Return to story

When Rubber met Cinema: The automobile, the motion picture and Pitts Fredericksburg Drive-in theater were a big hit I

December 16, 2006 12:50 am

T WAS APRIL 23, 1951, when the first drive-in picture show debuted in Fredericksburg.

The feature attraction was director John Ford's majestic big-budget Western "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," starring John Wayne, with Joanne Dru and John Agar. The Free Lance-Star advertised "Pitts Drive-in Theatre--a Carfull for a Dollar-Plus Tax--Shine or Shower--Route 1--Four Mile Fork." There were two shows nightly at 7:15 and 9:15. The flick was billed as "Drama that's Raw Violent Real."

The last remnants of the Fredericksburg Drive-in, which closed in 1990, were bulldozed away this summer to make way for offices and retail use.

The marriage of the car and the motion picture began in the early 1930s when a man named Richard Hollingshead Jr., while parked in the driveway of his Riverton, N.J., home, placed a Kodak 16mm projector on the hood of his vehicle. He focused it on a screen hung from a nearby tree, behind which played a radio. Subsequent experimentation involved varying screen sizes, projector throw lengths and the introduction of crude sound systems.

Then he designed a ramping system for parked cars so that the front of each car was pointed upward and toward the movie screen. Drawings were produced and the concept patented, according to the book "The American Drive-In Movie Theater," written and compiled by Don and Susan Sanders.

Matching America's love of cinema with its attachment to the personal convenience of the automobile was inarguably far-sighted and brilliant. Hollingshead submitted the patent in August of 1932, and in May 1933 "construction began on the world's first drive-in theater." It was located near Central Airport in Camden, N.J.

On June 6, 1933, Hollingshead's "Automobile Movie Theater," opened for business, to a packed lot, showing the second-run film "Wife Beware," starring Adolphe Menjou.

The concept of the drive-in caught fire, and by the time America entered World War II there were about 100 drive-ins nationwide. But the war brought drive-in construction to an abrupt halt as Americans focused on the great task at hand, and steel (used in the superstructures supporting movie screens) was needed for more urgent purposes.

Now, fast forward to Fredericksburg in 1950, and to the vision of state Sen. Benjamin T. Pitts: Pitts was prominent locally in the pre- and postwar years. He was a Fredericksburg city councilman, state senator representing the [then] 26th District, philanthropist, community leader and founder of Pitts Enterprises Inc., which at one point owned 36 movie theaters and drive-ins operating in Virginia and one in Charlestown, W.Va.--37 theaters total.

Pitts was a nonfiction Horatio Alger story, writ local, writ large. The Fredericksburg Drive-in was his 31st theater, expanding a business empire he began in 1909 at age 15, when he acquired the lease to the Old Fredericksburg Opera House at Caroline and William streets for $1 a night and purchased the projection equipment from the financially distressed owners. His start-up capital was $125; $75 of that borrowed.

The local drive-in operated between U.S. 1 and Lafayette Boulevard. Its entrance was on Lafayette Boulevard, just south of Fleming Street. "The long line of cars would stretch down Lafayette Boulevard and would block the entrance to our restaurant and to Fleming Street at night," according to Pamelia Bettis, who still lives on Fleming Street with her husband, John, adjacent to the tract of the drive-in (the Bettises once owned the little restaurant presently trading as "Grandma's Getaway"). "People would open their car trunks and children would fill into them."

At some point the theater stopped charging by the carload and started charging by the head. The Bettises acquired their house in 1960, nine years after the drive-in began operation. As the screen was oriented northeast, it directly faced their backyard. Parked theater patrons were just over their property line. John Bettis says he enjoyed sitting in his yard watching movies. He was close enough to hear the sound from the car speakers in the back rows.

The drive-in was adjacent to the Virginians Theater, built in 1972 and demolished in March 2005. The two theaters operated simultaneously for about a dozen years. Pitts' Fredericksburg Drive-in was chartered by the State Corporation Commission in 1950, as was his drive-in in Culpeper. He also had drive-ins under construction in Orange and Manassas at that time and was planning seven more, according to a Nov. 21, 1950, piece in the Free Lance-Star. It was the golden age for the drive-in theater, and Pitts was in the game and out front.

The Fredericksburg Drive-in cost about $125,000 to build. To put that in perspective, the annual median income for American families in 1951 was $3,709, according to Census Bureau tables. The Free Lance-Star, reporting on the theater's opening, stated that the screen was "made of solid steel and embedded with 50 yards of concrete." It was 65 feet high and 55 feet wide and was said to be engineered to withstand winds exceeding 100 mph.

The parking lot required $10,000 worth of crushed stone trucked in from Culpeper.

The article described the facility in detail: "There are individual speakers for all cars, a concession stand that sells hotdogs, hamburgers and such and also has speakers so you won't miss a tart bit of dialogue while munching on a ham and rye." A 300-foot well was drilled to supply water to the site, modern restrooms were installed and the sound and projection equipment were said to be "the most up-to-date."

The article cited many reasons for the growing popularity of the drive-in at that time. You could hear the actors' lines after a joke, unlike in a movie house where the "bedlam breaks loose and you hear nothing thereafter for a few moments. If nobody chuckles in your car you hear the next line. It's good for families with babies. No baby sitter required, take the tike along. If it cries it won't disturb other movie goers.

"There's comfort and privacy. No standing up to let people by, no peering around milady's hat. You can control the volume of the speaker. You can smoke and--no chewing gum on the seat."

Pitts' original concept for the Fredericksburg Drive-in included a fishing pond, a merry-go-round and a miniature train. Many drive-ins across the country installed multiple attractions, including miniature golf, and marketed themselves as family entertainment destinations. As best as can be determined, only the fishing pond was built.

Pamelia Bettis recalled, "There was a big pond on the side of the theater where people caught nice fish." The pond also spawned mosquitoes that could sometimes detract from the fun.

The Richmond News Leader, in a Feb. 29, 1956, profile of Benjamin Pitts, described the senator as "a lean blue-eyed individual who stands 6 feet 1 inches tall and weighs in at a fighting 172 pounds."

The senator, being interviewed, was asked about the implications of growing television viewership on the movie business. "Television has helped the industry," he contended. "Hollywood has learned a good movie can draw people out of their living rooms and goes about making good movies."

The story continues: "His ten drive-ins, which represent investment of $750,000, provide one particular problem. People are forever driving off without unhooking the speaker from their car window. And he doesn't go for all these tales about overzealous necking at the dollar-a-car-load cinemas." You get the sense the reporter may have struck a raw nerve in that topic.

But the term "passion pit" was not whipped up out of thin air. The term was "well deserved" according to Jim Mann, retired associate managing editor at The Free Lance-Star, who moved to the area in 1952. In Fredericksburg, and across America in the 1950s, the drive-in was the place where you went on a date. Large groups of guys would pile into cars and head there, as well. The drive-in was especially popular with high school students. There were only three high schools in the area at that time: James Monroe, Stafford and Spotsylvania.

"Those were much more innocent times" recalled Mann. "The most serious contact with the opposite sex took place at the drive-in." For the most part it would have consisted of necking and holding hands. Many a person who went there could not remember much about the movie.

Mann pointed out "most young people then did not have their own car." You would have to negotiate for that with the folks, dad most likely. One can only imagine how many paternal interrogations took place when the destination was the drive-in.

One native Spotsylvanian who characterized his upbringing as "sheltered" did not go there often but recalls people putting friends in the trunk to get in free. "It was considered a place to make out, and 'polite girls' would not go there--they would lose their reputations." But that was an evaporating point of view as the '50s ran their course and graduated into the '60s.

Mann emphasized that "movies were the primary form of entertainment then. The Fredericksburg drive-in was truly an important part of growing up here."

TED KAMIENIAK of Spotsylvania County is a freelance writer. Send e-mail to his attention to
Email: gwoolf@freelancestar.com.