Whatever Happened to Kansas City’s Drive-In Movies?

With summer on the way, it’s time to pack the family into the family sedan and head to the local drive-in movie, hopefully to enjoy a family movie night. As Nat King Cole phrased it, “those days of soda, and pretzels and beer.”

The Kansas City region has a rich history of the iconic summer entertainment tradition.

Although drive-ins existed as early as 1910, the concept was patented by Hollingshead in Camden, New Jersey in 1933. You could show movies to people in cars, and they could enjoy it in the confines of their own vehicles, windows up or down, with a speaker usually hanging on the driver’s side window. The best part, outside of the concessions, was the simple fact that theater seats, decorations, and labor were kept to a minimum. You could show movies to 100 cars, assuming an average of three passengers per car, not including trunk riders, when the fee included occupants.

Drive-in theaters and drive-in restaurants provided a unique experience in fast service at a low price. You could show a movie to 300 or 400 people or serve literally hundreds at drive-in restaurants with very little investment. Hollingshead claimed he invented the drive-in movie for those who couldn’t comfortably fit into small theater seats, after he created a mini-drive-in for his mother.

Kansas City has been at the forefront of theaters

Kansas City has been at the forefront of theaters, with Stanley Durwood opening what is widely believed to be the first movie theater designed specifically as a twin multiplex. The names of the participants, Durwood and Dickenson, were at one point the vanguard of theater businesses, with Durwood becoming AMC. Drive-ins declined in popularity with the rise of the multiplex theater, home entertainment, and the rising cost of real estate—these were the primary causes through the end of the 20th century. However, one of the biggest nails in the coffin of drive-ins was the advent of digital projection.

From the plethora of drive-ins, we are now reduced to one drive-in theater in the Kansas City area: the Boulevard Drive-In Theater in Kansas City, Kansas. B&B Theaters, the owner of the Twin Drive-in, closed it last year.

Drive-ins saw an unexpected resurgence during COVID-19, while theaters saw a resurgence during April 2020, as it allowed people to distance themselves. But the cost of real estate has caused the end of theaters like the Heart, Fairyland, I-70, Twin, Terrace, State Twin, and Lake Park. There used to be a drive-in on the Leawood side of State Line Road around 125th Street where the back of the screen was made to look like the columns of a southern mansion. It has given way to houses and shops.

Possibly the other problem with drive-in theaters is a change in the vehicles people drive. Sedans have been replaced by SUVs with no place to hide additional viewers. So if anyone out there still owns a sedan with a big enough trunk to fit four of my friends, let me know, and we can plan an outdoor drive-in movie night.

List of theaters once gracing the local landscape