Although its balmy climate would suggest California as a likely starting place for the “ozoners,” as they came to be known, the phenomenon began on the East Coast.  In 1933, the first outdoor movie house was patented and opened by Richard Hollingshead in New Jersey.  Despite his success in resolving technical challenges and lining up venture capital, the “World’s First Drive-in Theatre” could not sustain enough interest beyond its novelty appeal and the inventor sold the business in either 1935 or ‘36.^[2]  The build up and subsequent erosion of the drive-in culture didn’t happen overnight, and cannot be attributed to any single cause.  In his history of the drive-in, Kerry Segrave identifies the key ingredients for the success of the outdoor theatre, “…a country had to be wealthy: it had to have a good deal of vacant, accessible, relatively cheap land; and the country’s inhabitants had to be financially well placed, have automobiles, and enjoy an emotional relationship with their cars.”^[3]  After the stagnation of the fledgling industry due to wartime shortages, post-war America fit those criteria and a phenomenon was born. It grew because it was a perfect fit with the greater culture of the United States during the nineteen forties and fifties; it was in sync with the composition of the age.

During this period, social mores dictated formal attire in every day situations: being able to wear casual, comfortable clothes in the privacy of the family car became a major attraction for men tired of their business suits, and women who had to wrestle themselves into stockings and aggressive under-things on a daily basis.  You could also smoke, eat and drink, and chatter about the film without disturbing other patrons, allowing the whole family to enjoy the evening out.

Drive-in owners were quick to take advantage of the comparatively low overhead construction costs of a drive-in versus an indoor theatre, as well as capitalize on the audiences’ willingness to settle for much older films that would not have drawn a regular movie-going crowd.  While the tickets kept selling, the owners saw no reason to pressure the distributors into changing their contracts and allowing them to show the first-run films that were the staples of the indoor movie houses.

In the entrepreneurial spirit of the times, drive-ins vied with each other to offer novel conveniences for patrons, such as the “Rain-A-Way” visor, which “could be fastened to the car ‘in a matter of seconds’…and had a gutter along the side that carried the rain away while preventing it from running down the windshield,” or bottle-warming facilities, where “the mother just reaches out of her motor car, presses a button and an attendant brings her the bottle warmer.”^[4]  Such features seemed unnecessary with the sky-rocketing growth between 1942, when 27 states were home to 95 ozoners, compared to more than 3,700 active outdoor theatres in 1955.^[5]

          By 1958, the numbers showed that behemoth drive-ins, some able to accommodate 2,500 cars, had out-built their audience, and the golden years were coming to a close; in 1954 the average ozoner drew 93,100 admissions, while four years later, the draw was 82,900.[6]  By this time, the institution was reproducing itself; it had become a staple shooting set for movies that wanted to establish a visceral feeling of time and place for the American experience.  Consider the contributions that settings made to the following films, a small selection of the list in which drive-ins play their part as a prominent set: Back to the Future Part III, partly filmed at the Pohatchee Drive-In,  fictitious, propped for the film in Monument Valley, California;  Grease, partly filmed at the Pickwick Drive-In in Burbank, California, now gone; The Lords of Flatbush; The Lost Boys, partly filmed at the Skyview Drive In Theater, Santa Cruz, California, and  The Outsiders, partly filmed at the Admiral Twin Drive-In in Tulsa, Oklahoma, still in operation.^[7]

Often the drive-in would be used in the movie as the site of teenage sex, and perhaps the nickname, “passion pit” accurately described the drive-in’s key attraction for many audience members.  Families traditionally parked in the front, dating teens in the center, and “those with serious sex on their minds took up the back rows.”^[8]  With limited other options for a private make-out space, societal restrictions on single sex helped build the box office receipts during the forties and fifties, but on-screen sex was more problematic for owners.  Community and family values were tested with increasingly graphic content in sixties’ films until in 1968, audiences were separated into age cohorts, governed by the Motion Pictures Association of America rating system, and the public space of the movie experience was narrowed to fit within a more intimate and administered site. 

Audiences were further eroded when malls sprang up near newly built suburban tracts, and families were no longer so dependent on cars to carry them to their entertainment.  Suddenly there were multiplexes available without having to leave the neighborhood shopping environment, and drive-ins lost ground to the all-in-one convenience of the mall, as ozoners were not able to match either the variety or the quality of the indoor movie-going experience.  By 1987, the total number of drive-ins was down to 914.^[9]

As California property values soared, land cost became a significant factor in the reduction of the numbers of drive-ins.  In 1968, the median price of a home in California was $23,210, rising to $450,990 in 2004.^[10]  Currently, the average cost of a California home on the market is $733,000.^[11]  With their large footprints and limited financial return, drive-ins cannot compete with other land-use when costs are that high.

The history of drive-ins has a certain inevitability as human need for idiosyncratic community spaces in the public sphere succumbs to economic and cultural pressure.  As with so many other losses sustained in the progressive march forward, it is really only in hindsight that we can weigh up the costs of what has gone.  When drive-ins, music stores, small jazz clubs, and independent book stores bite the dust, other public space is created, but it is different; the public space of a mall, or a theme park, or an indoor movie theatre, is a site of commerce in a way that overwhelms any other function.  Drive-ins and independent music and book stores were trying to be commercial, but there was scope in their make-up for something beyond the bottom line.  They were generous entities with enough room to spare for passion of purpose as well as the entrepreneurial excitement of making money.  Communities could, and did, flow in and out of those spaces, remaking themselves in light of what they found there.

Psychologically, we are diminished by the reduction of sites of community where we could come into regular informal contact with heterogeneous groups, in relaxed and relaxing circumstances.  Loss of social trust can be traced to this, among other, factors as studies have shown that 18 – 25 year olds demonstrated a sharp decline in their belief that “most people are trustworthy, fair, and helpful” between 1875 and 1997.  Although the reasons for this have not been pinpointed, trends towards increasing materialism and self-interest are implicated.  The context of competition for limited resources may provide a reason that we are less likely to trust “others” who, like ourselves, are more likely to want to accumulate more for themselves.  The opportunity to meet people outside of your own family, school and neighborhood, creates ways for people to lessen the stereotyping that leads to “othering,” as they learn to interact within informal communities.^[12]

These findings, although not conclusive, are extremely worrying in light of increased “othering” of persons who are different from us in the fragile global political situation.  To put it simply, there has been a loss of public spaces where informal communities can meet, form, and learn from each other.  We live in a climate where suspicion of people different from us is institutionally instilled through the media apparatus, and lack of frequent informal interactions with diverse individuals and groups may lower trust of “others.”  This is not a recipe for improved relationships between groups distinguished by their differences, at a time when we need all the bridges we can build.

Bring back the drive-ins!

Sources Consulted:

Omoto, Allen M., ed.  Processes of Community Change and Social Action.  London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2005.

Rappaport, Julian.  Community Psychology.  New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977.