Campus Drive-In

Closed February 6, 1983.
News coverage video in below link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuifbx2TNRg

Opened on 18/8/1948 with “Give my regards to Broadway”, and “The Kansan”.

Ha! I snuck in, or watch over the walls, many many times at the Campus Drive-In in the mid 70’s… we would ride our bikes from Del Cerro, and climb up on top of adjacent businesses' roofs, and drop over the wall, then crawl up to the seats in the unmaintained “kids play area” in the front part, right under the screen… the old wooden seats there were all covered with ivy, but it was a good place to hide, as long as you didn’t turn the sound up too high (there were speakers next to those ivy-covered seats!)… we sometimes even got the gall to go and buy a soda from the concession stand, once the movie had started! … the only problem was that people with little dogs would let them take a dump in the playground sand, so you had to watch it up there in the “free seating area”.

Scroll down about one-quarter of the way down on this webpage to see some additional pictures of the Campus Drive-in.

Crying Shame this Drive-in could not be saved.

Here’s an addition to the article excerpt above, about the killing that took place at the Campus in December 1961:

O'Connor’s father Jerome O'Connor spent so much time in courtrooms that he eventually became president of the San Diego Court Watchers Association.

In 1971, the murdered man’s sister, Maureen O'Connor, became the youngest person ever to be elected to the San Diego City Council. She was elected Mayor of San Diego in 1986.

The Reader just posted online a new draft of the complete San Diego drive-in history —– it’s more than twice the length of the original, with a lot of new information and something like 100 graphics that weren’t with the old article either ——

View link

NICE, ANYONE HAS INFO OR PHOTOS OF THE STARDUST TWIN CINEMAS IN VISTA CA NORTH COUNTY SAN DIEGO???

I last saw it all in wooden crates at Gloria Poore’s downtown loft in about 1985. The neon was saved/salvaged by an ad-hoc preservation group called SONO (Save Our Neon Organization, a play on SOHO’s name). Gloria Poore and Juliette Mondot were the principals in that group if you can track them down.
They probably did something artistic with it. Back in the day (early 80s) you could have just about any old sign or tube you wanted or could handle just for the asking. Or sometimes for the taking, if it was doomed. I owned the Zebra Club, Lyceum Theatre, 5th Ave palette, cold cathode from the Pan Pacific in LA, etc. for a time myself.

Thanks!

I also posted an excerpt from an earlier article I wrote for the Reader (on downtown all-nighter theaters of the 70s) in the Aztec Theater section. I used to work there for Walnut (and at the nearby Casino, the Balboa, the Pink Pussycat and the two Horton Plaza theaters). If Cinema Treasures launches pages on the Casino, Cabrillo, etc., I’ll post those article excerpts. Anyone interested in the whole (lengthy) article can request it from me via email!

For that matter, there are several long-gone San Diego Drive-ins I’d love to post “chapters” on at this site – I have tons of records RE the Frontier, the Tu-Vu, the Midway near the beaches, etc.

My next big Reader feature on local theaters will be on the old Hollywood Burlesque Theatre in downtown SD where, in the 50s, famed strippers like Lilli St. Cyr came thru and a famous “nudie cutie” movie was filmed there –

Jay Allen Sanford

http://www.myspace.com/jayallensanford

The Russo’s company in later days was called Eldorado Enterprises. They were a very famous name in the San Diego movie theatre circles. They also owned the Aztec, Balboa and Casino theatres downtown. They eventually sold the Aztec to Mr. Wesley Andrews. Walnut Properties bought the Casino and purchased a lease on the Balboa. Their sister, a Mrs. Weatherby, owned the Tower theatre on West Broadway (now long gone). They also owned the Tower Bowling Alley (also on West Broadway and also long gone) which had a little tiny theatre that used a rear screen projection system. I think it was called the Guilded Cage Theatre or something along those lines; it was all so long ago. Walnut bought the projection equipment from the Campus and I was the guy who removed it. The 4000 watt Orcon lamphouses and rectifiers were taken to the Star theatre in Oceanside and were still there the last time I worked that theatre in April of 1994 but are probably long gone now. The Simplex projector heads, Simplex sound heads and Simplex heavy-duty pedestals (and boy were they heavy; solid cast iron) were moved up to a theatre that Walnut was building in Goleta called the Roxy, which may or may not still be there.

Excerpt from Reader feature:

The Campus Drive-In at the corner of El Cajon Boulevard and College Avenue, and stretching to 61st Street, was a single-screen ozone originally built for 700 cars and 200 walk-ins (the seats were later removed, making room for up to 900 cars). The Campus Drive-In Corporation was formed August 7, 1947, and the theater itself opened the following year, charging 50 cents admission and giving out free popcorn during opening week. Sam J. Russo and Co-Op Theatres Inc. were listed as chief operators.

At the time, the Campus was one of the largest drive-in theaters on the West Coast. Signage on the back of the screen featured a 50- x 80-foot mural. Lit up at night by 1900 feet of piping installed by California Neon, it depicted a 46-foot-tall marching majorette, wearing an Indian headdress and spinning a baton that appeared to twirl as she strutted in front of a depiction of SDSU’s old main building and bell-tower quadrangle, football goalposts, and mountains (one with a white S on it). The majorette was designed by Austin Linn Gray and Joe Schmidt, two San Diegans said to have based her on a photograph of Marion Caster Heatherly Baker, head drum majorette at San Diego High School in 1943 and later a majorette for the Los Angeles Rams.

A killing took place at the Campus on December 2, 1961. Snack-bar employee Tom O'Leary got into an argument with patron Dennis O'Conner. Things got increasingly heated, and O'Leary ended up pulling a knife on the patron and stabbing him to death. O'Leary was charged with unlawful killing and was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. This didn’t satisfy O'Conner’s family, who filed a lawsuit against the Campus Drive-In Corporation, seeking damages for corporate negligence by maintaining that O'Leary committed the assault while acting in the course of his employment. The court eventually ruled that the Campus wasn’t a party to the manslaughter and thus shouldn’t be held liable, though appeals and motions regarding the judgment continued through 1967.

The original Campus Drive-In Corporation dissolved July 8, 1975, and soon the locale was being run by Eldorado Theatres, the same corporation that had opened the Ace Drive-In in Lemon Grove during the late ‘60s. From the '70s onward, screenings opened with a short film that featured a rippling American flag set to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” During intermissions, “Speedometer Bingo” numbers were announced over the speakers, with patrons winning snack-bar prizes when the last three digits on their speedometer matched the numbers called.

The Campus Drive-In closed in February 1983; the final two features were The Dark Crystal and a retread print (a second- or third-run film) of Dragonslayer. Before the drive-in’s demolition, the majorette portion of the screen mural was donated to the Save Our Neon Organization, which packed the sign in crates to store in a downtown warehouse. In 1985, the majorette was purchased for $4000 by William J. Stone and Associates, operators of Marketplace at the Grove, off Highway 94. The neon was restored at a cost of around $200,000 by El Cajon-based Integrated Sign Associates, and the majorette was reinstalled at the Marketplace, near the Mann Theatre. After the shopping center was renovated as College Grove Center, a relighting ceremony was held March 10, 2000, reportedly attended by over 8000 people and covered by several local TV news crews.

On July 2, 2001, the operators of College Grove Center, Vestar Development Company, donated the neon landmark to a company called SOHO (Save Our Heritage Organisation). Vestar has agreed to remain responsible for financial and physical maintenance of the sign and for keeping it lit at night in the shopping center. SOHO has an easement for access and the right to remove the majorette, although there are no plans to abandon the Center. The Campus majorette has been featured in photo spreads in Time and Life, as well as in numerous books and calendars. The shopping center that replaced the drive-in uses small reproductions of the majorette in building signage.

Ignore both URLs above. The SD Reader is a free weekly paper and only keeps the current edition online. If one is interested, perhaps he/she can write for a copy of the back issue I referenced.