On June 6, 1933, a crowd of curious drivers pulled into a fenced lot in Camden, New Jersey, for a new kind of entertainment experience. Seated in their cars, they watched the comedy Wives Beware projected onto a giant outdoor screen. This was the debut of the drive-in movie theater, the brainchild of local businessman Richard Hollingshead Jr., who had tested the concept in his own driveway. What began as an experiment to make moviegoing more comfortable would soon become a defining feature of mid-century American life.
The Birth of an Icon
Inspired by his tall mother’s difficulty fitting into cramped theater seats, Hollingshead set up a Kodak projector on his car, used a bedsheet for a screen and tested how sound and sightlines worked from different vehicle heights. He settled on a series of terraced ramps, ensuring every car had a clear view of the screen, and received a patent in May 1933. The Camden “Automobile Movie Theater” opened weeks later, welcoming moviegoers from 43 states. The tagline said it all: “The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are apt to be.”
While the Camden drive-in lasted only a few years, it sparked a phenomenon. Among those inspired was Wilson Shankweiler, a chicken restaurant owner in Pennsylvania who saw Hollingshead’s theater and decided to build his own. Shankweiler’s Drive-In Theater, which opened in 1934, still operates today.
“Initially, it was really nothing more than a sheet strung between two poles, a little bull horn set up under the screen, and a tabletop projector,” says Matt McClanahan, owner/operator of Shankweiler’s. “It was very DIY. A lot of it was just what people had laying around, and many drive-ins in this area had a similar kind of upbringing.”