STARRY NIGHTS : Double and Triple Features Brighten Up the Sky for Orange County’s Drive-In Moviegoers

On June 18, 1941, at a time when the evening air was perfumed by orange blossoms, the swallows still came straight back to Capistrano and no one had heard of Pearl Harbor, something appeared in the night sky above Orange that no one had ever seen there before.

A movie.

There it was, on the giant outdoor screen of the Orange Drive-In Theatre. Immense Clark Gables and Judy Garlands and Movietone newsreels, seen through the vertical windshields of 9-year-old Model A Fords by people snuggling close in the dark and listening to the gravelly sound of the speaker hanging from the window.

It was only the second drive-in in Southern California. Pacific Theaters, which had built the place, figured the idea would be perfect for balmy Orange County. However, it wasn’t until 14 years later, almost to the day--after a world war and the subsequent migration of veterans and their families to new homes in the suburbs--that other drive-ins appeared in the county with the opening of the Hi-Way 39 Drive-In Theatre in Westminster and, a month later, the Anaheim Drive-In Theatre in Anaheim.

By then, the drive-in was becoming a Southern California institution, combining three of the great cultural passions of Southland life: good weather, the movie biz and the automobile. People went to the drive-in to meet friends, to munch popcorn, to giggle and snuggle in the dark, to let the kids watch the cartoons and fall asleep in the back seat, to check out the opposite sex at the snack bar, to show off their wheels and, sometimes incidentally, to watch the movies. They got a double feature and a cartoon.

Today they still do. And in the era of the multi-screen mall walk-in, ear-numbing Dolby sound and walk-in ticket prices for single features creeping inexorably toward double figures, Orange County film fans are still keeping drive-ins in business, particularly while warm summer nights remain. Though there are fewer drive-ins in the county than there once were (there are six--two of them, the Anaheim and La Habra drive-ins, closed for the winter last week), they remain the choice for thousands of Orange County moviegoers who prefer their films alfresco.

As recently as 1985, there were nine drive-ins in Orange County. But, said Milt Moritz, a spokesman for Los Angeles-based Pacific Theaters, which owns five of the six drive-ins in Orange County, their volume of business, contrasted with other newer, multi-screen theaters, was not enough to justify keeping the property in the face of soaring land values. The remaining drive-ins in the county, however, are adequate to handle the number of customers, Moritz said, and it is unlikely that Pacific will build new ones.

Still, even with competition in the form of walk-ins, concerts and videotape, Moritz insisted the day of the drive-in has not passed.

“Those people who are real moviegoers want to see a movie for the first time on that big screen,” he said. “It’s just like it was in the ‘50s, when you could come as you are, just pile into your station wagon and go. You can just pull in and you don’t have to climb over a row of seats. It’s an alternative way of seeing motion pictures where you’re the master of your own ship.”

Which, say patrons, is exactly the point.

“If you want to laugh out loud with your friends, or walk around when you want, you can do it here,” said Dawn Ameis of Newport Beach, munching on take-out food at the Hi-Way 39 with two of her friends, Denise Vienne of Newport Beach and her sister Katherine, from Loma Linda.

“We can bring the entire family,” said Cindy Seitz of Fountain Valley, who had arrived with her daughter Kelly, her friend Les Rowe and her two chows, Sushi and Bruin. “And the dogs like to get out too. You can get out in the fresh air, stand up when you want. It’s pretty much a summer thing for us.”

While many of the drive-in patrons of the ‘50s and ‘60s watched the movies from customized cars and caught the errant evening breeze by putting the top down, a portion of today’s moviegoers have embraced the camper, the pickup truck and the van, say theater personnel. It has become common practice to back such vehicles into spaces toward the rear of the lot specifically reserved for tall vehicles and turn them into small living rooms--or, perhaps, porches--complete with lawn chairs, blankets, portable stereos and food of all sorts.

“Walk-ins are out for me,” said Steve Decker of Fountain Valley, lounging in the bed of his pickup with his brother Bob and Bob’s 8-year-old son, Joshua. “The chairs are too small, and my legs get cramps because I’m tall. And someone always brings a kid who cries. I’d rather be out here in the fresh air.”

A new generation of moviegoers is discovering the pleasures of the drive-in, Moritz said.

“After (World War II), you had all these new homes going up in the suburbs and no entertainment out there,” he said. “Land was easily available, so drive-ins started popping up. People living out there didn’t want to drive into the city to see a movie, so there was absolutely a boom in drive-ins. They were able to out-gross the downtown theaters to the point that a lot of downtown theaters closed up.

“Slowly the suburbs started getting malls and shopping centers and getting walk-in theaters and that encroached on the business of the drive-ins. But in the last couple of years, there’s definitely been a resurgence of the drive-ins. People have discovered them again. They think they’re very camp, or that they’re a return to their past. They’re like diners. Young people are going to drive-ins and saying, ‘Hey mom--look what I found.’ ”

Mom is also taking the kids. Because the drive-in is cheaper than most walk-ins (Pacific drive-ins in Orange County charge $4 for adults, $2.50 for juniors 12 to 15 and admit children 12 and under free), large families in big vehicles, with small children dressed in pajamas, are a common sight.

Karen Johnson of Huntington Beach, at the Hi-Way 39 with her three young children and her friend Pat Murman of Long Beach, gave a silent but unmistakable answer when she was asked why she preferred the drive-in. She pointed instantly to her children: Ryan, 4, 6-year-old Brent and Aric, 2.

“My 2-year-old won’t sit still at the walk-in,” she said. “I really hadn’t been to the drive-in since I was a kid. My ex didn’t like them and we’d get a sitter and go to the walk-in. Now that I’m divorced, I can’t afford a sitter, so we come here.”

Said Murman, “You can bring your snacks and sit out on the lawn chairs, and the kids can act like maniacs if they want and they won’t bother anyone.”

Or they can conk out. Moritz said the cartoons that precede the features (many are new prints of old cartoons from MGM) are highly prized “because the kids are still awake when the cartoons go on at the beginning. They watch them, then they can say, ‘OK, now I’ve seen it,’ then cuddle up in their pajamas and go to sleep and the adults can watch the movie.”

Actually, movies. It has become common practice for drive-ins to show first-run double features on each screen. For instance, throughout most of the summer, the Hi-Way 39 has offered two of the season’s most-watched movies, “Batman” and “Lethal Weapon II,” on the same bill, said house manager Joan Ruth. And, she added, occasionally a triple feature will be shown.

But if the double and triple features have survived the years, other fixtures have not.

“I would say our patrons range between (ages) 19 and 25 unless we have a real good family movie,” said Ruth. “Then you see a lot of families. There have been more families this summer, and we’re glad to see them come back. But we’ll see a lot of people who haven’t been to the drive-in in quite a while, because they’ll ask where the playground is. We had one under the screen prior to 1979, but when we plexed we took it out.”

“Plexed” is shorthand for expansion to multiple screens, a practice Moritz called “by far the most economical way to go. Most drive-ins are multi-screen now. If you see any drive-ins being built in the future, I don’t think you’ll see any single screens.”

No new drive-ins have been built in Southern California for several years, and the number of drive-ins nationwide continues to dwindle. There were 4,600 screens in the United States in 1955, but only 1,497 as of Jan. 1, 1989, according to Mary Ann Grasso, executive director of the National Assn. of Theater Owners. Grasso said, however, that the drive-in business has stabilized in recent years.

But it is not the patrons’ appetite for movies that keeps the drive-ins running, Ruth said. It is the snack bar, and not the admission tickets, that brings in most of the money, even though many patrons bring their own food and drink. Pacific Theaters would not release figures on either attendance or income, however, citing company policy.

“The walk-ins don’t have the varieties of food we have,” she said. “We have pizza, burritos, hamburgers.”

Liquor is not served, nor is it permitted on the grounds, said Ruth, although she said that cars are not inspected for liquor and that therefore the rule is sometimes difficult to enforce.

In their infancy, drive-ins became known variously as “passion pits,” where teen-agers often went for romantic forays under cover of darkness and in the cocoon of their cars. That reputation has changed somewhat in the ‘80s, Ruth said.

Hi-Way 39’s manager, Lee Padilla, said that “in the ‘50s there weren’t that many places to go if you wanted to do that. In the ‘50s it was the drive-in, in the ‘60s it was the car and then in the ‘70s there was sexual liberation and they didn’t have to go to the drive-in. They could do what they wanted at home.”

Still, said Ruth, “at the end of the night, we’ll have to wake up a few and ask people who have to to get dressed. It’s still a cheap motel in a way for the kids, but we don’t get much of that anymore.”

Drive-in fans tend to be a hardy breed, said Ruth, particularly in the winter.

“The only time we’re unable to get on the screen is if we’re fogged out,” she said. “If it’s raining, we’ll still show the movies, because you can see and hear if you have windshield wipers that work. I remember watching ‘Giant’ in the rain at a drive-in in Illinois. And people will still come even if it’s foggy. I can remember that we once had 80 cars here and didn’t even get on the screen because of the fog. The weather doesn’t seem to stop them at all.”

But the closing of two Orange County drive-ins--the single-screen La Habra and the triple-screen Buena Park--will, at least temporarily. Moritz said that because of slacking business after Labor Day (he called it “the fall blues”), Pacific Theaters decided to close the two theaters until spring, hoping that their other drive-ins in the county will attract customers who usually patronized the North County theaters.

“We’ve never done this before” in Orange County, he said. “We feel that there are enough drive-ins in the area that will pick up the slack. We’ve done this in other areas, and we want to test it out in Orange County to see how it works.

“I don’t think you’re going to see new ones being built. If you wanted to build a drive-in on any of the locations (in Orange County) where there are drive-ins today, forget it. The cost of the land is too high.”

DRIVE-IN THEATERS IN ORANGE COUNTY

Stadium 6 Drive-In

1501 W. Katella Ave., Orange; (714) 639-8770; Six screens. (Owned by San Francisco-based Century Theaters. Only drive-in in Orange County not owned by Los Angeles-based Pacific Theaters.)

Hi-Way 39 Drive-In

7901 Trask Ave., Westminster; (714) 891-3693; Four screens.

Anaheim Drive-In

1520 N. Lemon St., Anaheim; (714) 879-9850; Three screens.

Buena Park Drive-In

6612 Lincoln Ave., Buena Park; (714) 821-4070; Three screens. (Closed for winter.)

Orange Twin Drive-In

291 N. State College Blvd., Orange; (714) 634-9361; Two screens. (Spanish language films exclusively.)

La Habra Drive-In

1000 W. Imperial Highway, La Habra; (714) 871-1862; Single screen. (Closed for winter.)