What To Do: Wellfleet Drive-In

It’s not quite dark yet when the powerful beam lights up the 100- by 44-foot screen. Families camped out on beach chairs and blankets, couples snuggled up close in the front seats of cars, and kids still swinging and sliding on the playground all look up. A cheer sweeps across the expanse of vehicles, each parked with the front end resting on a slight incline.

 

It’s show time at the Wellfleet Drive-In.

 

Inside the bunker-like projector building of concrete block, Dave Mead peers out of a square opening, as a vintage Warner Bros. Sylvester and Tweety cartoon begins to roll. The film winds through the nearly half-century-old RCA Dyn-Arc projector as Mead scuttles over to the other projector and threads up the first reel of the evening’s first feature. A ringing bell signals that the first reel is almost over; Mead watches carefully and then hits a foot pedal, seamlessly switching to the second projector, something he’ll do more than a dozen times during the evening.

 

Rain, fog or clear skies, every evening from Memorial Day to Labor Day—and many weekends before and after, cars line up at the drive-in just over the Eastham-Wellfleet border, each filled with people of all ages seeking that most American of experiences: the drive-in theater show. It’s an experience that’s getting harder and harder to come by. According to the United Drive-in Theatre Owners Association, as of last summer there were only 407 operating drive-ins left in the country—four in Massachusetts. Wellfleet is the last remaining of the five that once existed on the Cape.

 

“Nostalgia has a lot to do with it,” says John Vincent Jr., president and board chairman of the company that owns the drive-in.

 

Mead, whose long career as a projectionist and technician includes working at several other Cape drive-ins, has been running the vintage projectors at Wellfleet since the early 1990s. He agrees with Vincent. He grew up in Eastham and has fond memories of going to shows at Wellfleet and other Cape drive-ins. He surmises that many of those in the audience had similar experiences, either on Cape or at other no-longer-existing outdoor theaters. “I just like the aura of the drive-in,” he says. “It’s definitely a nostalgia thing.”

 

Patron Dan Gallagher of Winthrop says he likes the drive-in because it is “frozen in time.  It’s a living piece of a bygone era.” He visits the drive-in each summer, and it almost doesn’t matter which movie is playing. “It’s the experience,” he says.

 

The Wellfleet Drive-in has changed little since it was built by John “Don” Jentz in 1957. Sure, you can now listen to the movie on your car’s FM stereo instead of through tinny window-mounted “mono” speakers (although for many, that’s part of the experience), and there are special yellow-lined parking spaces for SUVs, minivans and other oversized vehicles that weren’t even on the drawing board when the theater was designed. But the snack bar, the playground, the projectors and even the sign on Route 6 jump right out as relics of another era. Throw in two feature films and a cartoon, all for less than the price of a single movie at a multiplex, and you’ve got an experience treasured by both vacationers and locals.

 

Five Cape drive-ins—Dennis, Yarmouth, Hyannis, Falmouth and Wellfleet—operated through the 1970s. Most fell to economics, development pressure and a downward trend in movie attendance. When he began working at Wellfleet in the 1980s while still a student at Nauset High School, Vincent says, attendance was at a low point.

 

“It was very hard to get decent first-run movies for drive-ins in the late 1980s,” he says.  Distributors just weren’t interested in the market, which was plummeting from its heyday in the late 1950s, when there were more than 4,000 drive-ins in America.

 

Wellfleet persevered, however, and unlike many drive-ins, never altered its programming to compete with multiplexes, sticking with first- and second-run features when other drive-ins were showing grade-Z horror or adult flicks in the 1970s. Original owner Jentz was strict about keeping things family oriented, Vincent says, and that philosophy has changed little. “We probably do more families than most drive-ins,” he notes, mainly because that’s what works on the Cape in the summer. He occasionally gets requests to show B-movies, but the one time that was tried—a re-release of “Grease” (once touted as the ideal drive-in movie), it spelled disaster.

 

“It was one of the worst weekends of the summer,” Vincent recalls. “No, people want to see first-run, current movies.” Things got better in the mid-1990s, he says, when distributors began making more first-run movies available to drive-ins.

 

Wellfleet remains the only place on the Cape where you can still see a double feature, not to mention the classic 1950s snack bar promo featuring parading food and the hot dog doing a perfect flip into an open bun (displayed prominently in “Grease,” by the way). “The dancing hot dog always garners laughter from the field,” Vincent says, chuckling.

 

A bit of trivia: new copies of the vintage snack bar, coming attractions and “five minutes to show time” trailers shown in Wellfleet are still being made by Filmack Studios, which has been in business since 1919. “They only last a couple of years before they have to be replaced,” Vincent says of the oft-run shorts.

 

Mead brought back the cartoons in the 1990s and sometimes dips into his own film collection for the occasional vintage treat. When the remake of “The Odd Couple” played at the drive-in, for instance, he spliced in a trailer for the original movie starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. “The crowd liked that,” he says.

 

And the crowd is a big part of the attraction of the drive-in. The squeal of children at the playground can be heard right up until the cartoon rolls, and sometimes afterwards. Cristen Nichols, who was at the drive-in recently with a large group of friends, remembers while growing up in Chatham the delight of being able to play outside in her pajamas when she went to the drive-in with her family. “You had your pillows and blankets in the back of the car, because, of course, you’d never make it through the movies,” she recalls. 

 

The drive-in still has that magic feel for Nichols, now a Brewster resident. “We try to go back at least once a summer,” she says.

 

The movies are still shown on the same two huge RCA Dyn-Arc projectors installed when the drive-in was built. The projectors are workhorses: Water-cooled oil guzzlers meticulously maintained by Mead, they’re so well built they’re considered the industry standard. “They’re bullet-proof,” Mead says, “and even if you make a mistake, they’re forgiving.”

 

The 8,000-watt carbon rods that provide the projection beam must be changed every few reels. They generate a lot of heat; it isn’t unusual for the temperature to get close to 100 degrees inside the projection building. To one side of the projectors are shelves holding the week’s films, each reel lined up in order. An FM transmitter and Dolby processor sit between the projectors to convert the film’s soundtrack so patrons can pick it up on their car stereos. The drive-in warns people to use the accessory key position to power the stereo rather than the “on” position, which will drain the battery. “We still do two or three jumps a night,” Vincent says.

 

People also occasionally drive off with the window-mounted speakers still attached, Mead adds. As the facility’s all-around technician, he simply adds a new cable and places the speaker back in its cradle. A stock of 500 or so picked up from a closed drive-in ensures a steady supply.

 

Technologically, however, the theater’s 49-year-old projectors are about to become obsolete. On the horizon is the conversion of the projection system from film to digital, an industry-wide switch that’s about four to six years away. Mead isn’t looking forward to the change. He says he enjoys handling the film and feels the digital picture is “just too perfect.” But the digital system will eliminate the need for costly prints—and repairing them when the film breaks.

 

Development pressures and competition from multiplexes make running a drive-in an iffy economic proposition these days. “It’s tough unless you have other uses for the property,” notes Vincent. “Even if we sell out all summer, it’s difficult financially.” A full house is 710 vehicles. Maintenance is expensive, and personnel costs are high. It takes a crew of about 75, including ticket-sellers, snack bar personnel and field workers, to run the drive-in. A popular flea market, held on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays in July and August and weekends throughout the rest of the year (weather permitting), helps generate revenue to support the drive-in. In 1986, a four-screen indoor theater opened on the property.

 

Vincent acknowledges he’s been approached by developers, but he has no interest in doing anything else with the 26-acre property. “We’re quite happy running it like it is,” he says. “As long as they continue to make good movies, and people still want to watch them, we’ll be here.”