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

NorWest Drive-In remnants remain in Broomfield CO

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NorWest Drive-In screen support anchors, concrete blocks with short metal pieces extending at an angle, on a sunny day.
NorWest Drive-In screen support anchors, as they looked last weekend

Saturday, I saw on Google Maps that the remains of the NorWest Drive-In in the southeast corner of Broomfield CO were still visible. I don’t know why I never thought to take pictures of what’s left, so off I went.

The former entrance road to the NorWest (also spelled Nor’West or Nor-West) was blocked by heavy construction equipment when I arrived. I feared that I had arrived too late, but the work was just a flood control project for Nissen Creek, which runs just south of the old drive-in.

I had written about the NorWest in my book, Drive-Ins of Colorado. It was one of those drive-ins that chased movie patrons into suburbia, built by Leonard Steele and opened in 1967. Long story short, the drive-in was first sold in 1969 and passed through some corporate owners until Commonwealth Theatres dumped it at the end of 1986. Bill Holshoe, who already owned the 88 Drive-In in nearby Commerce City, was the final owner, running the NorWest through the end of 1996.

Holshoe closed the NorWest because civic leaders wanted to clear the way for some developer’s proposed indoor ice rink complex. That never happened, but the drive-in never reopened. According to some 2016 photos posted at CinemaTreasures.org, the snack bar building was still pretty well intact at that point. That building was removed by 2023.

The sturdy concrete screen support blocks, with short bits of metal jutting out, were all still there. Now their only audience was the prairie dog town that has taken over the drive-in site. As I walked to the remains of the concession building, I could hear annoyed yips from both directions, the first time I’ve encountered prairie dog complaints in stereo.

The tiles on the concession/restroom/projection building (see below) were in good shape, probably because they haven’t been exposed to the weather for many years. There was a new gravel path to 121st Place to the north, probably for the workers who dismantled the building. I couldn’t find any trace of speaker poles, and the prairie dog holes were more noticeable than the ramps.

If you really want a piece of drive-in history, there were a few loose tile pieces near the building foundation, but that seems pretty extreme to me. But if you just want to wade past the prairie dogs to stand and look in the direction of the old screen, with the Rocky Mountains in the distance, you could go there and imagine what it all must have been like.

Tiled floor without a building in the foreground, looking out over an empty field to mountains in the distant background.
Looking toward the NorWest screen tower supports from the floor of the projection room, maybe?

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.