Hillcrest Drive-In
3500 SW 59th Street,
Oklahoma City,
OK
73159
3500 SW 59th Street,
Oklahoma City,
OK
73159
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This was another of the larger drive-ins in the Oklahoma City area. It opened on June 24, 1964 with James Stewart in “How the West Was Won”. It was operated by US Cinemas of Oklahoma with a 1,400 car capacity. It was a single screen and closed in 1992. The only trace of the drive in today is the entrance on S. Portland Avenue and the theatre drive way.
Contributed by
Chuck
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Recent comments (view all 8 comments)
As a 10-year old in 1978, I went to see STAR WARS at this DI, only to be EXTREMELY disappointed to learn that EAT MY DUST (with Ron Howard) would be shown first.
Never seen EMD since, and hope/pray I never do.
Can’t understand the reason for showing that first,it had to be summer time,what were they thinking,ahhhhhh,Concession sells!!!!!
My parents took us to a few films at this drive-in in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Hillcrest sat next to Will Rogers World Airport, and the jets flying in and out often drowned out the audio!
A closer address (at least for Google) is 3500 SW 59th St, Oklahoma City, OK 73159. This puts the address on the west side of the highway where the drive-in was located. The drive-in itself was south of the address at the end of the entrance road which starts just to the east of the 3500 SW 59th St indication. http://tinyurl.com/jmhnf7x
Could someone delete the 11 year old dead links to roadsideoklahoma.com and other sites…
How about removing the really helpful niggling comments about the empirical physical address. (Sorry, such conversations are just a waste of time.)
This opened on June 24th, 1964.
Hillcrest Drive-In opening Wed, Jun 24, 1964 – 44 · The Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) · Newspapers.com
Grand opening ad posted.
I’ll see whorton’s dead link observation and raise him one: When you find a wonderful web page, save it to the Internet Archive then link to the Archive’s version of the page. That’s much more likely to survive, especially for newspaper article links.
Anyway, his June 1, 1981 obituary in The Daily Oklahoman said that Farris S. Shanbour built the Hillcrest “which at that time was the largest drive-in theater in the state of OK.” He later built the Winchester Drive-In, Park Terrace Theaters, and Quail Twin Theater.
I wonder how this note factored into the story of OKC’s Hillcrest, which opened with a different owner eight years later.
Boxoffice, Dec. 24, 1955: “Oklahoma City - R. Lewis Barton of Barton Theatres will begin construction of a new twin screen drive-in about January 1. Site for the new Hillcrest Drive-In is at 75th and South Pennsylvania on a hill overlooking the Oklahoma City skyline. Barton has acquired a 45-acre tract for the drive-in. Plans now are for a total capacity of around 2,000 cars … The screens will be back to back, with two projection booths and concession stands. Opening date is planned for around April 15 (1956).”