While surfing through YouTube, I found this short video of the remnants of the long-closed Holiday Drive-In theater in Springfield, Missouri.
The video is notable because it contains drone footage of what’s on the theater grounds at 2829 E. Kearney St. Even almost 15 years after it was closed, aerial footage still clearly shows it was a drive-in.
According to Cinema Treasures:
The Holiday Drive-In opened August 13, 1970. It was a rather large drive-in for Springfield with a car capacity of 529. It was a single screen ozoner. The Holiday Drive-In operated well into the late-1990’s. Originally sound was by traditional pole speakers but later by FM radio. The Holiday Drive-In was demolished in March of 2005.
This old newspaper ad shows the first movie screened at the drive-in was the musical “Paint Your Wagon” starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood.
The Holiday Drive-In also briefly became a music venue during the late 1990s, as this website attests. Alternative-rock acts that performed there during the Edgefest festival included Local H, Seven Mary Three, Stabbing Westward, The Urge and Possom Dixon.
The Holiday Drive-In’s closing matches the general decline of Kearney Street in Springfield. In the last year or two, the city has come up with initiatives in an effort to revitalize that corridor, including a “blight” designation so it can offer tax-abatement incentives to developers.
Kearney Street was part of the Bypass 66 alignment from the 1936 to 1954 and for many years was known as a car-cruising Mecca.
In the long-term, Springfield hopes to draw a clothing retailer such as T.J. Maxx, a food-truck court, a microbrewery, restaurants, a miniature golf course and a Route 66-themed structure or park along Kearney. Reviving the Holiday Drive-In is not on the list.
(Image of the Holiday Drive-In theater sign in 2015 in Springfield, Missouri, by Bill Eichelberger via Flickr)