Twinlake Tri-Cinema

50sSNIPES on June 16, 2023 at 12:15 am

At the time of the Twinlake’s opening, it was his 26th year in the theater business.

Novak started his life as a doorman for the Strand Theatre in Jonesboro in 1952, which at the time was a Malco theater. Shortly after the first couple of drive-ins opened in Jonesboro, Malco transferred the manager to Jonesboro from Memphis and he called Novak that if he will be interested on running a drive-in. At the time, Jonesboro had three drive-in theaters (the Starlite, the Skyvue, and the Indian; all Malco theaters). He once remembered that one of the drive-ins there jammed over the number of cars on Saturday nights, also adding that we got an 800-car capacity once-a-week. At the time, it is a year-round drive-in and he said that it was the first drive-in in Arkansas to give out free in-car heaters. Novak would later have a partnership with the Imperial Theatre in Pocahontas and would later build and open the Cherokee Drive-In in Ash Flat. At the time while Novak worked at the Skyvue Drive-In in Jonesboro in the mid-1970s, that’s when Novak brought the idea of the Twinlake Tri-Cinema.

On August 22, 1997, Novak passed away from an undergoing heart surgery at St. Bernard’s Regional Medical Center in Jonesboro.