the plot hinged on the McCarthy returning to sustainable attendance, the clearly undersized lot was jarring.

The miniscule drive-in was one facet of CatD’s aggressively low-budget filming. Once that guiding principle got stuck in my head, I couldn’t unsee it. Every scene with mostly non-speaking extras, every substitute location, the odd patterns of faux snow, they all distracted me from the by-the-numbers plot.

There were good points too. The plucky lawyer-turned-teacher heroine gave a pivotal speech asserting that drive-in theaters were like Christmas. “Christmas is all about friends and neighbors coming together in a shared experience, creating memories that last a lifetime,” she said. “Christmas is a beautiful tradition, and so is the drive-in.” Later, she told a friend that she had researched some northern drive-ins that stayed open year-round and accurately described some of their strategies for dealing with the cold.

CatD required almost 15 minutes of heavy exposition to set up its absurd premise: The city orders the guy trying to sell the drive-in to work with the heroine trying to preserve it, to show that it can be profitable in December. But once the movie reached that point, it became a slow, straightforward, competent romance. Acting performances ranged from adequate to pretty good.

If you love made-for-cable Christmas romance movies, well, you’re not me. You might enjoy “Christmas at the Drive-In.” Personally, I’m still looking a movie with more drive-in in it.

“Christmas at the Drive-In” is coming

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A scene from Christmas at the Drive-In, copied from the Great American Family channel web site. The outdoor concession stand pictured in the background doesn’t fill me with hope for an accurate ozoner depiction.

Christmas is a time where there typically isn’t a whole lot of drive-in theater news to report. There are scattered holiday markets or expanded flea markets, but that seems mundane. I found something else that sounds odd, but at least it might be interesting.

The Great American Family channel premiered an original movie, Christmas at the Drive-In, on Thanksgiving weekend this year. (It’s showing again on Thursday, Dec. 8, and probably again later in the season.) The synopsis says the movie is about a woman who returns to her home town, Chesterfield NY, to save its drive-in theater by helping it acquire historic preservation status or something like that. She becomes frenemies with the new owner, who just inherited the Chesterfield Drive-In from his late father. Could there be holiday romance brewing? Will they need to work together to save the beloved drive-in?

Update: Despite the “Chesterfield”s in the original synopsis, the movie wisely switched to the fictional McCarthy Drive-In in Brenington. More details in the next post.

(I confess that I don’t understand the allure of this kind of Christmas movie, and I especially don’t understand why dozens of them flood the airwaves every holiday season. Is there some special factor about them, or are they strictly for folks who enjoy reading lots of romance novels? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I digress.)

I was surprised at the amount of detail I could find about its shooting locations at The Cinemaholic site, though it left me with more questions than answers. All of the photography took place in northern Ontario in September 2022. Most of it was at North Bay, on the shore of Lake Nipissing, with some scenes shot in Sudbury. Those are great places to get cold in early autumn, but what’s missing from those locations is anything that would look like a potentially historic drive-in theater. The Horizon Drive-In travels northern Ontario with a pop-up screen that it inflates at various locations, but surely they wouldn’t use that, would they?

I haven’t seen the movie. I saw a 30-second trailer on YouTube; there are issues. From glimpses in the background of the small viewing field, it looks like they really are using that inflatable screen. A photo at the official movie web site shows the protagonists in front of an outdoor concession stand. I know that such outdoor stands used to exist, but it’s much more common for even historic drive-ins to serve up their snacks indoors.

What I find ironic is that, although the real town of Chesterfield NY never had a drive-in, right across Lake Champlain in Colchester VT, the Sunset Drive-In has been active since 1948 and is still open. That would have been the perfect stand-in for a fictional historic drive-in; too bad it’s more expensive to film in Vermont than in Ontario.

Anyway, if you want to see a modern-day depiction of what someone thinks drive-ins are like, feel free to tune in this season.