Skyview Drive-In
3100 47th Avenue,
Parkway,
CA
95824
3100 47th Avenue,
Parkway,
CA
95824
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When was the exact closing date of the Skyview? (One-word name) The short answer is I’m not sure, it’s a little weird. Here’s what I found in the Sacramento Bee.
On Dec. 10, 1988, the Skyview ran an ad showing “Nightmare on Elm Street 4” + “Halloween 4” / “Iron Eagle II + They Live” / Closed for Repairs on screens 1, 2, and 3 respectively.
On Dec. 18, 1988, the Skyview ad changed the second screen to “Young Guns” + “Alien Nation,” but everything else stayed the same. The Bee’s editorial listing showed the same movies as Dec. 10.
On Dec. 22, 1988, there was no Skyview ad, and the listing again showed the same movies as Dec. 10.
I would have chalked it all up to a passive editorial crew that didn’t update listings for a freshly dead drive-in, that the final Screen 2 show was “Alien Nation.” Except that two weeks later a bad crash resulted in a Jan. 2, 1989 Sacramento Union photo (uploaded here) of the (already “old”) Skyview sign showing the same program as Dec. 10.
Did the Skyview really change back for shows on Christmas week? Was its Dec. 18 ad wrong because it had quietly closed earlier? And how did the Union writers discern that the freshly closed Skyview would never open again?
According to Google Maps, the old Skyview site is in the unincorporated, census-designated place called Parkway. Even Sacramento Bee ombudsman Art Nauman concurred in 1990: “Last week I blithely wrote that the Skyview drive-in theater was built outside Sacramento’s city limits in 1950 and later was annexed to the county. Three readers - including county Supervisor Illa Collin, who ought to know - emphatically pointed out the Skyview still is in the county, not the city. I should have double-checked.”
Update on the former site…most of the property is now being used, assuring that it will never again be a multi-screen drive in theatre. The area where Screen 2 (the South Screen) was has now been graded. I assume the Strawn family, the Skyview’s owners, still holds what is left of the property. A very small trace of the drive in (a bit of Screens 1 and 3) remain but have not yet been graded, and obviously the screens have been brought down. A very tiny remnant, considering it has been nearly 70 years since it was built, and over 30 since its demise.
As of this writing, Gladys Strawn is still alive in her 90s, while her husband Glenn has passed away.
If there is anyone who has any film snipes that was used at the Skyview, please come forward.
The 2 screens both opened with “Jessica” and “Birdman of Alcatraz”(in different orders).
2 screens on September 21st, 1962
Opened with “Samson and Delilah” and other added attactions(not named).
This opened on September 14th, 1950. Grand opening ad posted.
The site is possibly now Trench Plate Rental?
I was raised in Sacto beteen 1970 and 1980. When we’d drive on I-80 at night and go by the Skyview, I always liked the neon sign, showing a small star growing larger, then diminishing. I made up a stupid saying to go along with the visual: “ho, ho it, star!. Ho ho ho it.”
I had problems as a kid.
I would like to see some pics of this place as well. Its cool that even after being closed for 20 years you can still tell it was a drive-in.
The drive-in theatre that was closest to home.My family frequently go the to see a movie.
Goggle Earth 1995 view. Does anybody have any pictures of it?
A brief detailed history of this drive-in…it opened in 1949 as Sacramento’s first drive-in theater. At the time it opened, it was a single screen. Much later in the 1960s a second screen was added, called a “South Screen” (the original screen was labeled “North Screen”). A third screen was added in 1973 where a playground had been.
At its heyday, the North Screen had three sub-run hits for about $3.50 a car load. For a brief period in the 1970s, it ran Spanish movies. Some nights you’d get a short subject followed by two color cartoons (usually either a Disney or Terrytoons short). For intermission, you’d get those dancing hot dogs, or maybe you would have seen ads for “Federico College of Hair Styling”. Towards the end of its life, you’d see B- or Triple-Z fare (while no one remembers a movie called “The Rape Killer”, almost everyone, including myself, remembers “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”), but it did run some blockbusters (one time, they had “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters” on the same bill.
The drive in closed down in 1988, with demolishing coming soon after. Having been born and raised in Sacramento and visiting the Sky View many times growing up as a child, I remember vividly all those visits. I can still picture in my mind the snack bar. Anyway, if anyone else has vivid memories of this drive in, you’re welcome to comment. Rest in peace, Skyview Drive In.
Sky View was open until at least the late 1980s. I was a projectionist at the Sacramento 6 Drive-In in the late 1980s and 1990s, and in the Fall of 1988 I had to deliver a print of “Bat 21” (starring Gene Hackman) to the Sky View once we were done showing it. The Sky View looked to be in rough shape but was still operating; it seemed to only have a few speaker poles with speakers on them (this was pre-radio sound). A year or so later a reckless speeding car skidded off the road and crashed into their box office facing 47th Avenue and did major damage (the driver was killed). It was a big news story at the time. I think that is what finaly ended the theater’s operation.