June 6, 1933: The 1st Drive-In Movie Theater

June 6, 1933: The 1st drive-in movie theater opens, in Pennsauken, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.

Richard M. Hollingshead Jr. owned a chemical plant in adjacent Camden, and had nailed a screen to trees in his backyard in nearby Riverton, running a projector on the hood of his car. He got a permit for the theater, and set it up at 2901 Admiral Wilson Boulevard, U.S. Route 30. The first film shown there was Wives Beware, starring Adolphe Menjou and Margaret Bannerman. After 3 years, and no profit -- it was the Great Depression, after all -- Hollingshead sold the theater infrastructure to a theater owner in Union, New Jersey, who moved the equipment there. Retail now occupies the site of the theater.

But the concept had already caught on nationwide. After World War II, with more people buying cars, drive-in theaters became a sensation, usually showing cheap "B-movies," often early science fiction or monster movies.

In 1954, on The Jackie Gleason Show, while The Honeymooners was still a sketch on it, Gleason's Ralph Kramden ran one of his "crazy harebrained schemes": He bought a parking lot next to a movie theater that was under construction, and talked his best friend Ed Norton (Art Carney) into investing in it. It turned out to be a drive-in theater.

The 1970s saw the rise of exploitation films: Slasher films, African-American led "blaxploitation" films, kung fu movies from Hong Kong, and silly stuff like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with fans going to midnight screenings of that film having already seen it a few times and memorizing the dialogue.

But the coming of cable television and the VCR led to the decline of drive-in theaters in the 1980s. Drive-ins that specialized in showing old films fell by the wayside, including the Turnpike Theater on Route 18 at Tices Lane in my hometown of East Brunswick, New Jersey. It was a combination indoor-outdoor theater, It was demolished in 1984, and townhouses were put up on the site.

The 2020 COVID epidemic led to a minor comeback for drive-ins. As of 2022, there are believed to be 20 of them in operation in the United States.

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June 6, 1933 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees swept a doubleheader from the Boston Red Sox, 4-0 and 8-4 at Yankee Stadium. In the opener, Joe Sewell went 3-for-4. In the nightcap, Babe Ruth and Bill Dickey hit home runs. Over the 2 games, Lou Gehrig went 1-for-8 with 3 RBIs.

* The New York Giants beat their archrivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, 7-2 at Ebbets Field. Carl Hubbell went the distance for the win. Player-manager Bill Terry went 1-for-3 with a walk. Mel Ott hit a home run.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Washington Senators, 8-4 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Ed Coleman and Mickey Cochrane hit home runs. Jimmie Foxx went 0-for-3 with a walk. Two days later, he hit 3 home runs and had 5 RBIs.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-2 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Hank Greenberg went 2-for-5.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Cincinnati Reds, 6-2 at Redland Field in Cincinnati. (The ballpark was renamed Crosley Field the next season.) Joe Medwick went 4-for-5 with a home run and 3 RBIs.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-3 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Paul and Lloyd Waner each went 1-for-5.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the St. Louis Browns, 5-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

* And the Philadelphia Phillies and the Boston Braves were supposed to play at Braves Field in Boston, but they agreed to reschedule it, getting a day off today, and getting a bigger crowd with a Sunday doubleheader 2 days earlier, on June 4. The Phillies won the 1st game, 1-0. Ed Holley pitched a 5-hit shutout. The Braves won the 2nd game, 9-6. (The Braves also did this with the Dodgers on Thursday, June 8, moving it to Sunday June 11, splitting the doubleheader.)