Last Blast to the Past : Nostalgia Buffs Come Back for Drive-In’s Final Flicks

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.

But as the theater prepared Saturday to show its final movies, it seemed unlikely that there would be a sea of cars like there had been so often so long ago.

Not even with a triple feature--”Grease,” “American Hot Wax” and “Blackboard Jungle.”

Not even with a “Last Blast to the Past Celebration” the city and Pacific Theatres, which owned and operated the drive-in, had come up with to mark the end of “a piece of American history.”

In a few days the outdoor theater just off Firestone Boulevard would be torn down to make room for the expansion of a trucking firm next door. With drive-ins fading fast, the end of this one had been inevitable. But a few people hated to see it go.

“It’s kind of like saying goodby to an old friend,” said Terry McWeeney, who had pulled up toward the front in his shiny orange 1937 Ford pickup.

McWeeney, 54, a South Gate police officer, had come to this theater as a teen-ager, when it too was young. He pulled up then in a ’50 Chevy, but not in the front. The front was for families.

“I had a spot way back in the back row. I was one of those rowdy guys,” McWeeney said beneath his bristly mustache. “You’d be out talking to your friends, and when the movie started you’d get in the back seat with your girlfriend. Then after the movie you’d go down to the hamburger stand. There wasn’t a whole lot else to do back then.”

He remembers his old girlfriend. “Judy. We split up and she got married and went her own way.”

She had vanished as surely as the old days have, try though McWeeney and his friends do to keep them alive.

“The days of innocence,” he said. “Boy, they’re long gone. The ‘60s came along, drugs came along and that kinda shot down everything.”

As the cars trickled in, 45-rpm records were being played over a loud speaker. The Murmaids were singing:

Bright stars and guitars

and drive-ins on Friday night,

these are a few of the things we love.

*

The theater was built in 1951, and for the first few years was known as the Aladdin. It held more than 800 cars.

Its heyday began later in the decade, according to Frank Diaz, a longtime director of operations for Pacific Theatres who spent more than a few nights at the South Gate Drive-in.

“In the late ‘50s people got tired of watching television every night,” Diaz said last week. “The best place to go was the drive-in. It was a hell of a lot cheaper and you got the family out. We had dancing under the screen with a live band. Back in those days we were full an hour before show time. We had to turn cars away.”

Drive-in theaters did a brisk business in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Diaz said, then started going downhill in the ‘80s when the property they were on became too valuable not to redevelop. Those drive-ins that did survive did not attract the crowds they once had.

“People are more sophisticated,” Diaz said. “They want better sound and picture quality.”

About the only drive-ins left in the Southeast area are the Los Altos in Long Beach, the Compton Drive-in and the Fiesta in Pico Rivera.

In its last 10 years, as South Gate has changed to a predominantly Latino city, the drive-in theater showed Spanish-language movies. The last two years, charging $5 a car, it was open only on weekends.

“The crowds have just declined and declined,” said Terry Dickens, vice president of real estate for Pacific Theatres.

But South Gate will gain in revenue what it loses in nostalgia.

“This ends up being real positive for the city because it will end up with $175,000 more in taxes and 600 more jobs,” Dickens said.

*

More old cars had arrived for the theater’s last night, and McWeeney ticked them off: “There’s a ’53 Ford, there’s a ’53 Chevy, a ’50 Chevy, a ’50 Ford, and that’s a ’56 Chevy with a Lincoln front.”

In the dusty playground beneath the screen, children played on swings.

City officials, in a stab at nostalgia and to fill the time until the movies started, were holding bubble gum-blowing, best costume, best ‘50s-couple and Elvis look-alike contests.

And the old songs kept playing--”Heartaches” by the Marcels, “Apache” by Jorgen Ingmann, “See You Later, Alligator” by Bill Haley & His Comets, “Harlem Nocturne” by the Viscounts.

But McWeeney and his friend, Jack Hule, preferred to sit in lawn chairs beside their cars and reminisce.

“There used to be real long lines here,” McWeeney said. “If it was a real popular movie like ‘Summer Place’ with Sandra Dee, this place would be packed.”

“It was just a nice place to come to,” said Hule, 58, a retired truck driver in jeans and a white T-shirt. “My wife and I have been married 30 years, and we came here when we were dating. It was great, I’m tellin’ you. You looked forward to Friday night and Saturday night, coming here to show off your vehicles and then going to all the drive-in restaurants in the neighborhood.”

And still today the two men make the rounds of the carhop drive-ins that cater to the custom-car crowd.

“We’re just too stubborn to grow old, we got to live back in the past,” Hule said.

McWeeney and Hule laughed about how cars sometimes lost part of their windows when their drivers pulled away, forgetting that the speakers were still attached. They recalled smuggling in quarts of beer and playing “tag” on the screen with car spotlights during intermission. They remembered cruising the aisles to show off their cars. And they thought back to all that steamy, back-seat passion.

“The windows would fog up so you couldn’t tell if there was anyone in the vehicle or not,” Hule said.

“You remember Charlotte with the pink Corvette?” McWeeney asked Hule, who vaguely did.

“We used to go to this one bar,” McWeeney said, “and a guy wrote a song about her, ‘Char-lette and the Pink Corvette.’ ”

“Oh yeah,” said Hule. “Ha, ha, haaaa.”

Neither remembered what happened to her.

*

The darker it got, the more impatient the drive-in theater’s last patrons became for the show to start. They honked their horns.

Finally, with about 75 cars pointed toward it, the screen filled with the opening of “Grease.”

But the ‘50s weren’t really back.

McWeeney’s spot out in the last row was empty.