As darkness fell on September 10, 1947, a black-and-white title card flickered onto a large outdoor movie screen. Soon, the glamorous actress Gene Tierney sashayed into view as the star of the film Dragonwyck, a gothic period drama and the evening’s main attraction.
Among the guests of honor for this, the grand opening of Arlington’s Airport Drive-In, were Peggy Wilson, the newly crowned “Miss Washington 1947,” as well as county officials. A kids’ flick that same week was Junior Miss, starring teenager Peggy Ann Garner.
Drive-in theaters were first patented in the 1930s in New Jersey and proliferated as America’s love affair with automobiles grew. By the time the pastime hit its peak in the ’50s and ’60s, the U.S. had about 5,000 drive-ins nationwide.
Arlington’s outdoor silver screen came courtesy of a lawyer and entrepreneur named Paul J. Foley, who lived in nearby Arlington Ridge. He wagered that a drive-in theater near the Potomac River would draw both local residents and visitors from Washington, D.C.
Occupying a 25-acre lot along Route 1, the theater sat directly behind what was then known only as National Airport—just “1 mile from 14th Street Bridge,” advertisements proclaimed.
The back of the screen, a large wall facing the highway, featured a propeller airplane lit up in red neon.
With the capacity for 1,000 cars, the Airport Drive-In quickly became a community gathering place, offering free admission to kids under 12 and hosting fundraisers for local organizations such as the Arlington police department.
For Foley’s three kids, it was a personal playground. “I would go behind the counter and take all the candy,” recalls Paul’s son Rex Foley, who now lives in Woodbridge. “When we learned how to drive, we would go down during the day and my dad would let us drive the car in between the parking poles.”
Rex sometimes accompanied his father to theater owners’ meetings in D.C., complete with film screenings. “We could see the movies before they came out,” he says. “The screenings were held in an exquisite room, and the seats were very comfortable.”
As the years progressed, the Foley family moved around a bit, and the elder Foleys divorced. Under pressure from increasing development along Route 1, Paul Foley closed the drive-in in 1963. The last film ever shown was The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. Rex says he saw the film several nights in a row before the lights dimmed for good.