Skyview Drive-In, Belleville, Illinois

Tonight the theater has attracted a full house, or lot rather. Rows of cars of all sizes, makes and models are parked with their occupants inside watching an over-size screen with rapt attention. Above the sounds of the movie being streamed over the FM radio station, the laughter of children, the murmurs of adults, the crackle of wrappers being opened and the nocturnal cacophony of crickets provide a quiet soundtrack. It’s just another night at the Skyview Drive-In in Belleville, Illinois.

Skyview has been a fixture of Belleville, a town about 45 minutes outside of St. Louis, since the late 1940s, said Steve Bloomer, a co-owner of the theater and the third generation of his family to work there.

Bloomer said the theater has remained unchanged in the 60 or so years it has been open — with a few exceptions. The brightly lit neon “Skyview Drive-In” sign outside the entrance to the theater and the concession stand are original. He said the movie screens are different, however, because the first screen had to be replaced and another added after a particularly powerful storm in the early 1980s.

Another aspect of Skyview that has changed during its six decades of operation is its paint job. The concession stand and one side of the original movie screen were a vibrant pink in the 1960s and 1970s. According to the theater’s Web site, the shade of pink used at the theater was so distinctive that the company that supplied the paint dubbed it “Bloomer pink.” Today, the first screen is gone, and the concession stand has since been repainted a more subtle hue.

Although Bloomer doesn’t keep track of attendance figures, Skyview usually will sell out on a good, clear night, he said. Bloomer said that a sellout means about 600 cars are on the lot. The movie season at Skyview runs from April to October, he added.

Bloomer said he tries to concentrate on drawing families to Skyview.

“That’s what the drive-in has always been — a family type of atmosphere,” Bloomer said. “We’ve got a playground for the kids to enjoy, and the type of movies that we play is family movies. That’s who we are — we’re a family business.”

Bloomer added that a typical comment he receives from moviegoers is that Skyview generates nostalgia.

“A lot of people ... have not been to a drive-in for a long time, but they come back because it reminds [them] of when they were kids,” Bloomer said.

Echoing that sentiment were Julie and Mark George of Arnold, Missouri, who brought their daughter and her friend to Skyview Drive-In.

Julie George said she usually goes to the drive-in a few times each summer. She said she enjoys the atmosphere of Skyview because of its location and inexpensive price, in addition to the memories it evokes.

Mark George, her husband, said Skyview means something similar to him.

“I remember going to drive-ins as a kid, and now we get to bring our kids,” he said.

Susan Sanders, who co-authored “The American Drive-In Movie Theatre” and “Drive-In Movie Memories” with her husband Don Sanders, said she and her husband grew up in adjacent counties in Texas that had 43 drive-in theaters between them. Sanders added that her generation went to the drive-in to have a good time, whereas today, teenagers growing up in mostly urban areas go to the mall to hang out.

“We just grew up with drive-ins,” she said.

Sanders said her professional interest in drive-ins began when she and her husband started photographing neon fixtures around the theaters. They have since written a pair of books and produced a documentary about the drive-in culture.
Sanders said that movies have been projected onto the sides of buildings since the late 1800s, but it wasn’t until after World War II that the drive-in took off when returning soldiers bought cars en masse.

“The drive-in is a natural progression of the development of the automobile and the movie — Americans love both,” Sanders said.

The popularity of the drive-in began to decline with the advent of television and ended with a shift in cultural attitudes and preferences, Sanders said. Because of televisions, people didn’t have to leave their homes to be entertained visually. She said another factor in the decline of drive-ins was daylight-saving time — the farther west the state, the later the sun sets, and therefore movies start later, often past children’s bedtimes. Eventually, drive-ins started showing X-rated films to get by, which attracted rough crowds, Sanders said.

In the 1990s, the drive-ins that survived began showing first-run movies, which previously had not been possible because film studios owned movie theaters and charged a premium for unaffiliated theaters that wanted to show such films, Sanders said. Drive-in owners also redesigned parking lots and installed systems to transmit sounds from the movies over FM frequencies that could be played on a car radio. In time, families and teenagers started coming back, Sanders said.

“Today’s audience is just like it was in the beginning,” she said.

Drive-ins currently are experiencing an overall resurgence with people either reopening them or building them from scratch, Sanders said. She also pointed out some of the advantages of drive-ins: They usually are inexpensive and family friendly, and theatergoers can bring in their own food.

“[The drive-in] gives you the freedom you don’t have at the indoor theater,” Sanders said.

Steve Bloomer, the co-owner of Skyview Drive-In, said his theater managed to survive the lean times because it remains a family attraction that has little competition locally.

“We have our own audience,” he said. “[They] have found us.”

Photos by Mike Snodderley

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