Tinker Drive-In
Midwest City, Oklahoma1948-1961
Shop Tinker Drive-In tees, long sleeve tees and hoodies. TINKER ran across the dark upper face of a huge wedge of a tower, with THEATRE on a lower face slanting out over the marquee like the fold of a wing. A relief projectionist recalled portholes with no glass, only steel flaps, so the lenses could fill with water when it rained. Pick your style below, and the full Tinker history follows further down. Down Home Apparel is an American small business remembering the best places and teams of yesteryear, and every shirt is printed to order in the USA.
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Tinker Drive-In History
The Tinker Drive-In in Midwest City, Oklahoma, opened on August 10, 1948, on Air Depot Boulevard, with Mickey Rooney in Summer Holiday. It held 450 cars and was among the first drive-ins in the Oklahoma City area. R. Lewis Barton opened it. The Exhibitor reported on August 25, 1948, that it was on SE 29, just west of Midwest City, and gave its room as 500 cars. An earlier item that month said it had installed a Simplex E-7 projector mechanism, Peerless Magnarc lamps and Simplex in-a-car speakers. Boxoffice reported that September that it sat near the air base. The base had taken the name Tinker Air Force Base only that January, after Maj. Gen. Clarence L. Tinker, an Osage from Oklahoma lost in the Pacific during World War II. Midwest City itself had grown up around the base and was incorporated in 1943.
Cinema Treasures describes the whole compound as built in a quasi-aircraft style and nicely landscaped. A photograph shows why. The screen tower was a huge wedge rising over a low white building. TINKER ran across its dark upper face, and THEATRE ran on a lower face that slanted out over the marquee, like the fold of a wing.
A relief projectionist for the Barton circuit recalled working the drive-in on Air Depot in 1958 and 1959. The projector portholes had no glass, only steel flaps that had to stay open, so the lenses could fill with water when it rained. The one record he ever found there to play before the show was Five Feet High and Rising.
The last show was September 22, 1961, a double bill of Jet Pilot and The Conqueror, both with John Wayne. Boxoffice noted in July 1962 that the Tinker was not operating. No trace of it remains. A commenter places a transmission shop on the entrance road and a retirement community on the lot.