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.
Filling in a few more details from dallasmovietheaters' 2015 note, the Twin opened on July 18, 1952 with “The Lion and the Horse” on the first screen and “Flight to Mars” on the second, along with two cartoons.
Joseph Dydzak, who was part of that Canadian drive-in chain, passed away in Dallas in 1983. I tracked down his son, who sent me this email earlier this year: “My father, a Canadian who loved Texas, owned it for a brief period. It was acquired from Cinemark and legendary theatre owner Lee Roy Mitchel who lives in Plano. After my father passed away, the drive in theatre was eventually sold to Walmart.”
Motion Picture Herald, May 17, 1952: “The Tascosa drive-in theatre, on North Fillmore, Amarillo, Texas, opened.”
And now NewspaperArchive.com filled in the Amarillo gap that kept me from knowing the date. I uploaded the grand opening ad from May 2, 1952. The first double feature was “The Highwayman” with Charles Coburn, “The Longhorn” with Bill Elliott, and a couple of unnamed color cartoons.
Lester Dollison, who owned the Rex and Star theaters in Amarillo and others in Sherman, Denton, Wichita Falls and San Angelo, moved to Amarillo in May 1950 to establish his company headquarters there, per a note in the July 23, 1950 Amarillo Sunday News-Globe.
The 1953-54 Theatre Catalog still listed Dollison as the Skyway’s owner, but the 1955-56 edition changed that to H. Wilson and J. Fagan. The 1960 Motion Picture Almanac mentioned three owners - Weisenberg, Fagan & Wilson.
Amarillo Globe-Times, Dec. 6, 1967: “Amarillo has lost an ozoner … the Palo Duro … is being razed. The Palo Duro closed its gates permanently Nov. 26 after showing a triple feature which included "El Dorado,” “Your Cheatin' Heart” and “The Rounders.” The closing resulted from a loss of the lease on the property, an official said. The Palo Duro opened May 13, 1948 as the second drive-in theater in the city … Charles Weisenberg, Harold Wilson and Johnny Fagan were the original owners of the theater, and Wilson was the first manager. In 1954 Wilson and Fagan sold their interests in the theater. Fagan, however, did not completely sever his connection with the Palo Duro. For the past year, he has managed both the Palo Duro and Twin Drive-In. Fagan also owns the Buena Vista Drive-In in Borger … Built to hold 400 cars, the drive-in was enlarged in 1952 to accommodate 553 vehicles. A year later the screen was enlarged to allow showings of Cinemascope movies."
I guess this didn’t pan out. Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, July 6, 1972: “W. O. Bearden is seeking zoning changes that would … make the Golden Horseshoe Drive-In Theater conform to the zoning for the first time since it was brought into the city limits. Two requests to install a third screen backing up to 66th Street have been denied by the Zoning Board of Adjustment … The theater is a legal non-conforming use since it was there when the area was annexed and automatically zoned for single family residences.”
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.
Filling in a few more details from dallasmovietheaters' 2015 note, the Twin opened on July 18, 1952 with “The Lion and the Horse” on the first screen and “Flight to Mars” on the second, along with two cartoons.
Joseph Dydzak, who was part of that Canadian drive-in chain, passed away in Dallas in 1983. I tracked down his son, who sent me this email earlier this year: “My father, a Canadian who loved Texas, owned it for a brief period. It was acquired from Cinemark and legendary theatre owner Lee Roy Mitchel who lives in Plano. After my father passed away, the drive in theatre was eventually sold to Walmart.”
This 1977 photo by John Margolies is part of the Library of Congress’s John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive and is effectively in the public domain.
This 1977 photo by John Margolies is part of the Library of Congress’s John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive and is effectively in the public domain.
Years later, I found a local TV news story that confirmed that the Tascosa suffered wind damage in March 2019 and was collecting money to repair it.
The Tascosa was listed for sale in August 2020, and is still available. It showed movies through October 2021, and is closed for the season.
Years later, I found that opening clue.
Motion Picture Herald, May 17, 1952: “The Tascosa drive-in theatre, on North Fillmore, Amarillo, Texas, opened.”
And now NewspaperArchive.com filled in the Amarillo gap that kept me from knowing the date. I uploaded the grand opening ad from May 2, 1952. The first double feature was “The Highwayman” with Charles Coburn, “The Longhorn” with Bill Elliott, and a couple of unnamed color cartoons.
Lester Dollison, who owned the Rex and Star theaters in Amarillo and others in Sherman, Denton, Wichita Falls and San Angelo, moved to Amarillo in May 1950 to establish his company headquarters there, per a note in the July 23, 1950 Amarillo Sunday News-Globe.
The 1953-54 Theatre Catalog still listed Dollison as the Skyway’s owner, but the 1955-56 edition changed that to H. Wilson and J. Fagan. The 1960 Motion Picture Almanac mentioned three owners - Weisenberg, Fagan & Wilson.
Amarillo Globe-Times, Dec. 6, 1967: “Amarillo has lost an ozoner … the Palo Duro … is being razed. The Palo Duro closed its gates permanently Nov. 26 after showing a triple feature which included "El Dorado,” “Your Cheatin' Heart” and “The Rounders.” The closing resulted from a loss of the lease on the property, an official said. The Palo Duro opened May 13, 1948 as the second drive-in theater in the city … Charles Weisenberg, Harold Wilson and Johnny Fagan were the original owners of the theater, and Wilson was the first manager. In 1954 Wilson and Fagan sold their interests in the theater. Fagan, however, did not completely sever his connection with the Palo Duro. For the past year, he has managed both the Palo Duro and Twin Drive-In. Fagan also owns the Buena Vista Drive-In in Borger … Built to hold 400 cars, the drive-in was enlarged in 1952 to accommodate 553 vehicles. A year later the screen was enlarged to allow showings of Cinemascope movies."
I guess this didn’t pan out. Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, July 6, 1972: “W. O. Bearden is seeking zoning changes that would … make the Golden Horseshoe Drive-In Theater conform to the zoning for the first time since it was brought into the city limits. Two requests to install a third screen backing up to 66th Street have been denied by the Zoning Board of Adjustment … The theater is a legal non-conforming use since it was there when the area was annexed and automatically zoned for single family residences.”