In the opening paragraphs of my article, that the Westways editor cut from the published piece, I imagined what the drive-in theater experience would have been like growing up in America. Lakewood Drive-In, Long Beach (c) Elisa Leonelli 1978. As children, we loved cracking open and eating “romelline” pumpkin seeds in their salted shells, while watching the movie. We did not need to get there by car, we just walked and sat in chairs. The “hard top” cinemas would close for 3 months in the summer, because of the lack of air conditioning, and these open-air arenas opened. Click here for the summer 2019 program and a photo. In Italy, where I grew up, we had outdoor theaters, in my hometown of Modena we went to Cinema Estivo, still operating to this day. The most fascinating visually were those with a mural painted on the back of the screen, others had colorful neon signs. Many drive-ins were still operating in the greater Los Angeles area, so I mapped them out and went to photograph them all. By the time I went to photograph it in 1978, it was closed for business, but the Streamline Modern style structure built in 1948 was still standing. The only drive-in left within the city of Los Angeles was the Gilmore on Third Street and Fairfax, and in 1977 I did go there with my boyfriend to finally have that experience.

Foreign publications like Italian Vogue ran a 2-page spread. My article was published in the travel magazine Westways in April 1979. Since I was a photojournalist, I decided to create a photographic essay and research the history of drive-ins. While reading a recent article in the Los Angeles Times about some drive-in theaters staying open and offering relief to families with children in these times of Coronavirus fear, I remembered being intrigued by this very American institution, that does not exists in other countries, after moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s.

Los angeles drive ins