Totowa Drive-In
701 Union Boulevard,
Totowa,
NJ
07512
701 Union Boulevard,
Totowa,
NJ
07512
2 people
favorited this theater
The Totowa Drive-In was located on the east-bound lanes of Route 46 in Totowa, to the west of Paterson, NJ. It opened on May 28, 1948 with Lucille Ball in “Her Husband’s Affairs” & Roy Rogers in “On the Old Spanish Trail”. It was operated by J.J. Thompson & Eastern Drive-In Theatres Ct. It had an 800-car capacity at its opening. It was closed by General Cinema Corp. on September 17, 1974 with Sarah Kennedy in “The Working Girls” & Claudia Jennings in “The Single Girls”.
By 2024 a server farm operates on the site, and the property next to it is occupied by Bob’s discount furniture.
Contributed by
jerry kovar, Kevin Ruddy
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Recent comments (view all 21 comments)
There’s real showmanship on display in these ads. Look how many things are happening on any one of these pages: Free Coffee Served, Free Color TV Lounge, Ladies' Night, Guys' Night Out, Children Under 12 Free, etc.
Compare it to today, when you’re lucky just to be able to see a halfway-decent movie.
I too enjoy seeing the old newspaper ads, and am in agreement regarding the inability to keep track of recent postings made to existing theater entries. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I emailed the site editors the suggestion of adding a “more comments” link underneath the ten theaters on display in the margin (New Theaters and Updated Theaters have this option, so why not the Recent Comments, especially since the Recent Comments is the most popular of those three categories). This way, a longer list can be viewed which is helpful to those of us who do not live on the site 24/7. One visit a day or even every now and then would provide an opportunity to see what recent comments have been made. The way it is set up now, once a theater’s latest comment becomes the eleventh most recent comment, you’re out of luck.
A couple ways of getting around this: (1) select the email option so that when someone replies you’ll know about it (this applies only to those threads in which you contributed), and (2) go to your own profile (or someone elses) and click the theaters listed in an attempt to see if any new posts have been made.
Re the newspaper ads… Between Bill Kallay and myself we have hundreds of these things, some simply for our collection and most because of some particular form of research. I find it better to make a photocopy rather than simply taking hand-written notes while the microfilm is loaded (though this method is more expensive and results in a space and filing issue). We have ads for every advertised 70mm release over the past 50 years for the New York and Los Angeles regions plus many ads from other special process and roadshow type films and lots of theater grand openings (and scattered ads from other regions).
Bill and I never figured on posting these things, but if there’s sufficient interest…
Michael: I for one would love to see them, especially the Los Angeles ones which I’ve never seen. Thanks!
Still open as of 1971 – thanks again Bill:
View link
Old postcard:
View link
Approx. address for this drive-in was 244 U.S. 46.
Part of the drive-in is occupied by Hoffman La Roche Printing.
Was open as early as 1948, closed in September 1974.
The Totowa Drive-In opened its gates by the Eastern Drive-In Corporation chain on May 28, 1948 with “Her Husband Affairs” and “On The Old Spanish Trail” (unknown if any extras added).
The Totowa Drive-In closed on September 17, 1974 with “Working Girl” and “Single Girls”, and was last operated by General Cinema.
This opened as the Route 6 Drive-In theatre on May 28th, 1948. Around 1950 or later it was listed as the Totowa Drive-In. Grand opening ads posted. Directions read: “on Route 6, two miles east of the Paterson Plank Road next to Kiddieland”.
An server farm now stands on the drive-in site.