The Last Studio Drive-In Picture Show

Thirty some years ago Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox scored big with “Rebel Without a Cause” and “The Seven Year Itch.” If you were watching James Dean and superblonde Marilyn Monroe in those days, you may have been trying to score too--at least, if you were in the back seat of a ’49 Ford at one of the nation’s 4,000 drive-in theaters.

The drive-ins, introduced to postwar America’s booming families as a way of getting out without having baby-sitting bills, became the teen-age haunt of the ‘50s.

“It’s where everyone went on the weekend,” says 50-year-old Ronn Teitelbaum, a lifelong resident of Los Angeles and the president of Johnny Rockets restaurant chain. “It was definitely a hangout. It made little difference what the movie was, ‘cause by the end of the school week we’d just say, ‘Meet ya at the drive-in on Saturday night.’ We’d go in groups of four or five cars and afterwards we’d go and get a soda.”

You didn’t have to be there to appreciate it, though. Wednesday night, in the last of four events on the Los Angeles Conservancy’s “Last Remaining Seats” series, the Studio Drive-In in Culver City is hosting “Nifty Fifties Night,” complete with ‘50s music, a Hula-Hoop contest, a tailgating party and a screening of “The Girl Can’t Help It,” a 1956 musical comedy that featured rock ‘n’ rollers Little Richard and Fats Domino and starred Jayne Mansfield and Tom Ewell.

Ewell, who also co-starred with Marilyn Monroe in “The Seven Year Itch,” will make an appearance at the theater.

“We’re bidding a fond farewell to the Studio Drive-In,” says the Conservancy’s associate director Gregg Davidson.

The theater is scheduled for demolition within the next 18 months. This year, Southern California also will lose the Pickwick in Burbank and Westchester, and the Centinela Drive-In near the Fox Hills Mall on the Westside will be replaced by a housing development.

“These 20-, 25-acre parcels of land are very strategically located (near interstates) and prove more worthy as real estate developments,” says Milton Moritz of the Pacific Theater chain, which operates the Studio and 63 other drive-ins in Southern California and about 2,000 nationwide.

“The drive-in is far from being lowered into the coffin and frankly I think there will always be drive-ins. There are a lot of people who just don’t want to go to a walk-in,” says Moritz.

With double features like “Batman”and “Lethal Weapon 2” playing at the drive-in, you just might tolerate the cramped quarters of a Hyundai to see Mel Gibson and Kim Basinger on a 50 x 100-foot screen.

First-run movies are playing and succeeding at drive-ins for the first time in recent years. In fact, five out of the six top-grossing movies for the summer are playing simultaneously at the walk-ins and drive-ins: “Batman,” “Ghostbusters II,” “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” “Lethal Weapon 2” and “Dead Poets Society.”

“The last two years have really been the two best years for drive-ins in a long time,” says Moritz. “Years ago you had what were known as sub-runs,” he adds. For instance, the first-runs being released in Hollywood at Mann’s Chinese or Egyptian theaters weren’t released at the drive-ins until a week or even a month later.

Besides first-runs, there are other incentives for going to a drive-in today, not the least of which are cost and comfort. “People are rediscovering that this is an easy way to go to a movie,” says Moritz.

First of all, a family of four can attend for $9--$4.50 per adult, children under 12 free--and save whatever they’d pay their baby-sitters. They can watch “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” and talk it to death without disturbing anyone around them. They can smoke to their heart’s content without getting thrown out by an usher. As Moritz puts it: “At the drive-in you’re master of your own ship.”

Drive-ins have undergone a number of renovations in recent years. At multiscreen complexes such as the Winnetka in Chatsworth, which was patterned after the indoor theaters, Moritz says: “We have as many as six to eight box offices operating at once.” Cars and trucks can line up at the ticket booths one hour before the show.

Fortunately, the sound system has been improved too. Gone are the days of the squawk box. Pacific theaters, among others, uses a system called Cine-Fi, which enables drive-in goers to listen to the movie through their car stereo. “If you have a great radio, you’ll have great sound; and most cars today have great radios,” says Moritz.

Still, few would dispute the fact that a car stereo can’t compete with Lucasfilm’s THX or Dolby, the sound-enhanced stereo systems being used at most indoor theaters these days.

“There’s no denying that (THX and Dolby) are far more impressive and offer a better presentation of the sound effects,” says Tim Warner, president of the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) in California.

What’s most modern is not always better, though. The cars of yesteryear were bigger and more comfortable according to Teitelbaum, who watched a lot of B movies in his ’49 Ford convertible at the Olympic Drive-In in West Los Angeles.

Teitelbaum says he doesn’t go to drive-ins today, but said he might show up at the Studio on Wednesday for nostalgia’s sake.

“We’re used to watching TV at home, lying there comfortably in bed or on the couch,” he says. “Besides, for Southern Californians who spend a large percentage of their time in cars anyway, (there is no incentive.)”

Many people with short memories or with parents who are still sensitive to the issue after all these years say the drive-in’s reputation as a passion pit is myth and legend. Teitelbaum has a clear memory of what they were.

“Absolutely they were passion pits,” he said, laughing. “At that time nobody would even consider living together or spending the night together. There was no way you could get into a motel, so the drive-in was really the only place to go.”

Teitelbaum also remembers going with his parents when he was young: “We watched two movies, a short subject, a cartoon and the (Movie Tone news). It was the only picture we had of what was going on in the world.”

Actor Tom Ewell, 80, said in a telephone interview that he never went to the drive-ins himself.

“I like to believe that when you go to see a movie, you almost fall in with the people on the screen,” he said, “(but) the drive-ins were too big and there were all those cars around and I never felt that I could lose myself if I was watching a movie there. I like more contact with the people performing.”

With Wednesday night’s guest appearance at the Studio Drive-In, he’ll be a man of his word.