Movies Under the Stars : Hi-Way 39 Drive-In Still Lures Families and Romantics for a Magical Night

Things have not changed much through the years here at the Hi-Way 39 drive-in theater on Beach Boulevard.

Kids wearing pajamas sit on lawn chairs munching popcorn while their parents recline in padded seats. Teen-age couples smooch in their cars with the windows up and the volume down. And entire families lay sprawled in the back of pickup trucks watching intently as their heroes jump off buildings and elude hungry dinosaurs.

There are a few differences, of course, between this summer night and one in, say, 1955, when the theater first opened. Instead of watching “The Seven Year Itch” or “Rebel Without a Cause,” current-day moviegoers have their pick of “The Firm,” “Last Action Hero,” “Dennis the Menace” or “Jurassic Park”--all playing simultaneously on four giant screens. And rather than hanging crackling old speakers on their car windows for static-filled approximations of the movie’s soundtrack, patrons now simply turn on their car radios to listen in climate-controlled comfort.

All things considered, though, the atmosphere has remained pretty much the same in the 38 years that this place--one of the last drive-in movie theaters in Orange County--has been drawing crowds.

“It’s pretty mellow,” said Hector Flores, 40, who has been coming to the Hi-Way 39 since he was a teen-ager. “I don’t like walk-ins; they’re too confining and you’re at the mercy of other people who are rowdy.”

Barbara Robinson, 30, began coming here as a child, had her first date with her husband at the theater and now frequents the place with him and their two children, ages 11 and 6. “It’s a good family outing,” she said, “a way to be together without worrying about bothering other people.”

These are among the reasons people have always cited for coming to drive-in movies, according to Lee Padilla, who has managed Hi-Way 39 for the past eight years. “It’s a family atmosphere,” she said. “We encourage crying babies, where a walk-in can’t do that.”

Back when the theater opened, drive-in movies were the coming thing in Orange County. The first, the Orange Drive-In, began operating in 1941 featuring huge images of Clark Gable and Judy Garland seen through the windshields of Model A Fords. Fourteen years later, in the age of James Dean, the Hi-Way 39 opened in what was then a sleepy suburb on a road still considered out in the boonies.

The drive-in was a hit and has been well-attended ever since, according to Padilla and a spokesman for the drive-in’s owner, Los Angeles-based Pacific Theaters.

Other Orange County drive-ins did not fare as well. The elaborate outdoor theaters that once defined an era began dropping like flies, thanks to the proliferation of multiscreen walk-in theaters, the advent of home videos and the escalation of land values that made operating movie lots less profitable than building shopping centers. Where Orange County had nine drive-in movie theaters as late as 1985, today there are only three.

“Business began declining in the late 1970s for (drive-in) theaters,” said Frank Diaz, Pacific Theater’s former vice president of operations, who retired three years ago. “Drive-in movies all over the country have been closing at an alarming rate.”

Not that the Hi-Way 39 hasn’t had its share of woes.

Three years ago a gang-related shooting at the site, just south of the Garden Grove Freeway, prompted theater managers to shorten the run of “Angel Town,” a film about a former kick boxer living with a Latino family in the midst of gang warfare. The move inspired a newspaper editorial praising the theater’s management for putting safety before profits.

And in 1990 there was talk of shutting the theater down after Westminster Mayor Charles V. Smith revealed that the city had been negotiating for nine months with Pacific about finding a more profitable use for the 25-acre site. Nothing came of those discussions, but recently Smith said he plans to resume talks with the theater owner and potential developers.

“There’s nothing (imminent) in the wind, so I’m sure it will be operating as a theater for some time,” he said. “But in the long run, it’s not economically viable to keep operating as a theater. Eventually . . . it’s bound to be converted.”

Padilla said the company has no plans to close the Hi-Way 39 drive-in theater. “It continues to be very popular,” she said of the 2,200-car site.

That seemed evident during a recent summer night under the stars. Hunched down in high vans or cuddling in compacts, the moviegoers could sometimes be heard laughing out loud in the privacy of their separate cars.

“You can bring a lot of people and it’s cheap,” Ryan Trounce, 19, said of the theater, which charges $4.50 per adult and $2.50 for children ages 12 to 15. “You can kick back in your car.”

Added Shawn Dodgion, 18, Trounce’s date for the evening: “You can talk during the movie.”

There are, of course, some minor irritations, some customers said.

Debra Barnes, 36, of Huntington Beach said she likes coming to the Hi-Way 39 drive-in when she gets tired of watching videos at home. But coming, as she often does with her 3-year-old daughter, she said, can pose certain problems. “I have to bring her to the bathroom a lot,” Barnes said.

Mike Vrolyks, 24, of La Mirada complained of the dimness--especially during night scenes--of the images projected onto a huge screen against a sky sometimes intersected by city lights.

Yet a lot of the old romance of the drive-in remains, he said. “It’s a bitchin’ theater with good flicks and . . . nobody bothers you.”

All of which causes regulars to wax nostalgic. “I tell my kids to go (to the drive-in) now ,” said Flores, whose 10- and 12-year-old children often accompany him. Why? “Because when they have kids,” he said, “there won’t be anymore around.”