The first drive-in movie theater opens - June 6th, 1933

On this day in 1933, Richard Hollingshead opened the world's first drive-in theater in Camden, New Jersey.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class as a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show for those interested in the big and small
moments of history. I'm Gabe Lousier and in this episode
we're talking about the birth of the drive in movie theater.

(00:33):
Open air movie going became a fixture of American society
in the nineteen fifties, but the concept proved a little
ahead of its time in the nineteen thirties. The day
was June sixty three. Build is the first of its kind.
Richard Hollingshead's Drive in Theater opened in Camden, New Jersey.

(00:55):
The opening night film was a nineteen thirty two British
comedy called Why Beware, or, as it was known in
the u k. Two White Arms. That not quite classic.
Film was chosen because it had already briefly played in
traditional theaters a few weeks earlier, meaning that the drive
in wouldn't be competing with indoor theaters by showing the

(01:18):
same movie they were. Admission to the outdoor screening cost
twenty five cents per car, plus an additional twenty five
cents for each person, with no group paying more than
a dollar total that sounds like a bargain today, but
at the time it was actually a bit more expensive
than indoor theater tickets. Still, many movie goers felt the

(01:40):
slightly higher price was worth it an exchange for the
flexibility that came with watching a film outdoors. Seated inside
their vehicles, viewers could eat, smoke, and talk amongst themselves
without fear of disturbing their neighbors, and for the more
amorous members of the viewing public, the privacy of an
automobile had other benefits as well. The idea of showing

(02:04):
movies outside was nothing new. Throughout the nineteen twenties and
into the early thirties, people frequently set up screens at beaches, parks,
or other wide open public places. Impromptu screenings like that
were a simple enough prospect in the silent film era,
as you didn't need to bother with any kind of
complicated sound system. However, with the transition to talkies in

(02:26):
the early nineteen thirties, watching a film outside became too
daunting a prospect for most people to bother with. If
you wanted to hear a movie, which was the whole
point of talkies after all, then an indoor theater was
your one and only option. That changed in nineteen thirty three,
when an amateur inventor named Richard Milton Hollingshead Jr. Became

(02:50):
fixated on the idea of a permanent outdoor theater, one
where people could watch a movie from the comfort of
their own car. At the time, hollings Head was working
at Whiz Auto Products, a company founded by his father
to sell car detailing accessories such as oils and polishes.
His idea for a drive in theater, or a park

(03:12):
in theater, as he initially called it, was an unexpected
extension of that family business, But Hollingshead's mother not only
approved of the venture, she inspired it. Her son noticed
that she had difficulty sitting in a movie theater for
the full length of a film. When asked about it,
she said the seats were too uncomfortable and that she

(03:33):
wished they were more like the ones in her car.
Hollings had wagered that many other movie goers felt the
same way. After all, the United States was fast becoming
a car loving culture, and many drivers wanted to spend
as much time with their new rides as possible, giving
the public a new activity to enjoy in their trendy

(03:54):
new vehicles seemed like a winning idea. Hollingshead sets a
work on the concept and the sping of ninety three.
Using a handful of cars, a Kodak projector, and a
screen nailed to a tree. He experimented with different setups
in his backyard, trying to ensure that every passenger would
have a clear view of the screen. Over the course

(04:15):
of several weeks, he settled on a stadium like arrangement,
with cars parked one behind another on a series of
elevated ramps, so that cars fur their back could still
see you over the ones in front. He continued tinkering
with different viewing angles and speaker placements, and on May sixteenth,
he received the first US patent for a drive in theater.

(04:37):
Armed with the rights to his idea and a thirty
thousand dollar investment, Hollingshead founded Park in Theaters, Incorporated and
opened his first drive in just three weeks later. Ahead
of the opening, he spoke to the local Courier Post
newspaper about what made his venture so special. He explained
that quote here, the whole family is welcome, regardless of

(05:00):
how noisy the children are apt to be. That invitation
was well received as more than six hundred people attended
on opening night, filling every space in the nearly four
hundred car lot. People from more than twenty different states
came out to see the first movie ever shown at
a dedicated drive in, and by the end of the summer,

(05:21):
theater employees would record license plates from twenty three more.
Despite the successful opening night, the theater still had its problems.
For one thing, many customers complained about the poor sound
quality of the speakers. Hoping to replicate the sound of
indoor theaters, Hollingshead had opted for an r c A

(05:42):
system called directional sound. It featured three powerful speakers mounted
around the perimeter of the screen, an arrangement that worked
well inside buildings where the sound didn't have to travel
very far. Outside, though, the setup created a Goldilocks effect,
with spots closer to the screen being too loud, ones

(06:02):
in the back being too quiet, and just a few
prime spots in the middle where the volume was just right.
There was an r c A factory right there in Camden, though,
so Hollingshead reached out for a solution, and eventually the
company obliged by creating a new kind of speaker. Instead
of having three large speakers blasting sound at top volume.

(06:24):
The theater provided patrons with their own small speaker to
mount to their car. Individual speakers quickly became the norm
for drive in theaters until later technology allowed for each
car to play the movie's soundtrack through it's built in
FM radio. Unfortunately, even with improvements to the sound, Hollingshead's

(06:46):
theater failed to turn a profit and wound up closing
after just three years. Still, the concept of the drive
in was too good to be forgotten, and it wasn't
long before copycat theaters started springing up around the country.
Hollings had sued many of the owners on the strength
of his patent, but the lawsuits dragged on for years

(07:07):
and were eventually dismissed. The original patent expired in nine
right in the middle of a post war boom that
fueled a sharp increase in car sales, with Americans spending
more time in their cars than ever before. The nineteen
fifties became a golden age for the drive in for
theaters and restaurants alike. At the peak of the craze,

(07:31):
there were nearly five thousand drive in theaters nationwide. Hollingshead
had indeed come up with a winning idea just twenty
years too early. In the second half of the twentieth century,
the rising cost of suburban real estate all but destroyed
the drive in business model. An indoor theater required a
much smaller footprint than the sprawling lot of a drive in,

(07:54):
and with space at a premium, most theater investors, developers,
and operators chose the cheaper, safer option. As a result,
the US is now home to about five thousand indoor
movie theaters compared to just over three hundred operating drive ins.
Those surviving screens enjoyed an unexpected revival during the COVID

(08:16):
nineteen pandemic, when the majority of indoor theaters were ordered
to close for the better part of a year. The
newfound relevance of drive ins came with some heavy strings attached,
but they wound up providing a much needed escape for
countless stressed out families, both in the US and an
open air theaters across the world. A trip to the

(08:37):
drive in was once again, at long last, what everybody wanted,
a little taste of normalcy, even if it was the
normalcy of the nineteen fifties. I'm gay, bluesier, and Hopefully
you now know a little more about history today than
you did yesterday. If you enjoyed today show, consider following

(09:01):
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HC Show. You can also rate and review the show
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to me at this Day at I heart media dot com.
Special thanks to guest producers Joey pat and Casey Pegro,
and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back

(09:23):
here again tomorrow for another day in History class.