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Reprinted from www.driveinmovie.com

Massachusetts was an early leader among drive-in states. It has the distinction of having hosted one of the first 5 drive-in theatres in America (the Weymouth Drive-in, which opened in May of ’36), and also, four of America’s first 15 drive-in cinemas were located in Massachusetts! Within ten years of it’s first drive-in opening, there were twenty located in Massachusetts, and during the peak drive-in years of the late 50′s, the state had nearly 90 outdoor theatres in operation. Since that time, their number has declined very steeply, with 94% of them going dark; and presently, there are only five remaining which we can enjoy and preserve (or, six, if you count a NH Dr’in that overlaps).

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LEICESTER — Drive-in theaters have dwindled into near extinction elsewhere, but Leicester’s drive-in is alive and well and getting better. The Leicester Drive-in is preparing to open for its 42nd season next week with an upgraded screen.

“It isn’t really a whole new screen,” said Hanna J. Joseph, who built the drive-in in 1965 and has operated it for all but a brief period since. “The steel and everything underneath are the original equipment but I’ve just flipped the surface material, which had become worn and damaged over the years. It will seem like a whole new screen.”

Mr. Joseph said only the main screen of his three-screen theater is getting refurbished. Screen No. 2, built in 1995, and Screen No. 3, added five years later, are still pretty much good as new.

In his early days in the business, Mr. Joseph had plenty of competition. with drive-ins as close by as Oxford and Auburn. Those and most of the others in the state are long gone, leaving Leicester, Mendon, Lunenburg and Wellfleet on Cape Cod as the only representatives of the once-popular genre left in Massachusetts.

After he got the drive-in off the ground, Mr. Joseph sold it and took back a second mortgage. But the new owner’s operation failed and the drive-in was closed for a year in 1983.

“That didn’t work out,” he said. “He (the buyer) stopped making his payments and I finally had to foreclose. And when I went to take the operation back, I discovered much of the equipment had been taken away and someone even came to take the screen down. Fortunately, my neighbor Krikor Sojjan saw him and had them arrested. I wound up closing for a year just to get the theater back in shape.”

Once the theater was reopened, Mr. Joseph has continued operating it himself, making changes as he went along. The biggest change, he said, was getting rid of the speakers on posts, which had always caused problems with patrons driving off with them still attached to their cars. The speakers were replaced by sound broadcast over a radio band that patrons can tune into on their car or portable radios.

In the early days, the Leicester Drive-in was open only on weekends and, like most theaters of its kind, played second- and third-run films.
“I remember the first movie we ever played. It was Elvis Presley in ‘Double Trouble,’ and the second one was John Wayne in ‘War Wagon,’ ” he said.

With the addition of a second screen, he switched over to first-run movies, which in turn led him to remain open seven nights during the season. And the combination of the movies and being the only game in a wide area now bring him patrons from as far away as Connecticut, the Boston area and Western Massachusetts on a regular basis.

“I’ve had people come up to me on many evenings saying ‘Please don’t close it, we just love to be able to bring our family here,’ ” he said. “And I really wouldn’t want to close it. I just love to see the kids in their pajamas, sitting on the ground and enjoying the movies. It gives me a warm feeling.”

The Leicester Drive-in’s gates will open this year May 2. It will be open Fridays and Saturdays only for the first month, open four nights for Memorial Day weekend, then switch over to seven nights as soon as school closes in June.

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Reprinted from necn.com (NECN) – Going to a drive-in to see the latest film may sound like a thing of the past – but in Leicester, that old time tradition lives on.

Joseph: “We’re the only ones around here now, there’s nobody else – they’re all gone.”

Hanna Joseph is the owner of the Leicester Drive In Theater. He opened it back in 1966.

Joseph: “I love the drive in – I used to go from one to another myself and I decided that I wanted to build one and I did it.”

Friday night, Joseph’s theater opens for the season. This year marks the 42nd year here at the Leicester Drive In and according to Joseph, it continues to please the crowd. Karen Vaughn delivers films to theaters around New England. It’s rare that she stops by a drive-in but she’s always glad to find they’re still a few around.

Karen: “I think people appreciate it – they like being outdoors – not always cramped in a room – it always gave me something to look forward to in the summer as a kid.” The theater’s three screens are roughly 100 feet wide. And this year one of them has been completely refurbished.

It costs twenty dollars to see a movie from the comfort of your car – but those who come early can stay and watch two. Listening is as easy as tuning your radio – and a concession stand sells movie musts like popcorn and soda. For now, the theater’s only open on weekends. But during the summer, it is open seven nights a week – creating fun not for moviegoers, but also for those who run it.

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In 1965, when Hanna Joseph built his outdoor movie theater off Route 9 west of Leicester Center, drive-ins were springing up all over the county.

The Leicester Drive-In then had a single screen, individual speakers to be taken into the cars and generally a pair of B movies.

Today, most of those drive-ins are long closed. But Leicester’s is bigger and better than ever.

“I saw how the audience was changing, and I changed my operation to give the audience what it wanted” is how Mr. Joseph explains his venture’s continued success.

In the early days, the audience was mostly teens. Nowadays, it’s primarily families. And since not every patron likes the same movie, he installed a second screen and then a third. He replaced the speakers with sound broadcast over the car radio.

Most important, he started showing first-run movies. That meant a price hike, but the one-carful admission policy remained a bargain.

The Leicester Triple Drive-in opened for this season May 1, showing movies on Friday and Saturday only till school ends. Thereafter, shows will run seven nights a week until fall.

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