Rancho Drive-In Theatre (San Pablo)

Address: 1220 Connecticut Avenue, San Pablo CA

Date Opened: August 3, 1950

Date Closed: Late November 1978

Circuit: Syufy Enterprises

Number of Screens: 1

Number of Car Spaces: 985

Current Status: Demolished

A neon sign and a marquee on San Pablo Avenue point the way to San Pablo's fondly remembered Rancho Drive-In Theatre in 1954. Photo from the Jack Tillmany Collection, used with permission.

Photo Credit: Syufy Enterprises Collection

Photo Credit: Syufy Enterprises Collection. 1952 opening date on photo is wrong here, ad in Richmond Independent (below) indicates Rancho opened on August 3, 1950.

Photo Credit: Syufy Enterprises Collection

The Rancho Drive-In opened on August 3, 1950 with a double bill from Twentieth Century Fox, "The Gunfighter" and "The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend. The Rancho was the first drive-in in the Richmond/San Pablo area although the El Cerrito Motor Movies which had opened in 1948 was within easy driving distance. The Rancho was very popular in the early years of it's existence, somewhat less popular after the more modern San Pablo Auto Movies and later Hilltop Drive-In opened nearby.

"Buck Night" at the Rancho Drive-In in August 1951. A whole family or car full of teenagers admitted for only a dollar, quite a bargain even back then! Buck nights were a common promotion at most drive-ins in the 1950's, usually on only one or two nights of the week.

I'm not sure I'd want to go see a hypnotist's show in a drive-in movie theater (or anywhere else for that matter!) but both indoor and outdoor movie theaters were willing to try anything to get people away from their newly acquired television sets in July of 1951. In addition to the live show you got a screen program of the feature "Dear Brat", a Three Stooges comedy and a cartoon. All for $1 a carload on opening night! What a deal!

July 1952 ads from the Richmond Independent for the Rancho Drive-In. At the time the Rancho didn't have access to the first run product that downtown Richmond indoor theaters did and played product generally a month or two old. Before the drive-in exploitation era westerns, war films, adventure films, science fiction/horror films and comedies were the main staple of the drive-ins. Technicolor was an added asset. Dramas and musicals generally didn't do all that well.  I remember the San Pablo Auto Movie showing the 1957 Joel McCrae western "The Oklahoman" and emphasizing in the newspaper ad that "this is an action western, NOT the musical!" referring of course to the not so drive-in friendly Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma!".

Above: More typical drive in fare from (left) 1953 and 1954. The 3-D promoted in "Side Streets of Hollywood" is not the preferred dual projector Polaroid kind you could see at the downtown Fox and UA and even at the nearby San Pablo Auto Movies but the inferior anaglyphic format which was projected with one projector and viewed through red and green glasses, just like the ones used to view the 3-D comic books that were popular at the time.  Even more of a letdown is that a little research shows that "Side Streets of Hollywood" was really just a flat 2-D feature from 1952 called "A Virgin in Hollywood" with only12 minutes of 3-D burlesque inserted into it. Teenage boys in 1953 would have loved to see that three unit exploitation show at the Rancho though. Some even hiked down to the theatre to see if they could take a peek at the screen from somewhere outside or even better yet sneak in through the exit and stand by a speaker pole and watch the show and hope they wouldn't be caught. In the end they   most likely would have been very disappointed that they went through so much trouble to see so little bare skin.

Finding the newspaper ad at left above for "Creature from the Black Lagoon" indicating it played Richmond first  run and in flat 2-D at the Rancho starting April 8, 1954 surprised me. I've always wondered why I didn't see "Creature" in 3-D during it's initial release and quite possibly the reason was that it didn't play any theater in Richmond in 3-D. That's surprising because Universal's first 3-D film "It Came From Outer Space" played the UA to good business and you would suspect that "Creature" would follow and do the same. I didn't get the chance to see "Creature" until it played the Park in El Sobrante several months after the Rancho engagement and there too it was unfortunately presented flat. Twenty years later I finally got the opportunity to see the dual projector 3-D version in a rare revival at San Francisco's Avenue Theatre.                            

It's unfortunate that the dual projector 3-D equipped San Pablo Auto Movie, a short distance away, wasn't able to score "Creature" in 3-D. Ironically Richmond did get the sequel "Revenge of the Creature" in 3-D (at the downtown UA) while it was shown only flat in many larger cities. I believe that feature was the last we saw of dual projection 3-D in Richmond town.

Ads for dusk to dawn shows at the Rancho were always intriguing, in particular what little gems or turkeys Syufy would add to their regular double feature program to make up the five to six feature all night movie marathons. For this program on July 30, 1954 they dug way down to the bottom of the barrel for the whole damn show! "Gunfighters" from Columbia, the only film in color (and inferior Cinecolor at that!) was the newest of the lot, from 1947. The rest of the program consisted of reissues dating back to 1936, no doubt secured at very low flat rental rates from Poverty Row distributors Astor and Realart Pictures or whoever handled those properties out of San Francisco. Movie theaters were desperately trying to compete with TV at the time (3-D and CinemaScope had just been introduced in the previous year) but I  doubt that this was the sort of thing that would drag folks away from the little box. I suspect very patrons were still there for the free coffee and donuts at the end of the program, probably around 5:00 AM. I don't think I would have made it through "Great Guy" a low budget and sub par James Cagney flick from 1936.

This deceivingly advertised double feature played the Rancho Drive-In in December of 1956. According to the Internet Movie Database "The Flaming Teenage" was really a 1945 B film entitled "Twice Convicted" with some additional footage added in 1956 to make it appear to be a contemporary juvenile delinquent dope scare film. "These Wilder Years" was in reality a undistinguished MGM soap opera but now emphasizing the unwed and pregnant teenage girl theme to make it look more sexy in this Rancho ad. I suspect audiences were greatly disappointed by this snooze-fest but at least there was a pretty good James Stewart western in Technicolor as a reward for staying awake until the end of the main program.

More ads from the Richmond Independent, these from 1957, illustrating the type of films that did best in the drive-ins, at least so in the 1950's and 1960's.

A pre-4th of July dusk to dawn show at the Rancho, July 3, 1956. Features #1 and #2 were the regular program, both recent releases, while #3, #4 and #5 were bottom of the barrel grind house fare, all between 3 and 6 years old, whose only advantage was that they could be had for a very cheap flat rental rate. 

Another dusk to dawn movie marathon at the Rancho, this time on 4th of July weekend 1961 and this time featuring all major studio releases, although the final two were from 1957 and 1958. The final feature on Saturday night "The Pride and the Passion" began at 3:28 AM and ran 132 minutes which means you would have got out at 5:40 AM if you stayed for all four features. The show probably started with a double cartoon at 8:50 PM,  which was about as early as you could start with near peak daylight savings time that time of year. Almost nine hours of continuous entertainment (and that doesn't include what was going on in some of the back seats!) for the price of a single admission ticket! Those were the days...or nights at the drive-in!

A double dose of exploitation schlock played the Rancho in October 1962. The main feature was the infamous low budget sex education film "Mom and Dad", which deals with an unwed mother and concludes with a graphic childbirth and VD scare segment. Produced by "America's fearless showman" Kroger Babb, this little gem had been floating around since 1945 and reportedly would make over one hundred million dollars before it was all over. In many indoor theaters "Mom and Dad" was shown to segregated male and female audiences. There was a built in break in the film where a gentleman named "Elliot Forbes" (there were several of them simultaneously working the circuit!) gave a short lecture and then try to sell a sex education booklet, one version for men and the other for women. Quite possibly "Elliot" was even here in person at the Rancho in 1962 to give his little lecture and hawk his booklet. "Mom and Dad" continued to play theaters and drive-ins through the 1960's and beyond and  in 2005  and was added to the National Film Registry, to be preserved by the United States Library of Congress forever! According to the Internet Movie Database the Rancho's co-feature "The Narcotic Story" was originally made as a police training film and subsequently released to theaters in 1958. 

In January of 1965 with only the downtown Fox, El Sobrante's Park and the Hilltop Drive-In left as competition in the Richmond area the Rancho could score popular first run product like "Goldfinger" and continue to do very good business. 

By the 1970's the rowdy behavior of some patrons and the alleged illicit activities going on at the Rancho apparently became deemed unacceptable by San Pablo city administrators. Boxoffice Magazine reported in 1973 that the city council had asked the courts to have the Rancho closed as a public nuisance. The Rancho kept running films for five more years though, finally closing it's gates in late November 1978. The Rancho's last newspaper ad (above) dated November 24 shows "Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride" and "Dark Places", two minor British horror films from 1973 with Christopher Lee as the Rancho's final double feature program. The Rancho was soon thereafter demolished and housing replaced the area where the drive-in theater formerly stood.