The Drive-Ins

1948–1988 in South Bend · the Tri-Way at Plymouth, Marshall County, 1953 to the present

The automobile's theatres ringed the city on its arterial roads, and South Bend had three. The first in the record is the South Bend Auto Theatre, on Route 2 at the west edge — its address given in 1950 as 4903 West Western Avenue at South Summit Drive, and in its later listing on Peppermint Road. It was operating by May 27, 1948, with The Red Stallion on the screen, capacity 650 cars under operator A. Ochs; the capacity was raised to 850 in 1950 and listed at 650 again by 1952, under G. Benner (the record also spells Brenner) and then Benner and S. B. Greiver jointly, until it closed in 1959.

The Moonlite Outdoor Theatre, 500 West Chippewa Avenue on the south side, opened July 8, 1951, with Danny Kaye in On the Riviera, a single screen owned by L. Cochovetry, capacity 600 cars. Loew's took over its operation in 1961 — a major studio chain running a South Bend drive-in is a measure of the form's standing in those years. It was twinned on June 4, 1976, and renamed the Chippewa Twin Drive-In; from 1984 it went over to adult films, and it closed on July 13, 1988, after an arson attack destroyed its concession stand. It was demolished, and the Showplace 16 multiplex was built on its site — the drive-in's ground becoming the multiplex's, the two eras of outdoor and indoor scale succeeding each other on one parcel.

The Western Drive-In, 4849 West Western Avenue, opened June 30, 1961, with a double feature — Glenn Ford in Cimarron and Jeffrey Hunter in Key Witness — and closed as a twin-screen house on October 25, 1981. With its closing, and the Chippewa's in 1988, South Bend's own drive-in era ended; no drive-in operates in the city today.

The region's survivor stands outside the county, and the line is stated plainly: the Tri-Way Drive-In at 4400 Michigan Road, Plymouth, in Marshall County, is Plymouth's theatre, carried here because it is the drive-in South Benders have used since their own closed. Its name was chosen by a member of the public in a naming contest in 1953 — the winner received a year's family pass — for its place on the old US 31 between US 6 and US 30. It opened June 4, 1953, as a single-screen house (a Tribune history feature of 2002 carried it loosely as "around since 1952"; the 1953 opening is the documented one and governs). It has grown to four screens, shows double features through the season at $10 adult admission in the current listings, and stands verified as operating in the autumn of 2026 — one of fewer than twenty drive-ins left in Indiana, and the working remainder of the form in this region.

Sources

1. Cinema Treasures, South Bend Auto Theatre — operating by May 27, 1948; the operators; capacities 650 and 850; closed 1959.
2. Cinema Treasures, Chippewa Drive-In — the Moonlite opening of July 8, 1951, and its feature; Loew's operation from 1961; the 1976 twinning; the adult-film years; the July 13, 1988 arson closing; the Showplace 16 on its site.
3. Cinema Treasures, Western Drive-In — the June 30, 1961 opening double feature; the October 25, 1981 closing as a twin.
4. Visit Indiana (Indiana Destination Development Corporation), drive-in listings, 2026 — the Tri-Way's naming in 1953 and its four screens.
5. Indianapolis Star and South Bend Tribune, drive-in surveys, June 2026 — the Tri-Way opened 1953, the naming contest and prize, present operation and prices.
6. South Bend Tribune, 2002 — the Tri-Way "around since 1952," carried as the loose earlier statement against the documented 1953 opening.