| The Palo Alto History Project |
| The Palo Alto Drive-In West Bayshore Road at Amariollo Road |
| The Palo Alto Drive-In: A Generational Memory Kids running the bases these days at Greer Park’s baseball diamond have no knowledge of what used to exist where the ballfield now resides --- the old Palo Alto Drive-In Movie Theatre. And they wouldn’t be simply surprised to learn that this particular drive-in once stood here, they would be befuddled by the concept entirely. Few American cultural phenomena separate the generations like the drive-in movie. For those of a certain age, the drive-in theatre stirs up memories of halcyon days of teenage revelry, backseat love affairs, and Hollywood’s epic years. While for the generations that followed, the whole concept of watching a movie in your car is a little hard to even imagine. The first person to imagine it was the sales manager at Camden, New Jersey’s Whiz Auto Products: Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr. After hearing his rather large-sized mother complain one too many times about the slightness of movie theatre seats, Hollingshead began experimenting with projecting movies in his backyard. Having nailed a bedsheet into two trees in his backyard, this lover of movies and cars used a 1928 Kodak projector and a radio to entertain a few guests. Playing with the concept, Hollingshead propped up neighborhood cars on cinderblocks until he had sketched out a design for the perfect car ramp. It’s hard to imagine a much simpler idea to patent, but on May 16th, 1933 he received Patent #1,909,537 for his design of a ramp to allow passengers in cars to see over the heads --- or rather roofs --- of those in front. When the problem of noise pollution caused by large speakers blasting the movie’s soundtrack was solved in 1941--- small movable speakers were attached to posts next to each car --- the drive-in movie was ready for the big time. After the war, the concept took off and by 1958 there were more than 4,000 drive- ins nationwide. Palo Alto joined the bandwagon near the beginning of the wave when the Peninsula Drive-In Theatre opened off old Bayshore Highway in 1947. An ad running in the Palo Alto Times beckoned viewers to “see the stars --- under the stars” in promoting the grand opening week’s double feature --- teenage Shirley Temple’s “Kiss and Tell” and a feature length Disney cartoon, “Make Mine Music.” The Peninsula Drive-In (it later became the “Palo Alto Drive-In”) consisted of a 70 foot screen --- said to be the largest in the western states at the time --- a snack bar, central projection house, and semi-circular ramp with the capacity to hold 750 cars. And the requisite small speakers could be hung inside the car (a PA announcement after the show urgently reminded viewers to put the speakers back in the receptacle box before driving off). Indeed, at a cost of just 60 cents per adult, 14 cents per child and “no charge for your car,” the drive-in was one of Palo Alto’s most economical nights out. Drive-Ins primarily appealed to two rather different segments of American society. They were perfect for parents who could bring their little ones along in the backseat (sometimes already dressed in their PJs) and enjoy a movie without paying for a sitter. For teens, the drive-in offered a bit of much-desired privacy --- especially if you parked way in the back. A Nat King Cole song of the era proclaimed that at the drive-in “you’ll see more kisses in the car than on the screen,” and often kissing was just the beginning of the festivities. By the mid-‘50s the adults had caught on and drive-ins were condemned as “passion pits” by America’s clergy. In Palo Alto, as in other drive-ins, employees were known to patrol the lot, shining flashlights into cars when no heads were visible. Indeed, drive-in theatres were never really about the movies. After all, watching a movie through your front windshield probably wasn’t the best showcase for the world’s cinematic masterpieces. The movies tended to be big and brash --- Hollywood at its most gargantuan. Palo Alto Drive-In fliers of the day advertise such long forgotten B-movies as “Wildfire” (“with thundering hoofs and thundering guns!”), “Summer Holiday,” (“a big Technicolor Musical!”) and “Stampede (“Roaring out of the Lusty West!”) The flier goes on to boast that a “a cast of 50,000” took three years to make the upcoming “Prince of Foxes,” under which one finds a picture of Tyrone Power proclaiming, “I will use a woman’s lips as I use a sword…to conquer.” Yes, not exactly “Citizen Kane.” But ironically, even as the movies got bigger and bigger, it would be a smaller screen that would bring down the Drive-In. After reaching a peak in the late 1950s, close to 700 drive-ins would close over the next 15 years including Palo Alto’s. And as daylight savings time, color television, the VCR and Cable TV all came into their own, drive-ins would virtually close up shop in the late 1970s and early 1980s. By the 1987, there would be fewer than 1,000 in operation and just 405 nationwide today. While many drive-in owners cashed out by selling their land for housing or office parks, Palo Alto’s drive-in became a park. After closing in 1969, the land sat dormant for four years. But then in 1973, neighborhood activists rallied the city to purchase the land and combine it with bordering Amarillo Park to form a larger park. Over the course of the next 20 years Palo Alto would construct what came to be called Greer Park in a series of phases --- adding softball fields, basketball courts and eventually a skate park located at its southern edge. Today a visit to Greer Park provides no hint that these grounds once hosted such a revered slice of Americana. In Palo Alto --- as in much of America --- the drive-in movie must live on primarily in the minds of those who were there. -Matt Bowling |
| Sources: Palo Alto Times, Palo Alto Historical Association, Wikipedia, Drive-ins.com, |
| A Palo Alto Drive-In calendar from the 1950s |
| The first drive-in in Camden, New Jersey |
| A flier advertising Palo Alto's Drive-In, which was originally called Peninsula Drive-In |
| The nation's first Drive-In, just before opening |
| The old drive-in screen used to be in what is now right field |
| A freeway wall now stands where the entrance from old Bayshore Highway once stood. |
| Palo Alto: Then & Now |
| 2007 |
| 1972 |
| The original drive-in patent submitted by Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr. |
| A nostalgic drive-in drawing |
| Greer Park's skate park resides in its southeast corner |
| Greer Park today |
| A map of the South of Embarcadero East region of Palo Alto. Zoom in and out with the + and - symbols in the top left corner of the map... |
| Above is the old Palo Alto Drive-In, three years after it closed. The concession stand and projection house had been torn down, but the screen still stood. The Bayshore Highway had already been replaced with the 101 Freeway. Today the site of the Drive-In is the northern part of Greer Park. The Skate Park is the crater-like area toward the south of the park. |
| A Google image of the old site of the Palo Alto Drive-In |