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Westerns at the Drive-in: Watching Movies in the Great Outdoors

By Henry C. Parke

One of the few benefits of the Covid pandemic was a temporary revival of the drive-in movie-going experience. Whether it involved the re-opening of a long-shuttered venue, or a make-shift theatre in a shopping-mall parking lot, it gave thousands the opportunity to get out of locked-down homes and share a communal experience without getting too close.  It was also the first exposure, for at least a couple of generations, to a form of entertainment which, though it’s never disappeared, has been barely holding on as a quaint novelty.

There are roughly 330 drive-in movie theaters operating in the United States today, quite a drop from their zenith in 1955, when there were 4,300. Surprisingly, today the states with the most, tied at 28 each, are New York and Ohio, whose weather makes year-long business impossible. New Jersey has but one; ironic considering that Victor Hollingshead, Jr. built the first drive-in in Camden, New Jersey in 1933. His mother finding movie-theater seats cramped, he figured that a car’s front seat—couch-like then as our back seats are today—would be more comfortable. His greatest inspiration, which he patented, was to give each car an up-tilting ramp, so the cars ahead wouldn’t block the view of those behind.

Generally built on cheap, empty land outside of cities and towns, there were about 100 drive-ins built before World War II, and 700 more between 1947 and 1948. With tickets often priced by-the-car-load rather than by-the-person, they provided inexpensive, come-as-you-are entertainment. They catered to families with kids, featuring playgrounds right under the screen, so parents could watch the movies and the kids. Some even offered pony rides. The reverse side of the giant screens faced the road or highway, and served as a billboard for the theater, often decorated with Western-themed murals, sometimes highlighted in neon. Their names spoke of the prairies and plains—Thunderbird, Winchester, Alamo, Apache, The Trail, The Round-up.

Of course, while hardtop theaters could have as many movie-showing as their program’s running time would allow, drive-ins could only operate in darkness and thus were limited to one show per night. Daylight Savings Time made things worse: sometimes movies couldn’t begin until 10 p.m., too late for those who had work or attend school the next morning.

In February of 1974, the world premiere of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles was held at the Pickwick Drive-in in Burbank. About 250 guests, including Brooks, Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little, attended on horseback, with speakers adapted to attach to a saddle pommel. The “horspitality” snack bar offered soda, popcorn, hotdogs, and hay.

Sadly, the post-war housing boom, which first expanded the drive-ins’ business by expanding the suburbs, would eventually hasten their demise. Once the suburbs caught up with the drive-ins, the vast tracts of land needed for them became too valuable. Many of yesterday’s drive-ins are now housing developments or shopping malls.

Still, drive-ins introduced generations of kids to Westerns and are fondly remembered by many Western authors today. Novelist R.G. Yoho recalls, “Dad and Mom used to take me, my two brothers, and sister to double features at the Jungle Drive-In, in Parkersburg, West Virginia.” After the main feature was over, “my folks would put the back seats down and make us sleep with the blankets they brought along, (then) watch the second film in peace. This was where I saw Big Jake, True Grit, and The Cowboys, where I learned to love Westerns and John Wayne, and where I learned to despise Bruce Dern, a position I finally set aside in my 40s.”

Western short-story author Gregory Nicoll remembers, “My folks took me to The Hilltop Drive-In just outside Augusta, Georgia, to a double feature of The Carpetbaggers and Nevada Smith,” both, his parents explained, based on elements from the same Harold Robbins novel. “I was too young to follow the drama in The Carpetbaggers, but wow, once Nevada Smith finally started, I was glued to the screen, pressing my nose against the windshield of our brown VW van. The early scene in which the bad guys start to mutilate Steve McQueen’s Native American mother with a knife was a real shocker, and I was loudly rooting for him to get his revenge throughout the rest of the film.”

Screenwriter Dan Searles is thrilled to have his new Western, Was Once a Hero, play at Doc’s Drive-In in Buda, Texas. “My grandmother owned the Joy Drive-in Theater in Minden, Louisiana. I occasionally worked there and saw many Western films there, including Charro with Elvis. He made some good Westerns, but that wasn’t one. Day of Anger, (starring) Lee Van Cleef, I thought was terrific, and Valley of the Gwangi, which starred James Franciscus (as a) cowboy fighting dinosaurs: what could be bad with that?”

J.R. Sanders, author of the Nate Ross Western Mystery series, remembers, “When I was 12 my parents took me to the local drive-in to see True Grit on a double bill. During intermission, we went to the snack bar, where we ran into the pastor from our church. Never one to pass up a joke, my dad asked him if he’d covered his ears during the ‘Fill your hand, you son of a b*tch!’ line. The pastor just smiled and shrugged and said, ‘It’s John Wayne.’”

About Henry C. Parke  

Henry’s new book, The Greatest Westerns Ever Made, and the People Who Made Them, was published by TwoDot in February. The Brooklyn-born, L.A.-based writer has contributed articles to the INSP blog since 2016, been Film Editor for True West since 2015 and has written Henry’s Western Round-up, the online report on Western film production, since 2010. His screenwriting credits include Speedtrap (1977) and Double Cross (1994). He’s the first writer welcomed into the Western Writers of America for his work in electronic media. He’s done audio commentary on over thirty Spaghetti and domestic Westerns.  

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