USA Culture :: Movie Night at the Drive-in

Tuesday, June 6th. A major pop culture phenomenon, lasting several decades, began on this date in 1933. With the automobile increasingly reshaping Americans’ habits, Richard Hollingshead opened the nation’s first drive-in movie theater in Camden, New Jersey. Soon, drive-in movies became a fixture across the country and a popular place for teenage dating and family outings.

Drive-ins reached their peak in the 1950s. There were some 20,000 movie theaters then, and almost 5,000 of them were drive-ins. Now, there are some 4,450 enclosed movie theaters around the country — many, if not most of them with multiple screens — while there are only about 325 drive-ins remaining in operation.