Ozoners

As spring's gaudy carpet rolled north last week, the drive-in theaters were opening almost as fast as the daffodils. This week, New York City will get its first "ozoner": a 600-car, $300,000 affair on Staten Island. Six were open in Dayton, Ohio alone, and six would be running in St. Louis by summer. According to Boxoffice, more than 200 new drive-ins this year would swell the U.S. total--a mere 100-odd when war ended--to 546 built & building.

The boom had a firm foundation: by showing better pictures than before and showing them sooner (though few get first runs), and by keeping prices down (average: 55-c- for adults), they were giving many a regular movie house a run for its money. Getting a consistent share of better films is still a drive-in problem. But distributors cannot ignore the drive-in customer capacity: now almost one-twelfth of the national "indoor" seating.

The drive-ins offer inducements to everyone in the family. For infants, there are bottle-warming services; for young children, playgrounds full of swings and teeters; for older children, necking-room free of cops & robbers; for mother & father, an evening out without the expense of a baby sitter or the trouble of parking; for the aged, infirm or overweight, the chance to see a movie in comfort. For everyone, there are snack bars (with car service), rest rooms, fresh air and, in season, mosquitoes. And proprietors are still innovating: last week, one Tennessee drive-in added a while-you-wait laundry service.

Since the war, drive-ins have also multiplied their technical refinements. The sound, which in the first movie parks issued sometimes from staggered loudspeakers, sometimes from underground grilles, is now brought into the family car over small portable speakers. This device, with the help of a good windshield wiper, brings the show through clearly even during pelting rainstorms (though fog is still a bugbear); and some northern drive-in managers are dreaming that a new combination heater-speaker will enable them to keep going all winter.

The latest convenience is an artificial "moon," of amber and green shaded lights, that perches on a tall pole in the rear of the parking area, enabling patrons to grope their way to comfort stations and move their cars about without smashing fenders.

One problem is still baffling. No matter how massive the screen (one of the biggest: 65 by 50 ft.), or how super-powerful the water-cooled projection equipment, a good many people have to sit almost a thousand feet from the screen, and have trouble seeing details. The ozoners had not yet found a way around that.

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