Bel-Air Drive-In
Mitchell, Illinois1953-1987
Order Bel-Air Drive-In tees, long sleeve tees and hoodies. It opened at Christmas in 1953 on Route 66 and gave children toys on opening night. Its sign showed a pair of huge red bells behind the name and stayed up for more than 30 years after the last show, until July 2018. Browse the styles below, and the full Bel-Air history is further down. We are an American small business bringing back the signs and logos of places and teams that are long gone but remembered fondly.
4 products
Bel-Air Drive-In History
The Bel-Air Drive-In in Mitchell, Illinois, opened at Christmas in 1953 on Route 66, north of Granite City, with Ride, Vaquero and The Vanquished. Sources give December 24 or 25. Children got toys on opening night. It was built by the Komm theater interests of St. Louis, and Louis Jablonow later told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he had built it. It held about 500 cars at first, along with a seating area for walk-in customers.
It meant to run all winter. In January 1955 the Post-Dispatch called it the first drive-in in the area with in-car heaters, and the trade press reported 200 of them going in. There was also an air-conditioned building by the ramps. In November 1957 a Knights of Columbus council condemned the Bel-Air and two sister theaters over the films they showed and told its members to stay away. Nobody on record has explained the sign, a pair of huge red bells behind the name, though the bell plays on the sound of Bel-Air.
Mid-America Theatres of St. Louis ran it for years and added a second screen in May 1979, and capacity reached about 700 cars. BAC Theatres took over in 1982 and closed it in 1987. The ramps and buildings were gone by the mid-1990s, but the sign stayed up over Route 66 for more than 30 years after the last show, with the R missing from Air. It came down in July 2018 for a truck stop. It was cut into two halves, sold separately to one collector in Illinois and another in North Dakota.