Remember when Centre County had a drive-in theater? Look back the Starlite’s history
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Remember the days when Centre County had a drive-in movie theater? While 2008 may not seem like that long ago, it’s been over 15 years since the Starlite Drive-In theater played its final movie and closed its doors permanently.
In its glory days, the 16-acre Starlite Drive-In site at 1100 Benner Pike was an evening staple for children, teens and adults alike.
Opening in 1950, the Starlite Drive-In’s first show featured a popular Betty Grable in the movie “When My Baby Smiles at Me,” according to Cinema Treasures.
For decades after, the theater would show movies almost every evening. In a March 2008 Centre Daily Times story, Frank Royer, who was president of Centre Drive-In Theatre, Inc., which owned and operated the Starlite, reminisced about what the theater once was, and what it meant to him.
“I can remember the day we’d open in late February and be open until December,” Royer told the CDT. “I can remember working the fields many a night with snow on the field.”
Back then, he said, movies were shown every night of the week, and for 10 cents on Tuesdays. On the Starlite’s most popular nights, as many as 575 cars would pack their way into the viewing area to catch a glimpse at the hottest movie out at the time.
When Royer’s family purchased the Starlite in 1966, it was one of three in Centre County, according to CDT archives. The Nittany Lion Drive-in was in operation in the Boalsburg area, and the Temple Drive-in was in Patton Township.
Times began to change though, as the movie industry began to evolve and newer, more technologically-advances ways of watching movies began to come into the forefront.
More and more people decided to watch movies from the comfort of their own home, which ultimately kick-started the death of the drive-in movie.
With fewer people coming out to drive-in theaters, business became sparse and eventually, near extinct.
When the weeknight showing at the Starlite began to perform poorly, they were axed all together in favor of a Friday, Saturday and Sunday night showing format, Royer told the CDT in 2008.
This type of format continued all the way up to the 2000s, until 2007, when the Starlite Drive-In was bought from members of the Royer and Favuzza families by Sevan LP $2.475 million.
Royer continued to run the theater for one last year before closing the doors all together in 2008.
After the theater’s closure, the CDT compiled dozens of comments and memories readers left on the CentreDaily.com story. People recounted dates there with future spouses, family trips to the drive-in with carloads of kids, snacks from concessions and seeing movies like “The Lion King” and “Apollo 13.”
“Yes, today’s movie theaters offer better picture and sound than drive-ups, but they lack atmosphere. This is why they will be missed. Drive-ups are great part of American Culture,” one reader commented.
Since the closure, the once-bustling drive-in site has experienced somewhat of a mixed fate.
In 2015, the theater property was purchased by Jim Forsyth, a then-CATA bus driver who had a dream to turn the theater grounds into Centre County’s largest flea market.
The flea market didn’t work out, and the theater grounds got laid to rest once again, before being temporarily utilized for a zombie-survival themed Halloween attraction in 2018.
Despite facing dire odds, drive-in movies aren’t completely dead yet. According to a 2023 news story from ABC17, a news station based in Harrisburg, there are still 29 operating drive-in movie theaters in Pennsylvania. The closest one to Centre County is the Super 322 Drive-In, located at 1682 Woodland Bigler Highway, Woodland.
