Screen Towers: The Drive-In Theater in America

Captures the history, cultural impact, and visual beauty of America’s iconic drive-in movie theaters.

Beginning in 1933 and expanding greatly after World War II, mid-century America saw a boom in the construction of large outdoor screen towers on which a projected movie image could be viewed from a parked car. Actually, hundreds of parked cars. This was the era of the drive-in movie theater, which saw the marriage of the automobile and the Hollywood movie. At its peak during the 1950s and 1960s, more than 4,000 drive-in theaters dotted the American landscape, coast to coast.

Starting in 1971, Steve Fitch traveled throughout the United States photographing many of these drive-in theaters, concentrating on the often stunning neon and painted murals that decorated the street-facing (back) side of the tower that supported the white, rectangular screen. These dramatic murals often depicted scenes that related to the local history of the surrounding community, and they could be seen from many miles away. Working with black-and-white film, Fitch mostly photographed at dusk or at night, making striking images that captured the seductive beauty of these roadside monuments. 

In 1980, Fitch began working in color with a large-format 8” x 10” view camera, initially making pictures of the back (street) sides but then shifting his emphasis to the white screen itself and the inside spaces of the theater. This was a period of transition, when more and more drive-ins were being repurposed, abandoned, or even torn down. As Fitch shows, the golden era of the drive-in theater was nearing its end, even as some 285 drive-ins still operate in America, keeping alive, at least for some, the thrill of watching a movie outdoors under the stars, in the comfort of one’s car.  

Screen Towers is the first book in nearly three decades to portray the iconic drive-in movie theater in America. Anyone interested in the architecture, culture, and history of the drive-in theater will be smitten by Steve Fitch’s new book

Steve Fitch has been a photographer since the late 1960s and has taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Princeton University, and, most recently, the College of Santa Fe and Santa Fe University of Art and Design. He is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the last National Endowment for the Arts Survey Grant, and the Eliot Porter Fellowship. He is the author of Diesels and Dinosaurs: Photographs from the American Highway (Long Run Press, 1976), Gone: Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains, with essays by Merrill Gilfillan, Kathleen Howe, and Evelyn Schlatter (University of New Mexico Press, 2002), and Vanishing Vernacular: Western Landmarks, with an essay by Toby Jurovics (George F. Thompson Publishing, 2018). His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Yale University, among many others. His Website is stevefitch.com.

Katherine Ware is Curator of Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art who previously served as Curator of Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Assistant Curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, among other roles. She has organized exhibitions and written about the work of a range of historic and contemporary artists for more than thirty years, including Man Ray: 1890–1976 (Taschen, 2000), Elemental Landscapes: Photographs by Harry Callahan (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001), and Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2011).