Quietly Gone — Ep 11: The Screens That Went Dark

By the late 1980s, more than three-quarters of America's drive-in theaters had closed, and more than a thousand went dark between 1978 and 1988. 1

But the story starts earlier, on June 6, 1933, when Richard Hollingshead opened the first patented drive-in near Camden, New Jersey. The ticket was twenty-five cents per car, plus twenty-five cents per person. The film was Wives Beware. 2

This episode follows the drive-in from its backyard origins to its postwar peak. By 1958, 4,063 drive-ins were operating in the United States. They offered playgrounds, cheap family nights, and a private theater box for every car. 3

Then the ground beneath the screens became more valuable. Multiplexes, later home video, and the changing evening clock all cut into the business. In 2013, the move from film to digital projection forced surviving theaters to find tens of thousands of dollars just to keep showing new movies. 45

The drive-in never vanished entirely. A 2025 industry list still records operating theaters across the United States. Some are family businesses. Some were saved by their towns. Others survive as seasonal places where the old ritual still works: park the car, turn on the radio, and wait for the screen to light. 6

The drive-in's disappearance had no single closing night. It was a long change in the American map. The screen at the edge of town became a shopping center, a parking lot, a fast-food restaurant, or a blank stretch of pavement. The Los Angeles Times documented former California drive-in sites that became a Home Depot, an El Pollo Loco, and a Wendy's. 7

The episode also follows the technical changes that made the drive-in possible, including individual speakers mounted on car windows, and the later changes that made the business difficult: daylight saving time, rising land values, multiplex competition, home video, and the cost of digital projection. 4

The remaining theaters are not replicas of 1958. They are smaller, more seasonal, and often held together by one family or one town. Their survival is less a restoration of the old landscape than a reminder that a landscape can keep a few of its lights.