Lancaster Drive-In
665 W. Avenue H,
Lancaster,
CA
93534
665 W. Avenue H,
Lancaster,
CA
93534
2 people
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The Lancaster Drive-In was opened in 1956 as a single screen theatre with a 650 car capacity. It had an indoor viewing room inside the snack bar/projection building. It was later tripled. The property is now used by the city of Lancaster as a maintenance yard. The screen is gone, but buildings survive.
Contributed by
Ken McIntyre
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Recent comments (view all 19 comments)
I think the drive-in might have been closed before the film Spies like us was filmed there, the ticket booth and the snavk bar look partly covered up in wood sheeting!?
The Lancaster Drive-in was closed for the winter season when Spies Like us was filmed there. The drive-in closed after the 1985/86 season. Spies like us was not screened there(pity!!). The concession stand is still there.
The other guard seen at the drive-in ticket box(the speaking one) is director Joel Coen.
The Lancaster Drive-In was completed in 1956. There was nothing but bare desert in 1950. The “auditorium” was a nice feature.
The correct address was 665 W Ave H according to a 1964 booklet on Lancaster.
1958 cars.
The might have been an indoor movie theatre(behind the snack bar) according to tne Box Office Magazine articule in the photos section?
The snack bar/bio box building, and a indoor viewing room are still there(and a few speaker boxes(and posts, and the entrance/roads?) are still there. The snack bar/bio box building(seen in the movie Spies us like us) has been remodeled as a as a maintenance building by the City of Lancaster. The interior of the snack bar was used tooin the movie Spies like us.
The July 17, 1967 issue of Boxoffice ran an article about the recently expanded Lancaster Drive-In. The $160,000 project, designed by Los Angeles architect George Kirkpatrick, added a 600-car facility to the original 831-car drive-in opened in 1955. The article also mentioned the 400-seat indoor theater that presented the same program showing on the original screen. The entire complex was operated by Holiday Theatres Inc. and Griffith Grossman Enterprises.
An article about the planned expansion of the Lancaster Drive-In from two to three screens appeared in Boxoffice of December 9, 1974. The $250,000 remodeling and reconfiguration project was designed by architect Casey J. Saueres, and left the drive-in sections with capacities of 615, 595 and 506 cars, for a total capacity of 1716 cars. This article didn’t mention any changes to the indoor cinema.
The Lancaster Drive-In most likely closed after the 1985 season. Shortly after its closure, the Lancaster Drive-In made a movie appearance in that year’s film “Spies Like Us”.