Camping Out With Mickey, Donald, Pluto ...

What Say You Disney Experts?

Time Takes Toll on the Port Outdoor's Marquee

Here's one for Disney detectives: What, When, How, and Why was Drive-In Frivolities? Such a thing would have gone unknown to me if not for this ad turning up. I'd place the date around 1953-54, time enough for The Quiet Man to complete first-runs and make its way to outdoor screens (in some areas, of course, drive-ins were The Quiet Man's first-run). Anyway, Drive-In Frivolities is obviously something Disney put together in recognition of huge gains made by ozoners as exhibition sites. They were headed for a peak and sprung like weeds in even smallest communities. Certainly it was cheaper throwing up a screen and booth than to lay brick or retrofit a storefront. Folks with a roadside cow pasture could go into show business overnight. Drive-In Frivolities wasn't Mom and Pop's idea of a cartoon filler. This ad art as Disney supplied came from a pressbook or at the least a sheet or slick, so questions: How long was a typical Drive-In Frivolities program? Was it made up of random cartoons from the RKO exchange? And most importantly, did Disney do special wraparounds of original content for Drive-In Frivolities? This may warrant archival peer into vaults for footage unknown or forgotten over a last sixty years.