Although drive-in movie theaters had their beginnings in the 1930s, it was in the post-World War II era when they truly flourished. Suburban and rural drive-in theaters were a natural extension of the car-crazy culture that fueled the 1950s. There were obvious and not so obvious reasons for the popularity of the drive-ins. As more and more people moved out of cities and small towns into the suburbs, using their cars to commute to and from work and shopping, theater goers were faced with longer drives to see a show and fewer parking spaces once they arrived in town. But at the drive-in, your seats were in your car--your parking space became the theater. Drive-ins were also located on the outskirts of towns where the city lights would not interfere with the projected image on the screen and where, coincidentally, the traffic was lighter than downtown.

A less obvious advantage of the drive-ins was concessions. At many movie theaters in traditional buildings--called "hard tops" in the business to distinguish them from drive-ins--drinking and eating would have been done outside of the seating space for the film. The Appalachian Theatre in Boone, for example, had a soda shop outside of the theater entrance and patrons were encouraged to consume food and drink in the shop itself before or after the film. At the drive-in, you could eat all you wanted in the comfort of your own car. In addition, with individual speakers hanging inside your car window, sound was better than at many older theaters. You could also control the volume of your individual speaker and, presumably, the talking and noise of those in the car with you. In drive-ins in colder climes, they even had individual hanging heaters similar in style to the speakers.

Popular culture tends to look back upon the golden age of the drive-ins in the 1950s and 1960s as somewhat seedy places catering to the amorous pursuits of teenagers. But in the early days it was clear that the original intention of the drive-in owners was for family style entertainment: mom, dad, and the baby-boom children. In most drive-ins, children were admitted free or the admission charge was simply per car. Those with larger families were a prime target, drawing the family away from television with the promises of larger screens with color, not black-and-white, images as well as comfortable seats (varying with the age of your car, of course), and plenty of food. It was dinner and a movie at the same time, at economical prices. On the downside, if you were one of the children stuck in the backseat (as I was), it wasn't much of a view, even in the much larger and more upright automobiles of the era. And all of that eating and ordering food interfered with the film; by the time everyone figured out who had which burger and what happened to their fries and drink, the movie could be half way over. Most of the time, the films catered to a younger audience with light-hearted themes--Elvis movies were a big draw, for example--so perhaps rapt attention to the film was not necessary.

Watauga County's first and only drive-in movie theater was the Sky-Vu, variously spelled "SkyVu," "Sky Vu" and even "Sky View." It opened in May 1950, not coincidentally just as the Appalachian Theatre (1938-2007) was being reopened following the disastrous January fire, and operated until 1967. It was located two miles south of Boone, on what was then the Blowing Rock Road (Highway 321/221S):

When the Blowing Rock Road (321/221) was widened and straightened in the 1950s, the location of the drive-in was cut off and the address changed to Meadowview Drive. The property is now occupied by the Bavarian Village Apartments. No remains of the Sky-Vu are known to exist.

Beginnings: 1950

Art Hamby, Jr. (1918-1972) and John W. Hodges, Jr. opened the Sky-Vu in May of 1950. Son of Art Hamby, Sr. (1889–1945), who co-partnered with Ralph Winkler at both the Pastime and Appalachian Theatres in Boone, the younger Hamby had grown up in the film exhibition business. An initial notice in the Watauga Democrat, just a couple of weeks after the infamous "popcorn fire" at the Appalachian Theatre, indicated that Hamby Jr. and Hodges, Jr. were planning a new drive-in where "the very latest equipment is to be installed, including the Simplex X-L projector, one of the first such installations in the State" (Watauga Democrat 2/9/1950, p. 1). It was to accommodate 250 cars and April 1st was given as the opening date. The actual opening date wound up being 12 May 1950, with an initial show of films that arrived too late to be advertised in the paper. The earliest advertisement is presented here (Watauga Democrat 5/18/1950, p. 7):

The pattern established for the Sky-Vu in its first year of existence was carried on with few interruptions for the next 17 years: opening for weekly shows, seven nights a week, in the spring, followed by a winter season opening only on Saturday and Sunday nights. Because the theater was outside of the town limits of Boone, municipal blue laws forbidding the showing of movies on Sundays did not apply--another advantage of drive-in theaters over hard tops. Spring openings come as early as 31 March in 1951 and as late as 22 June in 1966. The weekend-only season begins typically in late October or November, depending on the weather. The Sky-Vu missed four weekends in a row during the infamous Blizzard of 1960.

As at all outdoor drive-ins, the movies were timed for just after sunset, when it was dark enough to see the projected image on the large screen. Lacking the ability to show afternoon matinees, drive-ins frequently had late shows. In the winter months, shows could begin quite a bit earlier, but the cold weather meant fewer customers and typically the showings were restricted to weekends. Some drive-ins simply closed for the winter and waited for spring, but the Sky-Vu kept to its schedule of seven days a week in season and weekends only during the colder months.

Very few of the Sky-Vu ads mention the exact prices for seeing a show, although the adage "children free anytime" is repeated frequently. Ads in 1951 give a price of 40 cents per adult, except on family night (usually Wednesdays) when it was a flat fee of one dollar per car. Compared to the prices at local hard-top theaters--the Appalachian and Pastime in Boone and the Yonahlossee in Blowing Rock--an adult paid a bit more at the drive-in at 40 cents a piece: at the theaters in town it ranged between 20 and 35 cents. The advantage came when you took children to the show--it would cost 9 cents at all of the local theaters per child, while at the drive-in they were admitted free. No written notice of just where the divide between children and adults took place, but obviously those old enough to drive a vehicle would have to be considered an adult. And unlike the Appalachian in town, there would have been no way for parents to leave their children at a drive-in while they shopped, so perhaps the 9 cent ticket could be rationalized as baby sitting. The prices at the Sky-Vu surely increased by the 1960s, but the ads from this period do not mention anything other than the films being shown . . .

The Films

Running far fewer films per week than the average hard top, drive-ins could focus on films that were slightly older but in many cases that had proven popularity. Judging from the number of days after the national release date that a film appeared, the Sky-Vu averaged 541 days post national release, more than double that of the Appalachian in Boone, which averaged 219 during the same period.

The major genres of films shown at the two theaters was almost identical:

These graphs show only genres with 10% or more of the overall total; there are quite a few genres with single-digit percentage totals not represented here. For example, although the stereotype today is that science-fiction and horror shows dominated the drive-in screens, these genres only occupied about 2% of the Sky-Vu's total advertised film listings, while they are 4% of that of the Appalachian Theatre's during the same 1950-1967 period. This might, in part, be due to the fact that the Sky-Vu closed when it did in 1967, before the era when drive-ins were moving towards more controversial fare. Nonetheless, the Sky-Vu appears to have remained a relatively conservative drive-in for the period, catering to a family audience and avoiding the sensational and shocking ploys of other similar theaters.

Teenagers and Drive-Ins:

While Hamby and Hodges may have aimed at getting the parents and the entire family out to the drive-in, young people did find the drive-in an ideal spot for a date. Cove Creek High School student Herndon Mast, writing a column for the local paper, noted that the Appalachian Theatre was as "modern as any theater anywhere" but that "some people say you can see too well in it." He added, somewhat furtively: "But then we also have a drive-in." (Watauga Democrat 4/5/1951, p. 4)

More surprising than teenagers seeking darkness and lax adult supervision are the incidents of thievery at drive-in movie theaters in the area. Most of these break-ins happened after closing in the early morning hours, when the relative isolation of the drive-ins made them a target of petty larceny. "Teen-aged boys" took a small amount of money from the Sky-Vu in the early morning hours of September 1955 (Watauga Democrat 9/15/1955, p. 1). The boys were arrested and charged and no further incidents are known through the history of the drive-in. In Caldwell County, the Carolina Drive-In near Valmead had a series of incidents from 1956 to 1958, at first petty larceny involving candy and cigarettes, but ending in a more serious crime when the cashier's safe was carried away, along with a large quantity of food (Lenoir News Topic 10/7/1958, p. 1). The Norris Drive-In in the same county was broken into in 1959 (Lenoir News Topic 6/30/1959, pp. 1, 5).

It is easy to see that it was a popular place for dates and just hanging out, but only by the late 1960s had the competition of color television led many drive-ins to book more adult-oriented films, often leading to troubles in the neighboring communities that could easily see (but not hear) the large screen from nearby highways. Drive-ins began running "all night" programs--usually just lasting until early morning--and not infrequently showed mainly horror films and even pornographic films. The atmosphere of family fun from the early days had long been abandoned.

It is interesting to note that the Sky-Vu was closed in 1967, just one year before the motion picture rating system was introduced. The exact cause of the drive-in's closing is not mentioned in the papers or trade journals of the time, but relatively few controversial films are advertised at the Sky-Vu during the period before its closing. The closing of the Sky-Vu left Boone with only one theater for the next four years, ending in 1971 when the Flick Theater, an indoor venue, was opened in Boone. No other drive-ins are known to have existed in Watauga County, although there were a number within driving distance . . .

Other Drive-Ins in the Area

The earliest drive-in movie theater near Watauga County was the State Line Drive-In in Elizabethton, Tennessee, which opened in 1947 and still operates in season today. There was also the North Wilkesboro Drive-In Theatre on Highway 18 north about five miles from town that opened in the same year. In March 1948, Drum's Drive-In, located in Joyceton between Lenoir and Hudson in Caldwell County, was opened. Ashe County got its first drive-in theater in April 1949 with the West Jefferson Drive-In. By the early 1950s, Caldwell County south of Watauga had four drive-ins, including Drum's, the Lenoir Drive-In near Whitnel (opened 1949), the Skylite (1949), and the Carolina (1950). Even Alleghany County had a Drive-In theater: the Twin Oaks which operated in the mid 1950s. The initial capital for a drive-in was relatively small, but the seven-day-a-week pace was grueling, as was the maintenance on equipment. Many of these drive-ins underwent several changes of owners and names through the years. And most, like the Sky-Vu, were not able to outlast the 1960s . . .

No Known Photos . . .

To this point, I have been unable to locate any good photos of the Sky-Vu Drive-In. There is an aerial shot of the south of town by Palmer Blair in the Digital Watauga collection, which shows the drive-in at a distance: https://digitalwatauga.org/items/show/6036 Zooming in on this photo shows the arc-like pattern of the parking lot and the screen with its back towards the roadway, but few details can be seen. A bit more detail can be seen in another aerial photo from the same site: https://digitalwatauga.org/items/show/1370. This image shows eight rows of cars, as well as the screen and projection booth (thanks to John Doherty of ASU for calling this photo to my attention).

If anyone reading this page has photos of the Sky-Vu please contact me (boyegr@appstate.edu). Any type of photo on the ground showing cars in the lot, the screen, the concession stand, the signs on the roadway, etc. would greatly enhance our knowledge of this venue.

Afterword

While referred to as the Sky-Vu in all of the known ads for the drive-in, there is at least one reference referring to the theater as the Greenway Drive-In. This may be merely a way of referring to the generally location of the venue rather than as an advertised title and comes from the obituary of Art Hamby Jr., who died suddently at only 54 in 1972:

Arthur Hamby Funeral Held On Wednesday

Arthur E. Hamby, Jr., of 300 Cherry Drive, was stricken at his home Monday and was dead on arrival at Watauga Hospital. . . . Prominently identified in the business community, Mr. Hamby had operated Greenway Drive-in Theatre and was one of the founders of Watauga Food & Milling Co. He was the manager of Daisy Originals, outlet for locally-made wood novelties. . . . (Watauga Democrat 3/2/1972, p. 2)

Note that this was several years after the theater had closed. Whether or not Hamby Jr. had planned to reopen the drive-in at some point is unknown, but after his death, the lot was sold to a company that erected the Bavarian Village apartments (Watauga Democrat 3/5/1973, p. 3). None of the earliest notices for the complex make any mention of the fact that a drive-in theater had stood on the same spot for nearly two decades.

Dr. Gary R. Boye

Music Librarian and Professor

Appalachian State University

boyegr@appstate.edu

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