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Historic place

Chalk Hill Drive-In

4501 W Davis St, Dallas, TX

A 408-car drive-in that opened July 4, 1941, added live stage shows in 1943, and closed for the last time in 1973.

📅 1941–1973🏛️ TheaterDemolished
Open on the mapSlide back to 1941

The story

The Chalk Hill Drive-In opened on July 4, 1941, two weeks after the Northwest Drive-In, with The Invisible Woman as the first film. It sat on 12.5 acres with 204 in-ground speakers and room for 408 cars. A playground was added later. From 1943 it offered live stage performances before the films.

In 1954 it installed an 80-foot curved screen for CinemaScope, opening with King of the Khyber Rifles and The Robe. The tower was updated with a clown face and neon. In 1972 and 1973 it belonged to the Texas Southwest Drive-In Theatres circuit. It closed for the season in 1973 and never reopened. A commenter shared 1974 WFAA footage of the demolition. The listing records no later advertisements, bookings or reopening announcements after that last season.

What's There Now

The page does not say what occupies the site today.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Photographer Steve Fitch took 1973 photos that may be the theater's last images.
It and the Northwest Drive-In were run by the same operators.
A children's playground was added after opening.

Nearby history

Texas Theatre

231 W Jefferson Blvd · 6.5 km away
The Oak Cliff movie house where police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963, and which now shows repertory fi

Lake Cliff Park (amusement park)

300 E Colorado Blvd · 7.1 km away
Charles Mangold's 1906 amusement park billed itself as the Southwest's Greatest Playground; the city bought it in 1914.

Cliff Queen Theater

661 E Jefferson Blvd · 7.5 km away
An Oak Cliff picture house that gave free shows to the unemployed during the Depression and was torn down in 1958.

Burnett Field

1500 E Jefferson Blvd · 7.8 km away
A Dallas ballpark that began as Gardner Park, hosted early Cowboys practices, and lost pro baseball in 1964.

Dallas Sportatorium

1000 S Industrial Blvd · 8.1 km away
A wrestling arena that hosted a weekly country music show, burned in 1953, and was torn down in 2003.

Reunion Arena

777 Sports St · 8.5 km away
The arena where the Mavericks and Stars played for two decades, and where Reagan accepted the 1984 nomination.

Know something about Chalk Hill Drive-In? An old photo, a date, a memory of what stood here before?

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Sourceshttps://cinematreasures.org/theaters/11057/comments