subscribe to rss Patience, Grasshopper
As real life keeps trucking along, the updates might be a little sporadic for a minute or two this summer. But not to worry — I’ve got a few things planned, including a chance for you, yes you, to get your hands on the MCFTR experience.
But on the subject of patience, Here’s something pretty cool I ran upon today. I’d seen this before, but I decided to research it a little bit further, and it made it all the more interesting. As I’ve mentioned many times here, one of my favorite places to see movies is the Starlight Six Drive-in in Southeast Atlanta. It’s full of old school goodness, and for good reason: it’s been in operation since 1949. I was glancing at a great time killer for Atlanta residents, the Atlanta Time Machine, and glanced again at the shots of the main marquee for the drive-in, then and now:
“Then”, actually, is 1958, and “now” is 2004, but you get the picture. It’s definitely a statement that there’s a big difference between the numbers of movies shown in a near 50-year gap. Two screens were expanded to six (while the actual real estate wasn’t expanded upon) with each screen showing two different films. So we went from four films being shown at a time to twelve.
Pretty obvious, right? I mean, Hollywood churns out a lot more movie now than they did in the 1950’s. But you’ll really be astounded when you look further into it.
There are four films playing in the 1958 version: Strategic Air Command, The Seven Little Foys, The Deerslayer, and Chief Crazy Horse. A couple of those were pretty big hits at the time, and it’s a neat time capsule to see them on the marquee at once. But what makes the biggest statement is that while The Deerslayer was released in 1957, the other three were from 1955. Nineteen hundred and fifty five. That means that by the time this photo was taken, three of four movies had been in that one theater for roughly three years. Can you imagine if movies were still in theaters for that long these days? Nowadays, even the largest blockbusters are gone within three months, on video within three more, on cable within a year, and in the bargain bin in another year.
Insane.
Our attention spans sure have taken a beating in half a century, haven’t they?
And that was place of the first real date of my parents during the early days of that drive in. Guess that makes me a bad sequel.
For the Atlanta folk, or those not and still love the good monkey kitsch, look at the Clermont Lounge in 1953. A girl and her monkey. I mean really. Dancin’ gals and a monkey? I was born in the wrong time.
I will say this in defense of our attention spans, though: when films were at the theaters for months at a time, TV/radio/internet advertising for films was either nonexistent or a fraction of what it is today. So they pretty much had to stay in a given location for an extended period of time so that word of mouth could get out and back before it was gone. These days, you’re pounded over the head with so many trailers and tie-ins that you’re sick of a movie before it’s been released.
Good post.
Tripping down memory lane, here. I went to that place FOUR TIMES in my mom’s 1973 Malibu Classic station wagon to see Star Wars back in 1977. Of course, the last flick that I saw there was Hot Shots Part Deux, but that’s beside the point. I love that place.
Interesting that you should write about the “Starlight”. I don’t ever remember taking you there, but your mother and I went in our early courting. (No, you were not a sequel of the Starlight drive-in, but of Disneyland). Your grandparents used to take our family in the early 50’s. Just a note of correction. Because the movies were released years before the date of the picture doesn’t mean they were playing all that time. Drive-ins, back “in the day”, were the equivalent to the DVD of today. They didn’t usually get the first runs. Those went to the Paramount or the Roxy theaters. Drive-ins were for the poor people (most of us were back then) and you could get the entire family in for one price. Later, they charged by the adult, and the kids were free. Popcorn was a dime a box and they had seats in front of the concession stand to dump the kids so the adults could watch the movies in peace. Enough nostalgia for one entry, huh?
I like they way the re-worded the sign from
1950’s “North Theater / South Theater”
2000’s “Theaters”
They must have took the “S” from ‘South’, and added onto the existing “Theater”, to make TheaterS”
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