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Mid-twentieth century · South Bend, Indiana
The screens are fixed; their dates are not. Cinema Treasures, the theatre-history census, lists three closed drive-ins for South Bend, and this article is their census entry: the Western Drive-In, two screens; the Chippewa Drive-In, two screens; and the South Bend Auto Theatre, one screen. The 1968 Motion Picture Yearbook's national drive-in listing carries "So. Bend" with the Western and the Chippewa among its screens, which fixes both as operating in 1968. A fourth name stands at lower grade: Indianapolis Monthly's 2013 survey of Indiana drive-ins names "the Comet in South Bend" among the state's 1950s screens. No opening or closing date for any South Bend drive-in was fixed by a citable source, and the article does not borrow dates from the better-documented screens of other Indiana towns. The dates are the leg's first open item.
Where the ritual survives. The drive-in was the era's family machine: children in pajamas in the back seat, the playground under the screen, the speaker on the window post. In St. Joseph County it survives only as memory, and South Bend families who still want it drive out of the county to the screens the Tribune's drive-in coverage names as the region's survivors: the Tri-Way Drive-In at Plymouth and the Melody Drive-In at Knox, open since 1949, both outside the county line and printed here only as the destinations, not as South Bend history. One warning the research itself earned: the "Moonlite" drive-in that search returns attach to this name belongs to Woodlawn, Virginia. It is not a South Bend screen, and nothing of it is printed here.
Sources
- Cinema Treasures, South Bend, Indiana listings: Western Drive-In (2 screens, closed); Chippewa Drive-In (2 screens, closed); South Bend Auto Theatre (1 screen, closed).
- Motion Picture Almanac / Yearbook 1968, drive-in census (archive.org): "So. Bend" listing carrying the Western and Chippewa.
- Indianapolis Monthly, June 2013, Indiana drive-in survey: "the Comet in South Bend" named among 1950s Indiana drive-ins.
- South Bend Tribune, regional drive-in coverage: Tri-Way Drive-In, Plymouth, and Melody Drive-In, Knox (1949), named as the surviving near-county screens.