Lakewood Drive-In
2100 E. Carson Street,
Long Beach,
CA
90810
2100 E. Carson Street,
Long Beach,
CA
90810
1 person
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The Lakewood Drive-In was opened in 1948. If I can remember correctly, this drive-in was located on Carson Street on the border of Lakewood and Long Beach. It had a sail boat painted on the screen.
Contributed by
Dave Smith
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Recent comments (view all 12 comments)
Cari De La Cruz:
The Los Altos was a different (and much larger) drive-in, on Bellflower Boulevard in Long Beach. I can’t find it listed on Cinema Treasures, but there is a web page devoted to it elsewhere:
View link
From socaldriveins.com:
View link
Here is a 1948 newspaper ad:
http://tinyurl.com/ydslr6
This ad was in the Press-Telegram in May 1949. I can’t place the location:
http://tinyurl.com/3y363e
Are you talking about the Cine Car? There was a Cine Car located in Orange County and was renamed the Lincoln Drive-In.
That must be the one. Thanks.
Google Maps thinks W. Carson Street is E. Carson St., and thus the map link for this theater shows a location west of the river. The site was actually at the corner of Carson and Cherry, way east of the river. However, if you change the city to Lakewood, Google Maps finds the right intersection. You can get the same correction by changing the zip code to 90712.
According to an item in the November 15, 1947, issue of Boxoffice Magazine, this drive-in was designed by Clifford and William Glenn Balch, for Pacific Theatres. The item also said that the brothers designed another drive-in for Pacific at the same time, to be built at Roscoe and Sepulveda in the San Fernando Valley.
Clifford Balch (born 1880) would have been about 77 years old at the time these theaters were designed, while his far younger brother William (born 1901) was, at the time, in a business partnership with architect Louis L. Bryan (Balch & Bryan), formed in 1946. I don’t know exactly what the professional relationship between the brothers was at the time, but a few items from about 1947 also appeared in Southwest Builder & Contractor linking them as designers of various drive-ins, and at least one hardtop.
I believe it was during a visit to the Lakewood Drive-In that we were given rain-out tickets because of a fire at Hancock Oil caused the cars and the screen to become covered in oil. I was only about 3 years old, so it would have been about 1957.
At that age, I think I rated drive-ins by the quality of the playgrounds.
Above address will not map correctly. Use 2250 E. Carson Street. Ralph’s is where the drive-in stood.
The Lakewood Drive-in was located at Carson and Lakewood Blvd, across from Douglas Aircraft and just west from Cal-Bowl just beyond the railroad tracks, (tho I never in 35 years saw any train on the tracts). The Los Altos Drive-in was located on Bellflower Blvd where Worthington Ford now sits. The Circle Drive-in was located at the traffic circle in Long Beach, Ca. near where Java Lanes once stood on Pacific Coast Hwy.