DRIVE-IN IS COUNTRY’S LAST SHOWING 35 MM FILMS EVERY WEEKEND
As cars roll into the Mahoning Drive-In Theater and wait for the sun to go down, Jeff Mattox loads the first reel of 35 mm film onto a Simplex E7 projector.
“Years ago, this was the way it was done,” Mattox said, as he pointed out the different parts of the 70-year-old twin projectors that still run side-by-side in the projection room.
Since the movie industry started transitioning to digital cinema technology in 2012, The Mahoning, a drive-in that exclusively shows 35 mm film, is the last of its kind.
The movies shown on any given weekend might be relatively new (this night’s opening feature was 1992’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”). But patrons still get a taste of what it was like when the theater opened outside of Lehighton in April 1949 and moviegoers sang along to the Mahoning’s premier feature, the musical “April Showers.” “Carbon County’s big, modern drive-in theater has just been completed in the Mahoning Valley,” said an April 18, 1949, article in The Morning Call.
It advertised individual speakers for each auto “that will bring sound directly into the car,” and a switch on the speaker that could be used to summon a waitress from the snack bar.
The speakers mounted on individual poles were gone by the time Mattox started working at the theater in 2001. Now moviegoers tune in with their radios.
Mattox has worked as the theater’s film
