It was awesome seeing families sitting outside spending quality time.
Paramount drive in theatre movie#
The best part about this "new" experience is that, contrary to years gone by where you watched the movie from within the confines of your car, now you can pull out your chairs and watch the movie under the stars. Fortunately, there were many movie goers who had set up big speakers and we were able to hear perfectly without having to use our car radio. I was greatly concern that my car battery was going to die if I did that. Now, you tune in from your car radio, but I'm still not sure how that works. Like another poster wrote, long gone are the days where you had a post and speakers. Tickets are $10 per person, which I found to be extremely reasonable. There are two screens in the lot, and depending what movies you want to watch you to one or the other. On weekends they show three movies, and on weekdays two. I took my youngest daughter, who is 21 and had never been to a drive-in, and she was just as excited as I was.
As a teen I lived fairly close to this drive-in and I remember trips with a car load of teens hiding in the back, going in for free. “I don’t go to the movies as much as I did because I’ve got three kids,11, 9 and 5,” said Beau Bianchi, who at 37 was just a youngster himself when the original drive-in closed.I was blown away when I learned that this drive-in was still in existence as I was under the impression that there were no drive-ins operating. The grandson of the Roadium founder said he has his personal reasons for seeing the drive-in return. He said about half of this country’s remaining drive-ins have converted from film to digital and cited the new three-screen Coyote Drive-In in Fort Worth as evidence of a revival. “We’re seeing one or two new builds a year,” said Vincent, who operates the 710-space Wellfleet Cinemas Drive-In in Cape Cod, Mass. John Vincent, president of the Drive-In Theatre Owners Assn., said drive-ins may be making a wider comeback. “They were fun and affordable for families.” “We used to have two drive-ins,” she said. Paramount City Manager Linda Benedetti-Leal said she was glad to see the drive-in resurrected. “But people still like to get out of the house and take the family out.” It took 10 years for our household to see a color TV,” Bianchi said. During the Paramount Drive-In’s final days, it was operated by Pacific Theatres and featured Spanish-language films. By the time he graduated from Long Beach State, Bianchi was the manager, opening and closing each night.īut as the car culture that helped drive the business began to decline, and as television continued to improve, the outdoor theater became a relic. It was a fertile time for family films, with summer evening favorites such as “The Sound of Music,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Mary Poppins” drawing the crowds. Glenn Bianchi recalls that his dad put him to work in the snack bar, serving up popcorn, soda drinks and hot dogs when he was 15. He wanted a “piece of Hollywood,” so he bought a cornfield that provided grain to the nearby dairies. Joseph Bianchi, the family patriarch who opened the original drive-in, came to Los Angeles after working as a chemist in New York City during World War II. “About 100 of those will not survive the switch over to digital,” predicted Glenn Bianchi. Now only 360 are left, according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Assn. In the late 1950s, there were more than 4,700 drive-ins in the U.S. Others were simply converted to outdoor swap meets. At one point there were 49 of them.Įxperts say that the skyrocketing value of land contributed to the demise of Los Angeles-area drive-ins, with many being cleared away to make room for shopping centers and big-box stores. The only other drive-in still operating in Los Angeles and Orange counties is the Vineland in the city of Industry, according to an Auto Club survey. The two already operate the 11-screen Bianchi Theatres on a corner of the drive-in’s 45-acre site, which is still used during daylight hours as a swap meet.
Along with two new 75-foot-wide screens, the 800-car theater will have an improved snack bar and walls that will block the ambient light from the neighborhood that now surrounds the property.īianchi, who will run the theater with his own son Beau, said he senses a fresh demand for family-oriented fare. “They want to get out in the fresh air.”īianchi plans to spend $1 million to bring the old-school drive-in into the high-tech era.
“People don’t want to stay at home on the couch all of the time,” Bianchi said.
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