Twin-Vue Drive-In
15201 S. Figueroa Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90248
15201 S. Figueroa Street,
Los Angeles,
CA
90248
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After digging through the LA Times, I think the Twin Vue’s final appearance in the Pacific Theatres' ad was on Thursday, Oct. 1, 1981. The double feature that night was “American Werewolf in London” and “Hell Night”.
This site has a Gardena post office address, so the 90248 plant handles any mail there. But it’s not in Gardena, or even all that close.
A 1939 topo map shows the future Twin-Vue completely within the half-mile wide arm of Los Angeles that reaches south to San Pedro. It’s on the eastern edge of the arm, making it about a half-mile away from Gardena. Ditto for the 1952 & 1957 topo maps. The 1965 map (the first to indicate the drive-in) carves out the Twin-Vue to Los Angeles County, albeit surrounded on three sides by the city of LA’s peninsula. Ditto 1975 & 1982.
The current City of Gardena’s presumably official City Boundaries Map concurs for the most part. It shows the old drive-in site completely within the LA peninsula at its eastern edge.
Either the Twin-Vue was in Los Angeles, or it was on county land bordering Los Angeles. When I write about the drive-in, LA is the city I’ll be using for its location.
This opened on July 15th, 1949. Grand opening ad posted.
I worked at the Twin-Vue in 1963-1965, when it was owned by the Glenny family, who also owned the liquor store and lounge next door. Busy nights meant trying to guide cars facing northwest into stalls facing southwest. We ushers made spare change by washing windshields for tips before the show started. Also, since we charged by the person while the nearby Roadium charged by the car, there were always a few cars who left the entry line with multiple passengers – only to appear moments later with only one or two people, and a pronounced lower ride toward the rear.
You can see aerial views from a few different decades by entering the theater address on this site:
View link
Here is another ad from the LA Times:
http://tinyurl.com/5v5n97
Here is an October 1974 double feature, as advertised in the LA Times:
http://tinyurl.com/3ayogh
It’s an industrial park. No trace of the drive-in.
As a child during the early 60’s my dad would take the family to the drive-in on Friday’s after he came home from work and got cleaned up. The Twin Vue was one of those drive-in’s that I remember fondly. Some of the films I remember seeing there were Pollyanna and Flipper. Years later after joing the projectionist Local 150 I learned that the projectionist who first opened the Twin Vue also closed it. I also learned that because of the small and somewhat narrow lot, the Twin Vue was configured in such a way that the main screen tower was placed in the northwest corner of the lot and faced southeast so the headlight glare from the northbound Harbor freeway traffic would not be distracting to the audience had it been placed in the southwest corner but later a second smaller screen tower was positioned in the southwest corner of the lot along with car stalls and speaker poles. Most of the time it sat there unused. Only on those rare occasions when the main lot filled up did management open the smaller lot and ran the same picture on both screens using an inovative prism mirror system contained in a box in front of the lens of each of the two projectors that were facing the main screen tower. With the turn of a knob on the top of each box the same image could be simutaneoulsy thrown on both screens. However, this reduced the footlambert and the image lost some brightness on both screens. After too many complaints and refunds about the poor picture quality management stopped doing this. Now when the main lot filled up the second lot opened but arriving customers were told to park their cars so that it faced the main screen.
Well when I went to the Twin Vue in the mid to late 60’s both screens were used to show movies
From socaldriveins.com:
View link
I have photos of the Twin-Vue and that dreadful second screen; I’ll have to look for them and scan them. The theatre was pretty trashy-looking for most of its existence; by the time the mid-1970s came (the last time I saw a film there), it was a real eyesore, as was the sad little Picador Restaurant right outside the front gate. All that’s left of this part of old Gardena is the sign from The Condes' restaurant from down the street (you can find it at Universal Citywalk). There’s now a McDonalds and a vocational school on the property, and, unlike in the days of the Twin-Vue, the freeway exits there and not down the street on Alondra. But it’s still hard to pass by the intersection without thinking about that spooky old theatre and the old Dr. Pepper plant across the freeway from it.
One other person who remembers the Twin-Vue well is Bobby Rivers, host of “Top 5” on Food Network! I heard him mention it on last night’s show! (Hey Gardena—-we were mentioned on telly)!!!
The last chain to operate the Twin-Vue Drive-In was Pacific Theatres. But before that Mann Theatres operated it. It was located at 15201 South Figueroa, Gardena, Ca. 90248.
The Twin-Vue Drive-In had a 492 car capacity.
What was the other screen used for?