Moonlite Drive-In
Santa Clara, California1949-1972
Shop Moonlite Drive-In tees, long sleeve tees and hoodies. Golden State Theatres opened it on El Camino Real on October 28, 1949, as Moonlite Movies, with James Cagney in White Heat. By the mid-1950s its fan-shaped sign carried a crescent moon and two stars, and the shopping center next door still carries the name. Browse the styles below, and the full Moonlite 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.
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Moonlite Drive-In History
The Moonlite Drive-In in Santa Clara, California, opened on October 28, 1949, as Moonlite Movies, with James Cagney in White Heat and Bill Elliott in The Last Bandit. It stood on El Camino Real at Kiely Boulevard, with the entrance on Kiely, and was owned by Golden State Theatres. An opening ad billed it as the world's finest drive-in.
Its answer to the Bay Area's winter was in the trade press before it opened. Showmen's Trade Review reported in October 1949 that it would have a heater for each car, and a night photo from its first years shows the sign glowing over a line of lit letters reading warmth, car heaters, comfort.
By the mid-1950s it was the Moonlite Drive-In, with a crescent moon and two stars on a fan-shaped sign. United Artists Theatre Circuit later ran it on land it owned there, along with the Moonlite Shopping Center and two indoor houses it built next door in the 1960s, the Regency and the curved-screen Cinema 150. One of them took part of the drive-in's lot.
The last ad found ran on December 30, 1972, for Walt Disney's Snowball Express and two shorts. The screen was gone by 1980, and condos went up on the land. The shopping center still carries the name.