Watch a Movie Under the Stars
Drive-in theaters of the Southeast 🎞️
You don’t see many authentic drive-in theaters in operation these days. But thanks to nostalgic Americans across the Southeast, you can still enjoy watching a movie under the stars.
Before we get to our list of drive-in theaters still open down here—and explore the history of how drive-in theaters came to be—check out our summer giveaway update, weekly poll, and trivia question.
Summer Giveaway
We’ve randomly drawn three winners of our Designed for Joy Crossbody Rosie Sling Bags and coordinating leather travel bundles. Congratulations to these readers!
Elizabeth Bondurant of Georgia
Betsy Edgerton of South Carolina
Shirley Ramey of North Carolina
Ready for our next giveaway? If you like barbecue, enter to win tickets to the Pinehurst Barbecue Festival August 30-September 1.
The most popular answer to last week’s poll asking you to choose which location in our Great Smoky Grand travel feature you’d most like to visit was … Linville Falls. Thanks to everyone who participated!
Trivia
Why did drive-in theater attendance begin to decline in the 1960s?
The Drive-In Movie: A Brief History
While we’d love to say it started here in the Southeast, Pennsauken, New Jersey, claims the first drive-in movie theater. It happened when Camden Drive-In opened there on June 6, 1933. Customers paid 25 cents per car and person to see the British comedy Wives Beware.
An auto-parts salesman with an entrepreneurial spirit named Richard Hollingshead invented the concept during the Depression after considering the buying habits of Americans and surmising that people gave up food, clothing, automobiles, and movies—in that order. Despite the Depression’s impact on the economy, Hollingshead observed that people continued to go see movies at local theaters.
Hollingshead also needed to solve a problem. His mother was, reportedly, a rather large woman who had trouble fitting comfortably in indoor theater seats. The family car provided the room she needed. So her devoted son experimented with the concept of the outdoor theater in his Riverton, New Jersey backyard by placing an old Kodak projector on the hood of his car and projecting movies onto a screen nailed to a tree.
Hollingshead took measures to simulate the sound, and spent a couple of years experimenting with the positioning of cars at different heights to ensure all vehicles had an unobstructed view of the screen. He patented his concept in May 1933 and opened Camden Drive-In the very next month.
After World War II, drive-ins became hot spots for teens and young adults. Drive-ins’ popularity peaked in the 1950s, and by the mid-1960s, they had become an icon of American culture, with 5,000-plus operating nationwide. However, as noted in the answer to our trivia question above (hopefully you’ve already read it!), drive-in movies began to decline in popularity during the late 1960s.
Fewer than 500 remain today, but that’s enough for you to experience the wonder of watching a movie while a gentle summer breeze—and the scent of fresh popcorn—wafts through your vehicle.
And now for the list you’ve been waiting for … Here are 21 drive-in theaters still open for business across the Southeast. Why not check one out this summer?
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