Joy Drive-In
1506 Shreveport Road,
Minden,
LA
71055
1506 Shreveport Road,
Minden,
LA
71055
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The Joy Drive-In was an inner city drive-in. It was opened April 15, 1952 with a capacity for 440 cars. It closed August 2, 1981.
Contributed by
Billy Smith / Don lewis
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
1506 Shreveport Rd, Minden, LA 71055
The above address will map to the location of the drive-in. Hwy 79/80 is also Shreveport Road.
Here is a 1976 aerial photo of the drive-in, courtesy of Earth Explorer and USGS:
http://flic.kr/p/996wMd
Thanks NYozoner. The family had initally given me a location for it a few hundred yards west of there but you helped pinpoint it.
Here’s more on the history of the place
http://scottymoore.net/minden.html
Awesome history page! Great photos!
Though it duplicates some of the information on the page jimroy linked to, this web page has additional information and includes a scan of part of a newspaper article about the closing of the theater from July, 1981 (difficult to read because the scan is too small.) The final night of operation at the Joy Drive-In was August 2, 1981.
The March 29, 1952, issue of Boxoffice said that the 400-car drive-in under construction at Minden, Louisiana, by W.H. Cobb and Ruth Cheshire was expected to open about April 15.
Though William Cobb had been a partner with New Orleans theater magnate Joy Houck in the Joy Theatre on Pearl Street beginning in the early 1940s, Houck was not involved in the drive-in project. The June 30, 1951, issue of Boxoffice had reported that Cheshire and Cobb had purchased Houck’s interest in Minden’s walk-in Joy Theatre.
Presumably Cobb had Mr. Houck’s permission to also use his name on the new drive-in, as I can’t find any reports of a lawsuit growing out of that use, and the name remained Joy Drive-In until it closed.
Also it should be noted that the web page jimroy linked to says that Ruth Cheshire, who later remarried and became Ruth Lowe, bought out Cobb’s interest in the theaters and operated the drive-in until it closed. There is no mention of Fox Theatres ever having any interest in the theaters in Minden.