The Rise and Fall of the Drive-In Theater Quiz

Answer: New Jersey

The first drive-in theater, with space for 500 cars, opened in Pennsauken (Camden County), New Jersey. Hollingshead is sometimes said to have "invented" the drive-in theater. It might be a bit odd to think of the "invention" of what is a rather simple concept: showing a movie on a large screen so people can see and hear it while sitting in their cars. Still, he deserves credit for not only conceiving the idea but also developing its feasibility and bringing it to reality. It's nice to picture Hollingshead working in his driveway, makeshift screen nailed to some trees, Kodak projector sitting on his car's hood. He placed a radio near the screen, and went through extensive tests. He needed to find out how much to slope and how to position the parking areas for his eventual theater so all cars could have a good view of the film. He also had to find out how to do the sound so it could be heard inside the cars. After putting all this information together, he was granted a patent in 1933. Unfortunately, the patent was eventually ruled invalid.

Interestingly, the first drive-in theater for airplanes was opened in June 1948, also in New Jersey (Asbury Park). It could handle several hundred autos and 25 airplanes which landed nearby and then taxied to the last row of the drive-in!

Answer: "Wives Beware" by Fred Niblo

According to "Smithsonian" magazine, that first drive-in theater was advertised with the line "The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are." And thinking about it, that would have been a good ad line for the entire history of drive-in theaters!

Incidentally, "Wives Beware", a British film originally titled "Two White Arms", was possibly chosen due to the fact that either Hollingshead or the movie distributors wanted to use a film that would not draw customers away from normal traditional theaters, and "Wives Beware" had only lasted one week in theaters.

Answer: In-car speakers

"Noise pollution" or "the neighborhood noise problem" had plagued drive-in theaters from their inception. Having large, loud outdoor speakers was obviously a nuisance to any surrounding homes. With its development of rugged, decent-quality individual speakers to be placed in each car, RCA greatly improved the experience of movie watching as well as dramatically reduced the noise problem. If you went to a drive-in theater in the earlier years, you may remember the typical set-up: a vertical stand between each two parking spots, with a speaker on each side, one per car. often the speaker had a clip that allowed it to be hooked onto a partially rolled-down side window of your car. Eventually of course, the sound portion at many drive-ins was done through broadcast on particular radio frequencies to your car's audio system.

Answer: Daily flea market

Opening November 22, 1963, the same day that U.S. President John Kennedy was shot, the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop claims to be the second largest tourist attraction in Florida. It was founded by Preston and Betty Henn as the single-screen Thunderbird Drive-In Movie Theater. Three years later the flea market was added.

As of 2010 the movie theater had fourteen screens and the flea market had become a six-day a week phenomenon, each claimed to be the largest in the world.

Answer: Decline in the birth rate

From the early 1930s until the end of 1941, when the U.S. entered World War II, the number of drive-ins in the U.S. had increased quickly, to about 95 theaters. In the next four years growth was nearly flat, with the total reaching only about one hundred by 1945.

After the war, with gasoline and rubber becoming more easily available, theaters reopened and new theaters were built. In one year approximately fifty new theaters were opened, and by 1948 or 1951 (depending on source) the number in the U.S. was up to 820 drive-in theaters.

Some of these new drive-ins would hold open houses during the daylight hours in order to acquaint people with the idea of a drive-in. Theaters would demonstrate how to work the sound system, where to get food and what food would be available, how to park and how to exit the grounds. According to one history of the drive-in, "some drive-ins reported as many as 400 cars would show up for the open house."

Answer: Passion pits

Despite many theater owners' desire to fight the reputation, drive-ins very often became thought of as "passion pits," where kissing, "necking," and other romantic and sexual activities took place. This was actually something that worked against the family-friendly atmosphere that many owners tried hard to develop.

As you can imagine, this reputation also disturbed local communities, especially in the first few decades of the drive-in theater's history when society was more conservative when it came to sexuality.

Answer: True

Yes, it actually happened fairly commonly. Perhaps it wasn't as frequent as people's stories would have you believe, but it was a time-honored method of sneaking people in free. One historian noted that it is unlikely that people sneaking into the theater in this fashion were actually fooling owners, since most owners and attendants could spot an overloaded car quite easily.

Interestingly, theater owners weren't as upset about this as you might think because at many locations the profit associated with food and drink sales was quite healthy and added substantially to total profits (much like many indoor theaters even today). Payment on a per-person basis was the most common form of admissions, particularly during the first few decades of the drive-in. E.g., a poll conducted in the early 1950s found that 88 percent of theaters used the per-person method. One of my Flakes teammates once went to a carload-payment theater and for $5 got 23 people into the drive-in. I don't know whether her shocks needed replacement after that.

Answer: Exploitation films

"Exploitation" films are loosely defined as films that depend on lurid content and sensationalist marketing. They existed before and independently of the drive-in, of course, but the privacy of the in-car experience gave rise to an opportunity to see such films that many indoor theaters did not. That opportunity combined with stagnant or declining attendance at drive-ins meant that drive-ins would become one of the notable venues for such films, since owners of many drive-in theaters were more willing to show those movies than they might have been if revenues were still growing. Thus desperate owners helped drive the growth in exploitation films. At the same time, this increasing use of exploitation films by some or many drive-ins drove down attendance by families because of the seedier reputation, and that reputation spread even to those drive-ins that did not embrace exploitation film use.

Exploitation films were often known for their sexual or violent content, and were often though not always of low quality. Subjects "exploited" in these films were often extreme violence, rape and revenge, Nazism, explicit sexuality, biker gangs, graphic science fiction, and the like. A Flakes teammate once saw "Candy Goes To Hollywood" at a black curtain-draped drive-in, in a VW Bug, with her brother! Actually they watched only a bit of it and had to leave from embarrassment.

As for the wrong answers: while the occasional exploitation film might be considered avant garde, it was not a common occurrence and not the defining trait. "Ozoners" is a term used to refer to people who attend open-air drive-in theaters. And "techno movies" is just a term I made up, although I suppose any movie about techno music could be considered a techno movie (but still would not have been from the era we're taking about).

Answer: New Zealand

The U.S., Canada, and Australia all were early adopters of drive-in theaters, and the rise and then fall of drive-ins' popularity are similar across the three. Drive-ins, however, did not take root in New Zealand. Attempts were made to build drive-ins in New Zealand starting at least from the 1960s, but the government forbade their establishment for at about twenty years.

This was evidently due to negative pressure from indoor theater owners as well as community moralists reacting to the "passion pit" reputation of drive-ins.

By the time the government gave in and allowed them, the impetus to build was largely gone, due to the decline in fortunes of drive-ins worldwide.

Answer: Rise of feminism

While the 1980s didn't totally kill the drive-in, the number of drive-in theaters in the U.S. went from about 3,500 in 1980 to only about 1,000 in 1990 according to one source or from 2,129 in 1982 to 999 in 1987 from another reference. No matter the exact numbers, the 1980s witnessed a dramatic down-turn for drive-in theaters. This decline was also seen in other countries.

Exploding land values in suburbs and exurbs led to many owners' selling the land their drive-ins sat on, often for enormous profits. At the same time, video rentals and VCRs (whose sales increased rapidly in the late 1970s) plus increasing penetration by cable TV brought many more movies into individual homes, reducing the incentive to go to the drive-in. Other scholars point to a general decline in America's "car culture" as a possible contributing reason as well. To my knowledge, the rise in feminism has not seriously been linked to the decline of the drive-in.