To summarize, the Basin opened on Thursday, July 24, 1952. Because that was after its planned opener, we don’t yet know what movies it showed that night. Its capacity was very likely 285 cars. The Basin closed by 1976, probably years earlier.
Boxoffice, Oct. 7, 1950: “Moses Lake, Wash. - John Lee of Ephrata, owner of Columbia Basin Theatres, … plans to acquire property for a drive-in to be opened in this area next spring … Lee said equipment for the drive-in has been ordered and is expected to be delivered in November. He said plans call for a capacity of 400 cars. THe ozoner will be located on the Moses Lake-Ephrata highway.”
Boxoffice, May 31, 1952: “Moses Lake, Wash. - The first drive-in for the Columbia basin was to be opened by late May, owner John Lee of Ephrata said … The Moses Lake situation is on the east side of town, just south of the new auto racetrack.”
Columbia Basin Herald, July 10, 1952 (quoted in the Oct. 4, 2014 Crescent Bar Chronicle): “The Columbia Basin’s first drive-in theater will open this weekend just off U.S. 10 near Moses Lake’s east city limits, according to William Daugaard, who will manage it. The theater is set up on an eight-acre tract cleared to accommodate 300 cars now and 600 when business warrants it, Daugaard said. The screen is 40 by 60 feet. The location is about three miles from the center of town. A double feature is booked for Friday and Saturday nights, but the theater may not be opened until Sunday, when the show will feature Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in "The Invisible Man” and a Roy Rogers western, the manager said. The theater will operate seven nights a week. The drive-in is owned by Columbia Basin Theaters, operated by John Lee of Ephrata, who also has the two regular movie houses in Moses Lake."
Boxoffice, Aug. 2, 1952: “Moses Lake, Wash. - John Lee opened his new airer, the Basin Drive-In, here Thursday (24). With a capacity of 285 cars, the theatre was equipped by Modern Theatre Supply of Seattle”
Spokane Chronicle, April 5, 1956: “Moses Lake, Wash., April 5 - Columbia Basin Theaters has been sold to Texan Peter Barnes, owner John Lee of Ephrata announced this week. The chain of theaters include 15 movie houses in Grant and Adams counties. Lee announced that he, however, wil retain ownership of the theater buildings. Included in the transation were the Lake and Ritz theaters and Basin Drive-In in Moses Lake; Lee and Marjo theaters and Park In Drive-In in Ephrata; Lake theater in Othello, and Warden theater in Warden.”
The 1953-56 Theatre Catalogs listed the Basin with a capacity of 284 cars, owner John Lee.
The 1953-66 editions of Motion Picture Almanac included the Basin of Moses Lake, capacity 258 cars, owner John Lee Circuit. A “Basin-258” entry continued while the MPA was on semi-autopilot during 1967-76, but when the MPA rebooted its drive-in list in 1977, the Basin was gone. My guess is that the 258 number was a typo of the accurate 285, and it stuck.
I haven’t dug too deeply into the old Rialto’s opening and closing dates. In 1985, it was apparently closed seasonally while the Tonto Drive-In was operating; the Sept. 11, 1985 ad for the Tonto noted “Rialto opens Friday (13).” Since the Tonto never reopened, the Rialto might have kept going all year. A spot check in the summer of 1988 showed the “Blair Rialto” advertising summer matinees. Here’s probably the end.
Winslow Mail, Feb. 7, 1996: “BioDome was the last movie to be shown at Winslow Rialto Theatre, prior to its closing on Jan. 31. Employees were surprised when the showed up to work on Wednesday to find the marquee taken down, equipment removed and their jobs eliminated.”
The Grizzly (Big Bear Lake) noted on Sept. 21, 1945 that “Big Bear Theatre, formerly the Grizzly,” would close for the season that month, and that owner Earle C. Strebe planned to construct a new building for the theater “on the highway next to Safeway”. “The foundation was poured and laid this summer, but actual work on the structure of the modern steel and re-inforced concrete building was delayed.”
That new building opened on April 28, 1946, “when a capacity crowd of valley residents and visitors packed the first show to see the Gary Cooper-Ingrid Bergman vehicle, "Saratoga Trunk.” … The youthful looking Strebe - he has not yet reached 40 years of age - is well known in Palm Springs theatre circles, having operated two cinema parlors at the desert spa for many years. In addition Strebe owns a theatre in Las Vegas and controls several units in the Lake Arrowhead-Crestline area."
Motion Picture Herald, Oct. 13, 1956: “Earl Strebe, who operates theatres in Palm Springs and other resort towns, has announced his plans to build a drive-in in Big Bear, where he is now operating a conventional theatre.”
A nice description by Wilfred P. Smith, writing in Motion Picture Herald, June 11, 1955: “On a trip to Montana I was particularly impressed by the approaches and exits of the Sage drive-in at Billings. Along beautiful macadam drives were 8x8-ft. luminous paintings based on famous paintings of western scenes. They were spectacular. One painting was of a coyote howling in the night, silhouetted by a bright new moon; another depicted a cowboy on a bucking bronco. Paintings were used here in lieu of shrubs and trees because of the short season for plants.”
There’s more information about the long-gone Cutter-Carr airport, sometimes known as the West Mesa airport, an eight-pointed star of unpaved runways just north of the 66’s viewing field, on Wikipedia.
As noted above, the July 30, 1962 issue of Boxoffice said that while the 66 was closed, “it has been used as airport runway.”
I was reminded of that airport stuff because a better address these days for the old 66 site is 221 Airport Drive NW. That’s where the Labatt Food Service distribution center sits as I type.
The Skyview was almost exactly 3½ miles from Route 66, but Quinta Scott included a nice B&W photo from 1981 in her 2000 book, “Along Route 66.” (Highly recommended for 66 fans!) She included the following notes, based on a 1998 interview with Christopher Caporal:
Sam Kapriolotis landed in New York with his father and brother at the turn of the century. For two years, the family made their living selling fruit and gum from a pushcart on New York streets. Then, when Sam’s father and brother returned to their native Greece, nine-year-old Sam stayed. He raised himself, became a citizen, and took a new name - Caporal, the name of his favorite smoke. Young Sam Caporal drifted to St. Louis, where he learned to be a movie projectionist, and then to Oklahoma City, where he opened his first movie house in 1916. In 1948, Sam and his sons - George, Chris, and Pete - built the Skyview Drive-In.
… The Caporals … hired architect David Baldwin to design the Skyview … Baldwin gave them a reinforced-concrete, Spanish Colonial screen tower. The contractor used slip-form construction to build the tower. The process, the same that had been used in the construction of grain elevators since the turn of the century, took six days. The workers started on the ground, filled the forms with concrete, let it set, moved the forms up a bit, and poured more concrete. It was a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation. As the tower moved upward, workers installed prefabricated windows, shaped like quatrefoils and glazed with opaque glass, in the center section of the screen tower. The Caporals painted the piers white and the center royal blue and outlined the whole in neon. They installed lights behind the quatrefoil windows so that at night they glowed like large golden stars. The set SKYVIEW on top in giant neon letters and proudly placed their came, CAPORAL, on the top of the left pier.
Pinterest included the note: “Art for Terrace Drive-in Theater in Albuquerque, NM. This is a print of the original concept painting for the mural on the back of the screen. Done by Keith Kent. June 1951. Theater long closed now.”
I guess that D. Armino reopened the Sunset (if it had closed) in 1987. That’s when I started seeing English-language movie ads for the Sunset, and would account for the Motion Picture Almanac listing in 1988. The final ad I found was for “Die Hard” and “License To Drive” on Sept. 25, 1988.
An Albuquerque Tribune columnist wrote in Nov. 2, 1995 noted that the Sunset was still standing “as it had for years, though locked behind barbed wire and chain-link fence, unkempt and neglected … A plywood sign on the ticket booth said, “Open May 31.” “
The Exhibitor, Sept. 10, 1952: “Charles E. Darden, Associated Popcorn Distributors, Inc., reported that the highlight of his trip into west Texas was his stop at the Grant Drive-In, Wichita Falls, which has a second story viewing room, and which does walk-in business from a residential area."
To restate that 1960 news, the school board bought the land and a concrete building (probably the concession/projection building) formerly used by the County / No Name. The drive-in was dead by then. Perhaps the board thought it could use the building somehow, which would account for its survival for another three decades.
In 1979, New Mexico authorized a vocational school in Tucumcari. I would speculate that’s about when the school board made a chunk of its land available for what later became Mesalands Community College.
John Hasten “J. H.” Snow owned and operated both of Hinton’s theaters at the time of this snippet.
Boxoffice, Sept. 11, 1948: “TUCUMCARI, N. M. – Construction has begun here on the County Drive-In, a 400-car airer being built by J. H. Snow of Hinton, Okla. The new ozoner is located on highway 66. Snow, a native of Oklahoma, has been in the theatre business only three years. He owns and operates two theatres in Hinton."
Kenmore, Mesalands Community College is on the site now. The high school was built on the east side of Loren Yessler’s property, which must have been extensive.
Gee whiz, the Yucca went through a lot of ownership changes in its first 12 months!
Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “John Blocker … built and opened the Yucca Drive-In this summer at Clovis, N. M., but sold out to Charles C. Wolf. Blocker has been in show business in Texas for a number of years. He once owned and operated the Texas in Abilene, then a night club at Lubbock and from there he went to Clovis.”
Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “WICHITA FALLS, TEX. - John Blocker has begun construction on the Falls Drive-In on the outskirts of the city and plans to open the ozoner sometime next month. Blocker built and opened the Yucca Drive-In this summer at Clovis, N. M., but sold out to Charles C. Wolf. Blocker has been in show business in Texas for a number of years. He once owned and operated the Texas in Abilene, then a night club at Lubbock and from there he went to Clovis.”
Same theater? Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “Charles W. Weisenburg … is building the new Sylvia Theatre in Seagoville … The new house is right on the main highway a block from the old location. It is an all new brick building and will have about 600 seats.”
Boxoffice, April 28, 1969: “McLendon Theatres has purchased the East Main Drive-In in Grand Prairie, near the Dallas city limits, and the Downs Drive-In, also in Grand Prairie … The Downs will be rebuilt into a four-screen drive-in … The Downs, after the reconstruction, will be renamed Century 4."
Adding a little detail to dallasmovietheaters' earlier post.
Boxoffice, April 28, 1969: “McLendon Theatres has purchased the East Main Drive-In in Grand Prairie, near the Dallas city limits, and the Downs Drive-In, also in Grand Prairie. Robert M. Hartgrove, president of the McLendon circuit, said that the East Main, purchased from Charles Weisenburg, will be made into a twin airer with 1,500-car capacity and a new concessions area.”
Your note inspired me to take a closer look at the original hi-res TIF of the photo that John Margolies took in 1982. Straining against the Kodachrome grain, I can see a small Coca-Cola-topped message board in the boxoffice window. I can’t make out the words, but the four lines look like “Admission $? / (two short words) / All Movies Rated / X”. So now I’m sold on the idea that the Trail was open at least that long.
TinEye.com first noticed this photo at Amachron.com’s long page of Amarillo photos, about a year before it was posted here. I sure wish I knew where it came from.
To summarize, the Basin opened on Thursday, July 24, 1952. Because that was after its planned opener, we don’t yet know what movies it showed that night. Its capacity was very likely 285 cars. The Basin closed by 1976, probably years earlier.
Boxoffice, Oct. 7, 1950: “Moses Lake, Wash. - John Lee of Ephrata, owner of Columbia Basin Theatres, … plans to acquire property for a drive-in to be opened in this area next spring … Lee said equipment for the drive-in has been ordered and is expected to be delivered in November. He said plans call for a capacity of 400 cars. THe ozoner will be located on the Moses Lake-Ephrata highway.”
Boxoffice, May 31, 1952: “Moses Lake, Wash. - The first drive-in for the Columbia basin was to be opened by late May, owner John Lee of Ephrata said … The Moses Lake situation is on the east side of town, just south of the new auto racetrack.”
Columbia Basin Herald, July 10, 1952 (quoted in the Oct. 4, 2014 Crescent Bar Chronicle): “The Columbia Basin’s first drive-in theater will open this weekend just off U.S. 10 near Moses Lake’s east city limits, according to William Daugaard, who will manage it. The theater is set up on an eight-acre tract cleared to accommodate 300 cars now and 600 when business warrants it, Daugaard said. The screen is 40 by 60 feet. The location is about three miles from the center of town. A double feature is booked for Friday and Saturday nights, but the theater may not be opened until Sunday, when the show will feature Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in "The Invisible Man” and a Roy Rogers western, the manager said. The theater will operate seven nights a week. The drive-in is owned by Columbia Basin Theaters, operated by John Lee of Ephrata, who also has the two regular movie houses in Moses Lake."
Boxoffice, Aug. 2, 1952: “Moses Lake, Wash. - John Lee opened his new airer, the Basin Drive-In, here Thursday (24). With a capacity of 285 cars, the theatre was equipped by Modern Theatre Supply of Seattle”
Spokane Chronicle, April 5, 1956: “Moses Lake, Wash., April 5 - Columbia Basin Theaters has been sold to Texan Peter Barnes, owner John Lee of Ephrata announced this week. The chain of theaters include 15 movie houses in Grant and Adams counties. Lee announced that he, however, wil retain ownership of the theater buildings. Included in the transation were the Lake and Ritz theaters and Basin Drive-In in Moses Lake; Lee and Marjo theaters and Park In Drive-In in Ephrata; Lake theater in Othello, and Warden theater in Warden.”
The 1953-56 Theatre Catalogs listed the Basin with a capacity of 284 cars, owner John Lee.
The 1953-66 editions of Motion Picture Almanac included the Basin of Moses Lake, capacity 258 cars, owner John Lee Circuit. A “Basin-258” entry continued while the MPA was on semi-autopilot during 1967-76, but when the MPA rebooted its drive-in list in 1977, the Basin was gone. My guess is that the 258 number was a typo of the accurate 285, and it stuck.
I haven’t dug too deeply into the old Rialto’s opening and closing dates. In 1985, it was apparently closed seasonally while the Tonto Drive-In was operating; the Sept. 11, 1985 ad for the Tonto noted “Rialto opens Friday (13).” Since the Tonto never reopened, the Rialto might have kept going all year. A spot check in the summer of 1988 showed the “Blair Rialto” advertising summer matinees. Here’s probably the end.
Winslow Mail, Feb. 7, 1996: “BioDome was the last movie to be shown at Winslow Rialto Theatre, prior to its closing on Jan. 31. Employees were surprised when the showed up to work on Wednesday to find the marquee taken down, equipment removed and their jobs eliminated.”
This photo is © Joe Sohm and available for license from Dreamstime, which is the source of its watermarks.
This photo is © Joe Sohm and available for license from Dreamstime, which is the source of its watermarks.
The Grizzly (Big Bear Lake) noted on Sept. 21, 1945 that “Big Bear Theatre, formerly the Grizzly,” would close for the season that month, and that owner Earle C. Strebe planned to construct a new building for the theater “on the highway next to Safeway”. “The foundation was poured and laid this summer, but actual work on the structure of the modern steel and re-inforced concrete building was delayed.”
That new building opened on April 28, 1946, “when a capacity crowd of valley residents and visitors packed the first show to see the Gary Cooper-Ingrid Bergman vehicle, "Saratoga Trunk.” … The youthful looking Strebe - he has not yet reached 40 years of age - is well known in Palm Springs theatre circles, having operated two cinema parlors at the desert spa for many years. In addition Strebe owns a theatre in Las Vegas and controls several units in the Lake Arrowhead-Crestline area."
Motion Picture Herald, Oct. 13, 1956: “Earl Strebe, who operates theatres in Palm Springs and other resort towns, has announced his plans to build a drive-in in Big Bear, where he is now operating a conventional theatre.”
Motion Picture Exhibitor, Nov. 10, 1954: “Mr. and Mrs. Lee Welch installed CinemaScope at the Sage and Sage Drive-In, Van Horn, Tex.”
A nice description by Wilfred P. Smith, writing in Motion Picture Herald, June 11, 1955: “On a trip to Montana I was particularly impressed by the approaches and exits of the Sage drive-in at Billings. Along beautiful macadam drives were 8x8-ft. luminous paintings based on famous paintings of western scenes. They were spectacular. One painting was of a coyote howling in the night, silhouetted by a bright new moon; another depicted a cowboy on a bucking bronco. Paintings were used here in lieu of shrubs and trees because of the short season for plants.”
There’s more information about the long-gone Cutter-Carr airport, sometimes known as the West Mesa airport, an eight-pointed star of unpaved runways just north of the 66’s viewing field, on Wikipedia.
As noted above, the July 30, 1962 issue of Boxoffice said that while the 66 was closed, “it has been used as airport runway.”
I was reminded of that airport stuff because a better address these days for the old 66 site is 221 Airport Drive NW. That’s where the Labatt Food Service distribution center sits as I type.
The Skyview was almost exactly 3½ miles from Route 66, but Quinta Scott included a nice B&W photo from 1981 in her 2000 book, “Along Route 66.” (Highly recommended for 66 fans!) She included the following notes, based on a 1998 interview with Christopher Caporal:
Sam Kapriolotis landed in New York with his father and brother at the turn of the century. For two years, the family made their living selling fruit and gum from a pushcart on New York streets. Then, when Sam’s father and brother returned to their native Greece, nine-year-old Sam stayed. He raised himself, became a citizen, and took a new name - Caporal, the name of his favorite smoke. Young Sam Caporal drifted to St. Louis, where he learned to be a movie projectionist, and then to Oklahoma City, where he opened his first movie house in 1916. In 1948, Sam and his sons - George, Chris, and Pete - built the Skyview Drive-In.
… The Caporals … hired architect David Baldwin to design the Skyview … Baldwin gave them a reinforced-concrete, Spanish Colonial screen tower. The contractor used slip-form construction to build the tower. The process, the same that had been used in the construction of grain elevators since the turn of the century, took six days. The workers started on the ground, filled the forms with concrete, let it set, moved the forms up a bit, and poured more concrete. It was a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation. As the tower moved upward, workers installed prefabricated windows, shaped like quatrefoils and glazed with opaque glass, in the center section of the screen tower. The Caporals painted the piers white and the center royal blue and outlined the whole in neon. They installed lights behind the quatrefoil windows so that at night they glowed like large golden stars. The set SKYVIEW on top in giant neon letters and proudly placed their came, CAPORAL, on the top of the left pier.
Pinterest included the note: “Art for Terrace Drive-in Theater in Albuquerque, NM. This is a print of the original concept painting for the mural on the back of the screen. Done by Keith Kent. June 1951. Theater long closed now.”
I guess that D. Armino reopened the Sunset (if it had closed) in 1987. That’s when I started seeing English-language movie ads for the Sunset, and would account for the Motion Picture Almanac listing in 1988. The final ad I found was for “Die Hard” and “License To Drive” on Sept. 25, 1988.
An Albuquerque Tribune columnist wrote in Nov. 2, 1995 noted that the Sunset was still standing “as it had for years, though locked behind barbed wire and chain-link fence, unkempt and neglected … A plywood sign on the ticket booth said, “Open May 31.” “
That’s the outline of the Duke City a couple of blocks south of the Circle Autoscope.
The Exhibitor, Sept. 10, 1952: “Charles E. Darden, Associated Popcorn Distributors, Inc., reported that the highlight of his trip into west Texas was his stop at the Grant Drive-In, Wichita Falls, which has a second story viewing room, and which does walk-in business from a residential area."
To restate that 1960 news, the school board bought the land and a concrete building (probably the concession/projection building) formerly used by the County / No Name. The drive-in was dead by then. Perhaps the board thought it could use the building somehow, which would account for its survival for another three decades.
In 1979, New Mexico authorized a vocational school in Tucumcari. I would speculate that’s about when the school board made a chunk of its land available for what later became Mesalands Community College.
John Hasten “J. H.” Snow owned and operated both of Hinton’s theaters at the time of this snippet.
Boxoffice, Sept. 11, 1948: “TUCUMCARI, N. M. – Construction has begun here on the County Drive-In, a 400-car airer being built by J. H. Snow of Hinton, Okla. The new ozoner is located on highway 66. Snow, a native of Oklahoma, has been in the theatre business only three years. He owns and operates two theatres in Hinton."
Kenmore, Mesalands Community College is on the site now. The high school was built on the east side of Loren Yessler’s property, which must have been extensive.
Gee whiz, the Yucca went through a lot of ownership changes in its first 12 months!
Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “John Blocker … built and opened the Yucca Drive-In this summer at Clovis, N. M., but sold out to Charles C. Wolf. Blocker has been in show business in Texas for a number of years. He once owned and operated the Texas in Abilene, then a night club at Lubbock and from there he went to Clovis.”
Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “WICHITA FALLS, TEX. - John Blocker has begun construction on the Falls Drive-In on the outskirts of the city and plans to open the ozoner sometime next month. Blocker built and opened the Yucca Drive-In this summer at Clovis, N. M., but sold out to Charles C. Wolf. Blocker has been in show business in Texas for a number of years. He once owned and operated the Texas in Abilene, then a night club at Lubbock and from there he went to Clovis.”
Same theater? Boxoffice, Sept. 25, 1948: “Charles W. Weisenburg … is building the new Sylvia Theatre in Seagoville … The new house is right on the main highway a block from the old location. It is an all new brick building and will have about 600 seats.”
Boxoffice, April 28, 1969: “McLendon Theatres has purchased the East Main Drive-In in Grand Prairie, near the Dallas city limits, and the Downs Drive-In, also in Grand Prairie … The Downs will be rebuilt into a four-screen drive-in … The Downs, after the reconstruction, will be renamed Century 4."
Adding a little detail to dallasmovietheaters' earlier post.
Boxoffice, April 28, 1969: “McLendon Theatres has purchased the East Main Drive-In in Grand Prairie, near the Dallas city limits, and the Downs Drive-In, also in Grand Prairie. Robert M. Hartgrove, president of the McLendon circuit, said that the East Main, purchased from Charles Weisenburg, will be made into a twin airer with 1,500-car capacity and a new concessions area.”
Your note inspired me to take a closer look at the original hi-res TIF of the photo that John Margolies took in 1982. Straining against the Kodachrome grain, I can see a small Coca-Cola-topped message board in the boxoffice window. I can’t make out the words, but the four lines look like “Admission $? / (two short words) / All Movies Rated / X”. So now I’m sold on the idea that the Trail was open at least that long.
TinEye.com first noticed this photo at Amachron.com’s long page of Amarillo photos, about a year before it was posted here. I sure wish I knew where it came from.