The Grizzly (Big Bear Lake) noted on Sept. 21, 1945 that “Big Bear Theatre, formerly the Grizzly,” would close for the season that month, and that owner Earle C. Strebe planned to construct a new building for the theater “on the highway next to Safeway”. “The foundation was poured and laid this summer, but actual work on the structure of the modern steel and re-inforced concrete building was delayed.”
That new building opened on April 28, 1946, “when a capacity crowd of valley residents and visitors packed the first show to see the Gary Cooper-Ingrid Bergman vehicle, "Saratoga Trunk.” … The youthful looking Strebe - he has not yet reached 40 years of age - is well known in Palm Springs theatre circles, having operated two cinema parlors at the desert spa for many years. In addition Strebe owns a theatre in Las Vegas and controls several units in the Lake Arrowhead-Crestline area."
Motion Picture Herald, Oct. 13, 1956: “Earl Strebe, who operates theatres in Palm Springs and other resort towns, has announced his plans to build a drive-in in Big Bear, where he is now operating a conventional theatre.”
A nice description by Wilfred P. Smith, writing in Motion Picture Herald, June 11, 1955: “On a trip to Montana I was particularly impressed by the approaches and exits of the Sage drive-in at Billings. Along beautiful macadam drives were 8x8-ft. luminous paintings based on famous paintings of western scenes. They were spectacular. One painting was of a coyote howling in the night, silhouetted by a bright new moon; another depicted a cowboy on a bucking bronco. Paintings were used here in lieu of shrubs and trees because of the short season for plants.”
There’s more information about the long-gone Cutter-Carr airport, sometimes known as the West Mesa airport, an eight-pointed star of unpaved runways just north of the 66’s viewing field, on Wikipedia.
As noted above, the July 30, 1962 issue of Boxoffice said that while the 66 was closed, “it has been used as airport runway.”
I was reminded of that airport stuff because a better address these days for the old 66 site is 221 Airport Drive NW. That’s where the Labatt Food Service distribution center sits as I type.
The Skyview was almost exactly 3½ miles from Route 66, but Quinta Scott included a nice B&W photo from 1981 in her 2000 book, “Along Route 66.” (Highly recommended for 66 fans!) She included the following notes, based on a 1998 interview with Christopher Caporal:
Sam Kapriolotis landed in New York with his father and brother at the turn of the century. For two years, the family made their living selling fruit and gum from a pushcart on New York streets. Then, when Sam’s father and brother returned to their native Greece, nine-year-old Sam stayed. He raised himself, became a citizen, and took a new name - Caporal, the name of his favorite smoke. Young Sam Caporal drifted to St. Louis, where he learned to be a movie projectionist, and then to Oklahoma City, where he opened his first movie house in 1916. In 1948, Sam and his sons - George, Chris, and Pete - built the Skyview Drive-In.
… The Caporals … hired architect David Baldwin to design the Skyview … Baldwin gave them a reinforced-concrete, Spanish Colonial screen tower. The contractor used slip-form construction to build the tower. The process, the same that had been used in the construction of grain elevators since the turn of the century, took six days. The workers started on the ground, filled the forms with concrete, let it set, moved the forms up a bit, and poured more concrete. It was a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation. As the tower moved upward, workers installed prefabricated windows, shaped like quatrefoils and glazed with opaque glass, in the center section of the screen tower. The Caporals painted the piers white and the center royal blue and outlined the whole in neon. They installed lights behind the quatrefoil windows so that at night they glowed like large golden stars. The set SKYVIEW on top in giant neon letters and proudly placed their came, CAPORAL, on the top of the left pier.
Pinterest included the note: “Art for Terrace Drive-in Theater in Albuquerque, NM. This is a print of the original concept painting for the mural on the back of the screen. Done by Keith Kent. June 1951. Theater long closed now.”
I guess that D. Armino reopened the Sunset (if it had closed) in 1987. That’s when I started seeing English-language movie ads for the Sunset, and would account for the Motion Picture Almanac listing in 1988. The final ad I found was for “Die Hard” and “License To Drive” on Sept. 25, 1988.
An Albuquerque Tribune columnist wrote in Nov. 2, 1995 noted that the Sunset was still standing “as it had for years, though locked behind barbed wire and chain-link fence, unkempt and neglected … A plywood sign on the ticket booth said, “Open May 31.” “
The Exhibitor, Sept. 10, 1952: “Charles E. Darden, Associated Popcorn Distributors, Inc., reported that the highlight of his trip into west Texas was his stop at the Grant Drive-In, Wichita Falls, which has a second story viewing room, and which does walk-in business from a residential area."
To restate that 1960 news, the school board bought the land and a concrete building (probably the concession/projection building) formerly used by the County / No Name. The drive-in was dead by then. Perhaps the board thought it could use the building somehow, which would account for its survival for another three decades.
In 1979, New Mexico authorized a vocational school in Tucumcari. I would speculate that’s about when the school board made a chunk of its land available for what later became Mesalands Community College.
John Hasten “J. H.” Snow owned and operated both of Hinton’s theaters at the time of this snippet.
Boxoffice, Sept. 11, 1948: “TUCUMCARI, N. M. – Construction has begun here on the County Drive-In, a 400-car airer being built by J. H. Snow of Hinton, Okla. The new ozoner is located on highway 66. Snow, a native of Oklahoma, has been in the theatre business only three years. He owns and operates two theatres in Hinton."
Kenmore, Mesalands Community College is on the site now. The high school was built on the east side of Loren Yessler’s property, which must have been extensive.
Gee whiz, the Yucca went through a lot of ownership changes in its first 12 months!
Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “John Blocker … built and opened the Yucca Drive-In this summer at Clovis, N. M., but sold out to Charles C. Wolf. Blocker has been in show business in Texas for a number of years. He once owned and operated the Texas in Abilene, then a night club at Lubbock and from there he went to Clovis.”
Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “WICHITA FALLS, TEX. - John Blocker has begun construction on the Falls Drive-In on the outskirts of the city and plans to open the ozoner sometime next month. Blocker built and opened the Yucca Drive-In this summer at Clovis, N. M., but sold out to Charles C. Wolf. Blocker has been in show business in Texas for a number of years. He once owned and operated the Texas in Abilene, then a night club at Lubbock and from there he went to Clovis.”
Same theater? Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “Charles W. Weisenburg … is building the new Sylvia Theatre in Seagoville … The new house is right on the main highway a block from the old location. It is an all new brick building and will have about 600 seats.”
Boxoffice, April 28, 1969: “McLendon Theatres has purchased the East Main Drive-In in Grand Prairie, near the Dallas city limits, and the Downs Drive-In, also in Grand Prairie … The Downs will be rebuilt into a four-screen drive-in … The Downs, after the reconstruction, will be renamed Century 4."
Adding a little detail to dallasmovietheaters' earlier post.
Boxoffice, April 28, 1969: “McLendon Theatres has purchased the East Main Drive-In in Grand Prairie, near the Dallas city limits, and the Downs Drive-In, also in Grand Prairie. Robert M. Hartgrove, president of the McLendon circuit, said that the East Main, purchased from Charles Weisenburg, will be made into a twin airer with 1,500-car capacity and a new concessions area.”
Your note inspired me to take a closer look at the original hi-res TIF of the photo that John Margolies took in 1982. Straining against the Kodachrome grain, I can see a small Coca-Cola-topped message board in the boxoffice window. I can’t make out the words, but the four lines look like “Admission $? / (two short words) / All Movies Rated / X”. So now I’m sold on the idea that the Trail was open at least that long.
TinEye.com first noticed this photo at Amachron.com’s long page of Amarillo photos, about a year before it was posted here. I sure wish I knew where it came from.
Filling in a few more details from dallasmovietheaters' 2015 note, the Twin opened on July 18, 1952 with “The Lion and the Horse” on the first screen and “Flight to Mars” on the second, along with two cartoons.
Joseph Dydzak, who was part of that Canadian drive-in chain, passed away in Dallas in 1983. I tracked down his son, who sent me this email earlier this year: “My father, a Canadian who loved Texas, owned it for a brief period. It was acquired from Cinemark and legendary theatre owner Lee Roy Mitchel who lives in Plano. After my father passed away, the drive in theatre was eventually sold to Walmart.”
This photo is © Joe Sohm and available for license from Dreamstime, which is the source of its watermarks.
This photo is © Joe Sohm and available for license from Dreamstime, which is the source of its watermarks.
The Grizzly (Big Bear Lake) noted on Sept. 21, 1945 that “Big Bear Theatre, formerly the Grizzly,” would close for the season that month, and that owner Earle C. Strebe planned to construct a new building for the theater “on the highway next to Safeway”. “The foundation was poured and laid this summer, but actual work on the structure of the modern steel and re-inforced concrete building was delayed.”
That new building opened on April 28, 1946, “when a capacity crowd of valley residents and visitors packed the first show to see the Gary Cooper-Ingrid Bergman vehicle, "Saratoga Trunk.” … The youthful looking Strebe - he has not yet reached 40 years of age - is well known in Palm Springs theatre circles, having operated two cinema parlors at the desert spa for many years. In addition Strebe owns a theatre in Las Vegas and controls several units in the Lake Arrowhead-Crestline area."
Motion Picture Herald, Oct. 13, 1956: “Earl Strebe, who operates theatres in Palm Springs and other resort towns, has announced his plans to build a drive-in in Big Bear, where he is now operating a conventional theatre.”
Motion Picture Exhibitor, Nov. 10, 1954: “Mr. and Mrs. Lee Welch installed CinemaScope at the Sage and Sage Drive-In, Van Horn, Tex.”
A nice description by Wilfred P. Smith, writing in Motion Picture Herald, June 11, 1955: “On a trip to Montana I was particularly impressed by the approaches and exits of the Sage drive-in at Billings. Along beautiful macadam drives were 8x8-ft. luminous paintings based on famous paintings of western scenes. They were spectacular. One painting was of a coyote howling in the night, silhouetted by a bright new moon; another depicted a cowboy on a bucking bronco. Paintings were used here in lieu of shrubs and trees because of the short season for plants.”
There’s more information about the long-gone Cutter-Carr airport, sometimes known as the West Mesa airport, an eight-pointed star of unpaved runways just north of the 66’s viewing field, on Wikipedia.
As noted above, the July 30, 1962 issue of Boxoffice said that while the 66 was closed, “it has been used as airport runway.”
I was reminded of that airport stuff because a better address these days for the old 66 site is 221 Airport Drive NW. That’s where the Labatt Food Service distribution center sits as I type.
The Skyview was almost exactly 3½ miles from Route 66, but Quinta Scott included a nice B&W photo from 1981 in her 2000 book, “Along Route 66.” (Highly recommended for 66 fans!) She included the following notes, based on a 1998 interview with Christopher Caporal:
Sam Kapriolotis landed in New York with his father and brother at the turn of the century. For two years, the family made their living selling fruit and gum from a pushcart on New York streets. Then, when Sam’s father and brother returned to their native Greece, nine-year-old Sam stayed. He raised himself, became a citizen, and took a new name - Caporal, the name of his favorite smoke. Young Sam Caporal drifted to St. Louis, where he learned to be a movie projectionist, and then to Oklahoma City, where he opened his first movie house in 1916. In 1948, Sam and his sons - George, Chris, and Pete - built the Skyview Drive-In.
… The Caporals … hired architect David Baldwin to design the Skyview … Baldwin gave them a reinforced-concrete, Spanish Colonial screen tower. The contractor used slip-form construction to build the tower. The process, the same that had been used in the construction of grain elevators since the turn of the century, took six days. The workers started on the ground, filled the forms with concrete, let it set, moved the forms up a bit, and poured more concrete. It was a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation. As the tower moved upward, workers installed prefabricated windows, shaped like quatrefoils and glazed with opaque glass, in the center section of the screen tower. The Caporals painted the piers white and the center royal blue and outlined the whole in neon. They installed lights behind the quatrefoil windows so that at night they glowed like large golden stars. The set SKYVIEW on top in giant neon letters and proudly placed their came, CAPORAL, on the top of the left pier.
Pinterest included the note: “Art for Terrace Drive-in Theater in Albuquerque, NM. This is a print of the original concept painting for the mural on the back of the screen. Done by Keith Kent. June 1951. Theater long closed now.”
I guess that D. Armino reopened the Sunset (if it had closed) in 1987. That’s when I started seeing English-language movie ads for the Sunset, and would account for the Motion Picture Almanac listing in 1988. The final ad I found was for “Die Hard” and “License To Drive” on Sept. 25, 1988.
An Albuquerque Tribune columnist wrote in Nov. 2, 1995 noted that the Sunset was still standing “as it had for years, though locked behind barbed wire and chain-link fence, unkempt and neglected … A plywood sign on the ticket booth said, “Open May 31.” “
That’s the outline of the Duke City a couple of blocks south of the Circle Autoscope.
The Exhibitor, Sept. 10, 1952: “Charles E. Darden, Associated Popcorn Distributors, Inc., reported that the highlight of his trip into west Texas was his stop at the Grant Drive-In, Wichita Falls, which has a second story viewing room, and which does walk-in business from a residential area."
To restate that 1960 news, the school board bought the land and a concrete building (probably the concession/projection building) formerly used by the County / No Name. The drive-in was dead by then. Perhaps the board thought it could use the building somehow, which would account for its survival for another three decades.
In 1979, New Mexico authorized a vocational school in Tucumcari. I would speculate that’s about when the school board made a chunk of its land available for what later became Mesalands Community College.
John Hasten “J. H.” Snow owned and operated both of Hinton’s theaters at the time of this snippet.
Boxoffice, Sept. 11, 1948: “TUCUMCARI, N. M. – Construction has begun here on the County Drive-In, a 400-car airer being built by J. H. Snow of Hinton, Okla. The new ozoner is located on highway 66. Snow, a native of Oklahoma, has been in the theatre business only three years. He owns and operates two theatres in Hinton."
Kenmore, Mesalands Community College is on the site now. The high school was built on the east side of Loren Yessler’s property, which must have been extensive.
Gee whiz, the Yucca went through a lot of ownership changes in its first 12 months!
Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “John Blocker … built and opened the Yucca Drive-In this summer at Clovis, N. M., but sold out to Charles C. Wolf. Blocker has been in show business in Texas for a number of years. He once owned and operated the Texas in Abilene, then a night club at Lubbock and from there he went to Clovis.”
Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “WICHITA FALLS, TEX. - John Blocker has begun construction on the Falls Drive-In on the outskirts of the city and plans to open the ozoner sometime next month. Blocker built and opened the Yucca Drive-In this summer at Clovis, N. M., but sold out to Charles C. Wolf. Blocker has been in show business in Texas for a number of years. He once owned and operated the Texas in Abilene, then a night club at Lubbock and from there he went to Clovis.”
Same theater? Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “Charles W. Weisenburg … is building the new Sylvia Theatre in Seagoville … The new house is right on the main highway a block from the old location. It is an all new brick building and will have about 600 seats.”
Boxoffice, April 28, 1969: “McLendon Theatres has purchased the East Main Drive-In in Grand Prairie, near the Dallas city limits, and the Downs Drive-In, also in Grand Prairie … The Downs will be rebuilt into a four-screen drive-in … The Downs, after the reconstruction, will be renamed Century 4."
Adding a little detail to dallasmovietheaters' earlier post.
Boxoffice, April 28, 1969: “McLendon Theatres has purchased the East Main Drive-In in Grand Prairie, near the Dallas city limits, and the Downs Drive-In, also in Grand Prairie. Robert M. Hartgrove, president of the McLendon circuit, said that the East Main, purchased from Charles Weisenburg, will be made into a twin airer with 1,500-car capacity and a new concessions area.”
Your note inspired me to take a closer look at the original hi-res TIF of the photo that John Margolies took in 1982. Straining against the Kodachrome grain, I can see a small Coca-Cola-topped message board in the boxoffice window. I can’t make out the words, but the four lines look like “Admission $? / (two short words) / All Movies Rated / X”. So now I’m sold on the idea that the Trail was open at least that long.
TinEye.com first noticed this photo at Amachron.com’s long page of Amarillo photos, about a year before it was posted here. I sure wish I knew where it came from.
Filling in a few more details from dallasmovietheaters' 2015 note, the Twin opened on July 18, 1952 with “The Lion and the Horse” on the first screen and “Flight to Mars” on the second, along with two cartoons.
Joseph Dydzak, who was part of that Canadian drive-in chain, passed away in Dallas in 1983. I tracked down his son, who sent me this email earlier this year: “My father, a Canadian who loved Texas, owned it for a brief period. It was acquired from Cinemark and legendary theatre owner Lee Roy Mitchel who lives in Plano. After my father passed away, the drive in theatre was eventually sold to Walmart.”
This 1977 photo by John Margolies is part of the Library of Congress’s John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive and is effectively in the public domain.