Drive-Ins

Last week the U.S.'s biggest Drive-In cinemansion was thriving. Just west of Evanston in the richly populated suburban belt north of Chicago, this month-old bow to the U.S. citizen's affinity for all but living in his automobile was evidence of a now established evolution in U.S. entertainment.

Offering the services of a combined filling station and roadside hot-dog stand, Chicago's new 1,500-car Drive-In is a gaudy affair. There are white-uniformed attendants to wash dirty windshields for a better view of the screen, and to check patrons' cars for oil, gas, water, air. There are also comely females in white satin slacks to peddle food, beverages, programs.

Cars purr past four wickets (admission: adults, 40-c-; children, 10-c-), proceed to their places on a series of curved ridges.

The screen is six stories high. Sound wells up throughout the Drive-in's 20 acres from 580 grilled manholes.

Because his theater operates for 40% less than an average movie house of the same capacity, lanky Nate Barger, veteran Chicago showman and owner of a burlesque house, figures to turn a neat profit on his new $165,000 venture if the weather man and the customers are kind to him. He can give two shows nightly. Full capacity (better than three admissions to a car) should gross him $15,000 to $20,000 a week.

In the eight years since the first licensed Drive-In opened for business, the then crackpot cinema sideline has expanded into a $3,000,000 industry supporting 52 theaters, with twelve others abuilding and 50 more contracted for. Most of them are in the temperate South, whose largest chain, George Wilby & Associates, is so sold on Drive-Ins that it is liquidating its indoor cinemas. Despite the fact that producers refuse to sell Drive-Ins anything but old A pictures, punk Bs and westerns, most of them manage to make a respectable profit. Evidence that the producers may change their minds is $500,000 Paramount has invested in Drive-Ins through affiliates.

For casual moviegoers, the Drive-In offers innumerable luxuries. It is a solution for the moviegoer's car-parking problem, for persons elderly, ill and crippled, for those who don't like to dress for the downtown cinema, for parents with no one to mind the children, for those who like to talk and smoke during a performance, and for young bloods looking for a place to make two-bit love.

Drive-In is the invention* of Richard Milton Hollingshead Jr., a vigorous fellow of 41 who thinks the U.S. was much happier in the days when most people couldn't read. His concern, Park-In Theatres, Inc., headed by Cousin Warren Willis Smith, is collecting 5% of all the Drive-In Theaters' weekly gross. Vice president in charge of manufacturing of R. M. Hollingshead Corp., world's largest makers of automotive polishes, enamels, brake fluids, etc., Hollingshead worked out the Drive-in Theater idea by asking himself in the early days of the late depression what luxuries people would give up last. Automobiles and movies were his answer. Put together they spelled Drive-In.

*Patent covers Drive-In Theater space in which patrons see an unobstructed performance from their cars.

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