Page 12 - CinemaRecord #11R.pdf

61. Cinema Under The Stars By David Kilderry

Friday night in the corporate box, beers and snacks on hand, luxury seating and fifteen friends and colleagues.
This is where I found myself last week. Guess what it wasn't the football or the basketball, it was the drive-in.

Rodney Chiodo, manager at Coburg, arranged for a converted tour bus with 15 seats, facing sideways and a
bar, to drive up on the ramp for our screening of "Lost World". This may well be used for groups or party
bookings in future. One of the highlights of the evening was intermission! Ken Spicers homemade slides were
fantastic and promoted all features that the Village Triple drive-in offers. Gombos, marathons, early bird ses-
sions, you name it, Ken had a slide for it all projected on Victoria's biggest screen. His voice-overs, done live
at every interval of the snacks available, made you want to run to the cafeteria. This is what I call showmanship
and many other locations could learn from this.

Coburg Drive-In has had an interesting history. It opened on 26 November 1965 as a single screen drive-in with
a capacity of 857 cars. The premiere attractions were Alfred Hitchcock's "Marnie" plus "McHale's Navy" the
movie spin off from the TV show. Sillman and Sharp were the directors and it was part of the Big 6 chain of
drive-ins. Also in this group at the time were Olympic Twin (Northland), Toorak, Sandringham, Frankston and
Sunset Maribyrnong.

Aerial View in the late 1960's

In 1967 Hoyts took over as owners when they acquired Coburg and Maribyrnong Sunset in a buy-out. The jewel
of this duo was undoubtedly Maribyrnong. During the 60's and 70's the site traded quite well. Blockbusters such
as "The Great Race" regularly filled the ramps. Coburg always managed to hold its own even though it was
within 15 minutes drive from four other drive-ins.

The purchase of Coburg, ultimately forced the closure of Hoyts Broadmeadows Drive-in. It was the first Drive-
In in Melbourne to close when it shut its gates for the last time in 1972. Hoyts had opened the last suburban
Drive-In at Altona in 1971.