Paramus Drive-In

1966 ad courtesy of Bill Huelbig:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/billhuelbig/myfairlady.jpg

I love that ad. It doesn't even actually refer to those 5 theaters as drive-ins. They were so widespread and commonplace back then, everyone just knew. Now they are the rarest of the rare: only one in the whole state of New Jersey, and that's way down near Vineland.

The Paramus Drive-in was open well into the 1980's. The problem in it's later years was that the land was owned by The Garden State Plaza, which wanted to build an office building on the site. The town would not give the a variance to build, so while they squabbled with the town, the leased the theatre to various operators on a year by year basis. Because of the short term leases, nobody was willing to spend the money to keep the place up, and it quickly became a dump.

"In 1931, one of the earliest Drive-In Theaters opened in Paramus, and boasted the world's largest and brightest screens. Located behind what is now he Garden State Plaza Shopping Mall. The drive-in closed sometime around 1983. Easy Money starring Rodney Dangerfield was one of the last movies shown there."
extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramus%2C_New_Jersey

Well, I always thought that the wikpedia was fairly accurate, now I'm not so sure. The 1931 date is obviously erroneous since the first drive in opened in 1933. Not sure if the 1983 closing date can be trusted.

Old aerial postcard from the 1950s. Theater is almost dead center:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b6d702b3127cce8dd2a2f87e7200000016108IZsW7Zwzc-

another post card from the 50s or 60s:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b7dd25b3127cce82dc9818698400000016108IZsW7Zwzc-

Years after the theater closed, the movies are returning to the Plaza in a much different form, this time a 16-plex slated to open in the spring of this year. When that happens, I will post the Garden State 16 on this site. Hopefully it will be much better than the aging Route 4 Tenplex, which has outlasted all of its nearby cinema competition (Paramus Picture Show, Route 17 Triplex, and Bergen Mall) as the most popular multiplex in Paramus.

The Paramus Drive In closed in 1987. The last movie there was a double feature, Crocodile Dundee and the Untouchables.

The Paramus Drive-in was closed for the first half of the 1970s. It reopened around 1977. The great feature when it reopened was that instead of attaching a speaker to your car, you could tune in to the movie on your car radio. This was great for the local teens because we used to hang out in the woods behind the theater. We would bring our beers and of course a portable radio, watch some great movies and drink our brewskies without worrying about getting hassled.
In the summer of 79, the theater began having midnight showings of rock movies. This brought in a lot of young, drunk moviegoers. I don't think this even lasted the whole summer because of the problems with drinking, drug use and fights. Tragedy struck when a teenage moviegoer was hit and killed by a car on his way home from one of these shows. It was after this summer that the theater really began to go down hill as far as maintenance.