San Pablo Auto Movie (San Pablo)

Address: 13224 San Pablo Avenue, Richmond CA 94805

Date Opened: July 29, 1953

Date Closed: September 16, 1964

Circuit: United California Theatres

Number of Screens: 1

Number of Car Spaces: 750 

Current Status: Demolished

Entrance to San Pablo Auto Movie on Riverside Avenue is shown in background. This photo appears on the Cinema Treasures website, as posted by "rockyroadz", courtesy of the San Pablo Historical Society.

The San Pablo Auto Movie was a very nice drive-in, quite an improvement over San Pablo's Rancho Drive-In and the El Cerrito Motor Movies at the time it opened. It's features included a big wide CinemaScope formatted screen and a very nice cafeteria style snack bar which included 100 seats for those people who didn't want to watch the movie in their cars or walk in customers. The San Pablo opened on July 29, 1953 with a dual projector 3-D presentation of Paramount's "Sangaree" and  a flat 2-D co-feature "Roar of the Crowd".

In 1954 and 1955 the San Pablo Auto Movie was promoting their giant wide screen in these two ads from the Richmond Independent. I don't know if their claim that they had "the brightest and largest screen in Northern California" was accurate but it was a very impressive drive-in screen. CinemaScope in particular looked very good here, far superior to the presentation at the other two local drive-ins.

Friday and Saturday nights brought bonus feature late shows to the San Pablo Auto Movie as well as other Richmond area drive-ins. At left on April 2, 1954 the extra feature, promoted in this ad even ahead of the regular show, was a  Realart Pictures reissue of Universal's mediocre 1946 horror film "She-Wolf of London". Some weekends, long holiday weekends in particular, brought brought dusk-to-dawn movie marathons with four or five features running all night. Free coffee and donuts were sometimes made available to those patrons still there for the final feature. The five feature movie marathon advertised at right played in August 1955.

More dusk to dawn shows at the San Pablo Auto Movie. These two programs played (left) the day before Memorial Day and (right) the day before 4th of July in 1956.

Buck night at the San Pablo Auto Movie January 18, 1957. Load up the car and bring the whole family for only $1.00 Two big features, a couple of cartoons, news and prevues, a cash drawing and reserved parking and a free lube job if you've got a Caddy. What a deal! In car heaters if you get cold too!

 

The San Pablo Auto Movie was supplementing mainstream films with adults only attractions in October and November of 1962. Nothing explicit could be shown at that time but fare like the above double feature programs,  the movie equivalent of what you would see in a then current issue in Playboy magazine, had become increasingly popular at drive-ins in the last couple of years.

It wasn't exactly a stellar closing attraction but the 1963 Brazilian exploitation film "Katu" was the last main feature to play at the San Pablo Auto Movie, opening on September 9, 1964. According to the Internet Movie Database "Katu"'s original title was "How I Lived With Eve" (above right poster) and was also known as "The French Girl and the Nudists". 

The Italian import "Rice Girl", presumably featuring a bit more bare female skin (the only reason foreign dramas ever played domestic drive-ins!) and Hammer Films' "Evil of Frankenstein" comprised the remainder of the San Pablo Auto Movie's final triple feature program. 

This San Pablo Auto Movie closed permanently after the evening showings on Wednesday September 16, 1964. It was soon demolished to make way for housing. That left the Hilltop and Rancho as the greater Richmond area's two remaining drive-in theaters.