Beverly Drive-In Theater was constructed in 1948 as a cinema structure in Forrest County, Mississippi. The main screen measured 105 feet by 75 feet (32 meters by 23 meters), and the theater contained a paved parking area for 500 cars. The back of the screen tower held a display of neon lights that denoted the Beverly logo with a moon and shooting stars. The original owners built their family home beneath the main screen.
In 2007, the Mississippi Heritage Trust listed the Beverly Drive-In as one of the ten most endangered historic places in Mississippi. The theater was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 30, 2008.
The theater operated from 1948 through 1987, and periodically for special events, into 2005, when Hurricane Katrina caused significant damage to the screen and buildings. In 2005, it was the oldest drive-in theater still operating in Mississippi.
The Beverly Drive-In Theater burned to the ground on October 30, 2010.
Famous quotes containing the word theater:
“We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd.... Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste...? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)