When the drive-in cinema craze swept across Victoria
Few of us had TVs, the shops shut early and the pubs closed at 6pm. In the 1950s drive-in cinemas ruled Melbourne’s suburbs, with a network of 20 sprawled across the city at the peak of their popularity.
Best of Melbourne
Don't miss out on the headlines from Best of Melbourne. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Back in the 1950s, before television hit, most of us had to travel into town to see a movie.
And it was one of the few things to do after dark, thanks to the six o’clock swill in the pubs and restrictive trading laws that forced most shops to shut early.
But post-war prosperity began to change our tastes, and hints of Americana began to creep into Australian society.
One of the biggest signs of American influence in our culture arrived in Melbourne in 1954 when our city gained its first drive-in cinema.
A Melbourne-based Hoyts Cinemas executive, George Griffith Jr, travelled to the United States in the early ‘50s and saw the huge impact of drive-in cinemas there.
With our good weather and growing car ownership, fuelled at least in part by the arrival of the first Holdens in the late ‘40s, he knew the concept would work in Australia.
The chiefs at Hoyts weren’t so keen but, with the company’s tacit backing, Griffith formed a separate partnership and established Australia’s first drive-in theatre, the Burwood Skyline, which opened on February 18, 1954.
The drive-in was down McComas Grove, a side street off Burwood Highway in Bennettswood that ran parallel to Gardiners Creek, the lie of the land creating a natural amphitheatre that allowed the developers to mount the screen on a hill and gave excellent views from every car.
A balmy summer’s night was the perfect time to launch.
The Burwood Skyline was an instant hit. Opening night created a traffic jams each way on Burwood Highway, then not much more than a country road on the edge of suburbia, as patrons flocked to watch the 1951 Danny Kaye comedy On The Riviera on the biggest of the big screens.
On the post that held the crackly car speakers, a button was provided for patrons to buzz the diner.
That would alert an attendant to take your order for hamburgers, hot dogs and other fast food fare, and they’d return with food in a flash.
And attendants were at the ready at the end of the night for the inevitable flat batteries to get patrons going again.
These huge crowds went on for some time, which didn’t impress local residents all that much, but it gave Hoyts the confidence to build new drive-ins in Preston and Oakleigh within the first year. Soon, the 652-car drive-in was expanded to 700 cars.
By Christmas 1954, Hoyts’ newest cinema rival Village, which only began operating that year, opened its first drive-in in Croydon.
In 1955, Hoyts took full ownership of the Skyline Burwood and soon added a barbecue area with a Western motif and a small ornamental lake, an expanded diner, a steakhouse, a “walk-in” building for patrons without cars and a merry-go-round in the playground.
Drive-ins were beginning to spring up all over Melbourne, including the Panoramic in Dandenong in May 1956, and the expansion continued even after television landed in November 1956.
Hoyts opened a fourth drive-in in Broadmeadows in 1958.
By 1966, the index in the first edition Melway street directory listed 19 drive-in theatres across metropolitan Melbourne, including sites at Bulleen, Burwood, Campbellfield, Clayton, Coburg, Croydon, Dandenong, Frankston, Hawthorn East, Laverton, Maribyrnong, Oakleigh South, two sites in Preston (one of those more Reservoir than Preston), Rowville, Sandringham, Thomastown, Tullamarine and Wantirna.
They held such importance that on the big metro reference map in the front of the Melway, the location of drive-ins was marked with bright red triangles.
Of the 19 drive-ins, seven were owned by Hoyts, six were operated by Village and six were independently owned.
The Melway index also listed a proposed 20th drive-in – a new Village site at Sunshine, and the index missed the opening in 1966 of a new independent drive-in at Moorabbin.
In addition, there were about 40 other drive-ins across regional Victoria.
Geelong gained its first drive-in soon after the Burwood Skyline opened, and most major regional centres had a drive-in by the 1960s – from Mildura and Robinvale, to Ballarat and Bendigo, Stawell and Terang, Shepparton and Seymour, Wodonga and Warrnambool, Sale, Traralgon and Morwell.
It’s estimated that there were 330 drive-ins around Australia by the late 1960s.
A new drive-in cinema opened in Altona in 1971 but, although the Hoyts Broadmeadows site closed in 1972, drive-ins were bigger than Ben Hur.
Why did we love drive-ins so much?
Drive-ins represented freedom for young people and families at a time when Australia had full employment and, economically and socially, things were looking up after years of deprivation during the 1930s and ‘40s.
Rising car ownership meant we were more mobile than ever, and we were increasingly willing to spend money on entertainment.
In an era when many women were locked into domestic duties, for families the drive-in was a chance for dad to relax after work, for mum to have “the night off” from cooking thanks to the diner and for the kids to run around and play.
Drive-ins were relaxed. You could make as much noise as you liked in your own car with cracking chip packets and the kids monkeying around.
Frequently, children went to the drive-ins in their pyjamas. Apart from the food itself, the diners often had a jukebox and pinball machines within their 1950s-themed walls.
They also offered families the freedom to bring in their own food and drinks.
They were popular with couples seeking a little privacy in a time when many young people stayed at home until they were married, and for friends who wanted to get a little rowdy during the film without attracting a theatre usher’s attention – or who were sneaking in extra people via a car boot or ute tray.
But by the 1970s, dark clouds were beginning to gather.
Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences curator Margaret Simpson said colour television in 1975 and the later advent of video cassette players had an impact.
The fuel crises of 1973 and 1979 did not help to boost patronage, but one key element spelled the end of most drive-ins by the 1980s, in Melbourne at least.
“Finally, the large expanse of land they occupied became too valuable and was sold off for car parks, shopping centres, housing estates and apartments,” she wrote in 2016.
For example, the old Thomastown drive-in is now part of a larger industrial estate. The Northland Twin in Preston became a large homemakers’ centre. A Pizza Hut, a Sizzler and new housing occupied the old Croydon drive-in site.
The former Burwood Skyline is now a heritage-listed park.
The only continuously operating drive-in in Victoria is down at Dromana. It survived the 1980s drive-in crash and has remained open since 1961.
It’s now the longest-running drive-in in Australia.
The Panoramic in Dandenong is now the Lunar Drive-in. It opened in 1956 and closed in 1984, but was revived in 2002.
It’s now Australia’s largest and oldest drive-in, with four screens and space for up to 950 cars.
The Coburg Village Drive-in started out as an independent in 1965. It was snapped up by Hoyts in 1967 and was shut in 1984, then revived in a partnership between Village and Hoyts in 1987.
READ MORE:
CLASSIC MELBOURNE ADS FROM 70s & 80s