![]() The writing is on the wall: Movies produced on film are rapidly decreasing. Because of their size and distance to the screen, a drive-in requires a doubly expensive, $130,000 long-throw digital projector conversion. Digital conversion costs are especially high for drive-in theaters. Going exclusively digital is profitable news for Hollywood, but costly news for movie theater owners. The cost for Hollywood to send out a full-length movie using 35-millimeter film is about $1,500 per copy. Like any business, the movie industry’s goal is to turn a profit. There are fewer than 330 surviving drive-ins, according to the United Drive-In Theater Owners Association. Drive-ins out west even provided back row rails for tethering horses. ![]() Some drive-ins offered a playground for the kids, others a driving-range for dad, still others went as far as offering a laundry service for mom, for a small fee.ĭrive-ins were not only offering movies, but acrobats, pony rides and chicken dinners. ![]() What made the American drive-in unique was the lack of any drive-in protocol, so the sky was the limit for these new entrepreneurs. By 1956, this phenomenon of the Motor Age, this alleged fad of more than 5,000 drive-in theaters was now bringing in one-fourth of Hollywood’s revenues. Hollywood movie tycoons rejected the early drive-ins, calling them “ozone theaters” - a passing fad. Early drive-in theaters usually consisted of an open field, a used projector, one loudspeaker, and one huge floppy canvas screen, which could grotesquely distort the images on a windy evening. While the professionals built hardtop indoor cinemas, it was amateurs who were building open-air cinemas. The world’s first drive-in theater was opened in Camden, N.J., in 1933. In 1933, a patent was awarded to Richard Hollingshead for the design of an outdoor automobile movie theater. As a 6-year-old, I could hardly comprehend the concept of watching movies on such a huge screen outside under the stars.” Roll the Credits “Some of my fondest memories as a child are of attending with my parents, my sister and my grandmother. Dehn, president of Golden Age Cinemas, which operates the McHenry Outdoor, has similar happy memories. We were just in time as the projector flickered back to life, and there, right before my eyes, bigger than big, still bigger than even today’s mega theaters, the screen read: “American International Pictures presents: ‘The Amazing Colossal Man.’” Once parked with the speaker in the window and volume adjusted, we kicked off our shoes and got comfy. I could hear the gravel crunching beneath our tires as we slowly searched for the perfect spot in what seemed like some spooky moonlit graveyard. It was dark, previews had begun and all was very quiet. There was row after row of posts with glowing translucent lights and each held your very own personal speaker. We pulled in, bought our tickets and proceeded with headlights off. It was there we turned left and it was then I realized, I was going to the coolest thing ever: The drive-in. We drove east, through McHenry, past the Dog N Suds, past the A&W Drive-In, and then I saw it, the glowing neon sign: Skyline Drive-In (now McHenry Outdoor Theater). I had no idea where we were going and couldn’t have cared less. “A ride? You bet I would!” Nothing could be finer than riding shotgun, without your parents, in a three-tone 1956 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer on a Saturday evening. My brother Tom, who was 16 and old enough to drive, asked if I wanted to go for a ride. It was late one Saturday afternoon when I was 7 years old. It was during the summer of ’57 that I experienced the most amazing, most colossal thing ever. My grandparents had a summer cottage in White Oaks Bay on Wonder Lake, and on weekends we’d drive up from Chicago to go boating and swimming. ![]() McHenry County is one of a few lucky places to still have a drive-in movie theater.
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