The Las Vegas Drive-in has been part of Comesha Starnes’ life for as long as she can remember. “I’ve actually been coming to this drive-in since I was a little kid,” she says of the theater at 4150 W. Carey Ave. in North Las Vegas. “So, I’ve watched it transform into what it is today, going way back from when I was a child when we had speaker boxes that went onto our windows. You pulled up to them (and) hopefully you got a good, working one.”
Those days are long gone, with the speaker boxes having been removed in the 1990s in favor of broadcasting the audio on FM signals.
“If you have a good car stereo or if you have a great FM Bluetooth radio or boombox radio, your sound is going to be great quality,” says Starnes, who worked her way up from the ticket booth to the general manager’s office over the past 19 years.
On a recent Friday night, some of the King of Pop’s greatest hits blared forth from portable speakers the size of a beer keg as families curled up in the backs of SUVs, in the beds of pickup trucks and, occasionally, on the hoods of sedans to watch “Michael” on two of the drive-in’s six screens.
Practically every word of that sentence would have been unimaginable to those in attendance at the city’s first drive-in.
The last drive-in standing
The Motor-Vu drive-in, built at a cost of $100,000, opened April 23, 1948, next to the Last Frontier. The first feature was “Cheyenne,” a Western starring Dennis Morgan and Jane Wyman.
Admission was 60 cents, children ages 10 to 12 were admitted for 9 cents and children younger than that got in for free.
An announcement in the Review-Journal called it “the century’s greatest achievement in movie magic, combining the great outdoors with the world’s most popular form of family entertainment.”
Another claim touted “the pioneering and technical skill” behind the individual speakers for every car while boasting there was “even a bottle warming service for that little hungry tot.”
After having been shuttered for a few years, the drive-in reopened in 1959, following another $100,000 in improvements, as the Stardust with the world premiere of Disney’s “The Shaggy Dog.” It was torn down in 1971.
The West Wind Las Vegas Drive-In, as it’s currently known, opened on West Carey Avenue on Jan. 7, 1966, with “Do Not Disturb,” a romantic comedy starring Doris Day; “The Train,” a World War II action movie with Burt Lancaster; and the short film “The Beatles Come to Town.”
There was one screen, it presented 1:45 a.m. shows for shift workers, and electric car heaters were offered for free.
A second screen was in service by 1971. It was up to four screens by 1975 and the current six screens by 1993.
Other drive-ins came and went.
The Sky Way Drive-In, also spelled Skyway, opened June 9, 1954, at 4035 Boulder Highway, the current site of Boulder Station. The last mention in the Review-Journal of movies at that location was on Dec. 11, 1980.
The Nevada Drive-In opened Sept. 3, 1955, at 3873 Las Vegas Blvd. North. Attendants went from car to car asking if any special services were needed, and windshields were cleaned regularly. Movies seemed to have stopped running there as of Nov. 9, 1985.
The Sunset Drive-In opened July 12, 1966, at 3800 W. Cheyenne Ave. — directly across the North Las Vegas Airport from the current drive-in. The final advertisement mentioning movies instead of the swap meet it became ran on Dec. 3, 1982.
The last drive-in built in the valley, the Desert 5, held its grand opening July 2, 1975, at 2606 S. Lamb Blvd. It closed Feb. 15, 1988, leaving the West Wind as the final outdoor theater standing.
‘Never a thought of closing’
The United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association lists 283 active drive-in theaters across America, down from a high of 4,063 drive-ins in 1958.
Many were gobbled up by real estate development. The owners of the Las Vegas Drive-In announced in 1994 that it would be torn down to make way for a 20-screen, 4,000-seat indoor theater. Those plans were scrapped in favor of building the 16-screen Rancho Santa Fe. That multiplex, in turn, was replaced in 2005 by the current theaters across the street at Santa Fe Station.
Still more drive-ins were lost when Hollywood mandated the conversion to digital projection. In 2013, Paramount became the first studio to stop releasing movies on film with “The Wolf of Wall Street” as the first all-digital release. The cost of the new projectors, pegged at the time at $60,0000 to $80,000, was simply more than many theater owners could bear.
“Our company jumped on it immediately and transformed our projection room from 35mm film to the digital projection just like a lot of the indoor theaters were doing,” Starnes says. “It was never a thought of closing for us. It was always a thought of ‘How can we make the drive-ins relevant again? How can we get it back?’ ”
The Las Vegas Drive-In upgraded its technology yet again in 2023 with the introduction of LX Laser Extreme. The new laser projector replaced the standard 7,000-watt xenon lamp on Screen 2. That process was repeated the next year with Screen 4.
The difference is especially noticeable now that Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho have been demolished, taking with them a major source of light pollution around the screens.
“It’s like watching a TV that is better than a 4K smart TV. It’s very bright,” Starnes says. “The coloring is super vivid. If you see animation on any of the laser screens — oh, my gosh. You will be blown away just by the way the colors project.”
Drive-ins across the country saw a renaissance during the early days of COVID. Between the closure of traditional movie theaters and many moviegoers not wanting to sit near strangers, drive-ins were more popular during the pandemic than they’d been since the days when Roger Corman was cranking out schlock.
Attendance has dropped over the past 18 months or so, Starnes says, but it’s still above pre-pandemic levels.
“It has slowed down. Mostly it’s due to the content being released by the studios. They’re not really having great big blockbusters like they were prior to the pandemic,” she notes. “But I think if we get the content again, we will still be right on top like we were during the pandemic.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at [email protected] or 702-380-4567.