For the younger generations, it’s hard to paint a picture of an empty valley of just a few souls. TV reception was mostly fuzzy and limited to a few channels. People looked forward to a Friday date or evening with the family when you piled the pajama-clad kids in the back of the station wagon and headed to something called a drive-in theater.
Thank you, Richard Hollingshead.
It was this young man who came up with the concept of linking the auto with the movie. That was back in 1928. Hollingshead worked at his father’s auto product store when he started experimenting with showing movies that could be viewed from a car. He set up a Kodak projector in his own drive-way back in New Jersey, subjecting it to outdoor weather tests by squirting the device with a garden hose. He also kept parking and re-parking cars, trying to figure out the best location for the screen.
On May 16, 1933, he was issued United States Patent No. 1,989,537 and a few months later, with a loan of $30,000 (a staggering amount of capital during the Depression) he opened America’s first drive-in June of that year. Admission was a quarter per car and a quarter per person.
Some of us from the drive-in era remember the heavy old-fashioned metal car speakers. They sat two to a pole and you hooked them onto your window. Hollingshead’s first drive-in had three giant directional speakers under the screen. They were like bombs going off if you were in the first few rows. If you were in the back, forget it. And, of course, the neighbors in the houses around the drive-in just loved the booming annoyances.
This new form of entertainment quickly spread. Eventually, in Copiague, New York, they would build the world’s largest drive-in. Talk about traffic jams coming and going (remember those?). Called the All Weather, this drive-in could hold 2,500 vehicles on its 28 acres, plus, it had indoor seating for another 1,200 people. Besides the playgrounds and full-service restaurant, the All Weather even had a special shuttle train that took people from the concession stands to their cars.
Conversely, the smallest drive-ins were a bit more modest. Two — the Harmony in Pennsylvania and the Highway in South Carolina — fitted just 50 cars.
Then, there was the Ed Brown Drive-in, built in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on June 3, 1948. It had room for 500 cars and 25 small airplanes. The Ed Brown Drive-in was next to an airstrip. Pilots and their passengers would fly in and taxi over to the last row of the theater.
Eighteen years later and a continent away, we’d finally get our Mustang.
It was pretty good size, one of the biggest in California, and could accommodate 1,200 vehicles.
I have so many memories of The Mustang, fonder now in the passage of time.
Coincidentally, my first driver’s license coincided with the Mustang’s opening. I remember my best friend, Phil Lanier and I driving down Soledad Canyon Road (close to where the Cross Valley Connector is today) and locking the brakes of my big, potty brown 1959 Buick when we saw the billboard announcing the opening.
It was a Wednesday night, May 25, 1966. My driver’s license was about a month old. Costing $400,000 and built by Potnter-Wirthwein Theaters of Beverly Hills, the grand opening had all the excitement of the Academy Awards. At first, prices were $1.25 for adults, 50 cents for kids and the small fry were admitted free.
Ready for the ultimate cocktail party trivia?
The very first double bill that night 40 years ago was “Last of the Secret Agents” and one of my favorite “B” movies, “Night of the Grizzly” with Clint Walker.
Later, the glimmer would fade from the Mustang. I’m embarrassed to confess, but Phil and I shared ownership in a 1956 green Mercury convertible with faux leopard fabric seats. It had a trunk with square footage that would dwarf some modern-day Valencia townhouses. With the Women’s Revolution still brand spanking new, and us without steady jobs, we’d sometimes talk our girlfriends into hiding in the trunk.
Then there was a prank practiced by mostly guys, ages 16-60, week in and week out. Some poor soul too pure to behold iniquity would be put in charge of going to the snack bar for sustenance. The guy would walk back through the gravel, carrying a month’s worth of popcorn, pizza, hot dogs, soda and candy. When he got back, his shoulders would droop. His alleged friends had moved the car to some distant part of the vast acreage.
So many stories.
Phil and I were editors of our college satire magazine, Amalgamated Buffalo Chips. In a dubious promotion, but, mostly, being 19-year-old guys, we held a contest: “Win A Date With The Editors.” Part of the evening consisted of a double bill at the ‘stang.
We had one losing entry from two girls calling themselves The Snort Sisters.
I remember warning Phil:
“Just go to the door. If they’re really hideous, I’ll be in the truck with the motor running. Jump in the back and we’ll escape.”
Alas, Phil did not dive into the bed of Tim Behan’s 1956 Chevy pick-up he used for our gardening service (one of our many careers back then). Grinning triumphantly, Phil escorted the ladies back to the short bed. The Snort Sisters lived up to their names and I had one of the longest nights of my life crammed into the front seat with four people, three of whom I did not particularly care for, thank you very much.
I got shot at one night at the Mustang.
With a contingent of rowdy friends — one of whom my dearly departed mother used to call “That Lousy Dana Knauber” because he carried a switchblade and was always making a point to open it in front of her — I was languidly enjoying some forgotten film. My pals were high-stepping it madly from the snack bar and screaming for me to start the car so we could get the expletive-deleted out of here.
In a perfect wake of gravel, I gun the big Buick, brodying out of the drive-in as horns honked, people swore and shot gun blasts peppered the screen’s tepid dialogue. Someone in a big sedan gave chase. Dodging bullets (interestingly, a childhood pastime of mine in what should have been a halcyon quiet farming community), I made good our escape.
I found a desolate spot, killed the lights and engine and calmly asked my friends just what the heck had happened.
“We stole an empty 5-gallon water bottle from the concession stand and the manager didn’t like it,” said Knauber.
“I hate you,” I said.
Knauber, all 6-3 and 250 pounds of him, tucked his hands between his thighs and stared at his shoes.
(If the G.M. of the Mustang is still alive today, sorry. Truly.)
As the Mustang, along with American civilization, began the slow slide, they took to showing X-rated movies.
Phil would become sports editor of the local paper, The Signal and he even once sacrificed himself by sitting through, solo, a triple X-rated bill of German pornography with subtitles.
Mind you, this was in the early days of Newhall Land trying to drag the valley kicking and screaming into AYSO land with well-manicured postage stamp lawns, HOAs and sensible moral values and here they’re operating what is essentially an outdoor Pussycat Theater.
Part of the problem is that the Mustang’s giant screen faced westbound Soledad traffic. You didn’t even need to slow down to get an eyeful of 60-foot tall people without any clothes, really liking one another in rather desperate, sweaty fashion. Local law enforcement was even called in after a few traffic collisions featuring wide-eyed, sheepishly grinning motorists who couldn’t watch where they were driving.
Like the American cowboy, the Mustang’s day not so much in the sun but in the moon — no pun intended — would be short-lived. Something called a “multiplex” caught the fancy of both America and the SCV. People stopped going to drive-ins and the Mustang would be used for occassional specialty events, like swap meets. Just 20 years later, in August of 1986, Newhall Land & Farming announced the abandoned theater would be torn down to make way for a business park.
Cue the boos.
Funny, too.
The man given the contract to demolish the Mustang was Paul Newman.
Nope.
Not THAT Paul Newman.
Continuing in the odd cosmic happenstance department, the same week the Mustang was being razed, the parking lot over at College of the Canyons was transformed.
A film crew built a mock drive-in theater for a national fast food TV commercial.
(By the way, saddlepals… If you have any thoughts on the Mustang, do send them along in the space below… Vayan con Dios, amigos!)
John Boston has earned 119 major awards for writing stuff. Besides The Mighty West Ranch Beacon, his work appears in the prestigious thebostonreport.net just about every darn day. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon. Read Boston’s daily blog, his Daily English Muffins, the Adventures of Job Hunter and more of John Boston’s award-winning commentary on thebostonreport.net.