Drive In Theaters

The screen is so small that an announcer has to read the subtitles over a microphone. The projection booth is so bulky that it blocks the best views. And the location is so poorly marked that it is easy to miss entirely. The first drive-in movie theater in Poland is primitive--it doubles as the site of a swap meet for used cars by day--but its debut last month represents a cultural milestone in this country's phenomenal rush to the automobile.

Doomed to demolition, the South Gate Drive-in Theater looked on its last day like it did in the 1950s and '60s: Just right. The towering, blank screen waited for the sun to go down. Popcorn popped in the snack shop. The skinny, bent poles holding the speakers were stuck in the acres of gritty, oil-stained asphalt like candles in a cake. Classic cars began to arrive.

Fearing a repeat of a Friday night brawl that led to the wounding of an 18-year-old suspected gang member, the manager of the Hi-Way 39 Drive-In Theatre decided Saturday to cancel the weekend showings of a newly released movie that depicts Latino gang life in Los Angeles. "We will not be playing it until further notice," said theater manager Joan Ruth. Saturday and today's showings were canceled.

THE best time I ever had at a drive-in movie was with my dog. I'm a little sorry to be putting this down on paper, because my mother believes the best time I ever had at a drive-in was with her. We went to see "Gone With the Wind" when I was maybe 13, just before I hit the age at which I was mortified to be seen in the same hemisphere with my parents. That was fun, sure. But nothing like a double feature with a cocker spaniel. Of course it was summer.

It was only decades ago that drive-in movie theaters joined mom and apple pie in a seemingly eternal pantheon of Americana. But the announcement that one of the last two drive-ins in the San Fernando Valley will be replaced by a gleaming 26-screen mega-plex seems to be marching the drive-in movie theater right into the dustbin of history.

When William Forman began his chain of drive-in movie theaters more than 50 years ago, he bought chunks of land at bargain prices on what were then the outskirts of cities and small towns across Southern California. But those cities expanded and, as a result, many of Forman's once remote drive-ins--which often covered up to 30 acres--are now valuable pieces of close-in, suburban real estate that the company is busy developing.

Pummeled by two growling construction vehicles, the towering Studio Drive-In movie screen, long unused, swayed once before pitching forward and crashing to earth Monday, a defunct Culver City landmark demolished to make room for homes, a park and a school. Like many other Los Angeles-area drive-ins, the days when families watched Hollywood's latest hits from crowded station wagons are long gone at the Sepulveda Boulevard site, and some residents say the 50-year-old screen had become an eyesore.

Movies are long gone, but a weekend swap meet has won approval to operate--at least temporarily--at the former Anaheim Drive-In. The owner of the old Lemon Street drive-in recently received city approval to open a weekend swap meet until a permanent development project is set for the 25-acre site. The City Council gave Los Angeles-based Pacific Theatres approval to run the swap meet until Jan. 31, 2000.

It's getting near twilight for the drive-in theater in Los Angeles. The decline in open-air cinephilia has been gradually underway since the phenomenon peaked in the '50s and '60s. But locally, the closure rate for "ozoners" has accelerated alarmingly over the last year.