This photo proves that shadow can be as necessary as light to create a striking image. This one was taken at the entrance to the Olympic Drive-in which stood at 12109 W. Olympic Blvd. I love how the lights reflect off the shiny cars pouring into the drive-in. The photo was taken in 1951, so now I’m wondering what these people were going to see: Quo Vadis? Show Boat? The African Queen? An American in Paris?
Olympic Drive-in entrance, 12109 W. Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, 1951
I had a look at Newspapers.com for what movies where playing there in 1951, and its seems most of them were from the previous year (At War with the Army, Sirocco, etc) but Showboat did start at the Olympic in September.
Ah! So I was close!
Ah, the surfer theater! When my uncle was a young single guy in the late 50s, he had an apartment up the street. Coincidentally, my older sister lived in an apartment very, very near his when she was at UCLA. But I remember driving by that site a lot when I was younger.
In looking at images on a theater history site, I get the impression that the original entry/exit was smaller and had doors. This place had a grand opening in April 1945. But a listing in October of that year says “opens Wed.”, so perhaps the changes were carried out during late summer. That’s when we see this wider gateway, with what must be a faux roof as they cut through a border wall having little depth to it. The wall on the right must be fake too as the gateway was several feet beyond the wing extension of the screen structure. Pacific Theaters took control in later years, and it shut down in 1973. From aerials, I roughly estimated 500-600 cars, but the recorded capacity seems to be around 750. That’s a lot of ice cream and popcorn!
Revising that conclusion…an examination of other things in the images would suggest the entryway was widened much later, possibly when the drive-in was already in the Pacific Theaters system.