Picture a Monday night in May 1955. Headlights swing off U.S. 50 East just beyond Lake Barton Road and bump onto a brand-new lot with space for 550 cars. Somewhere out there, a 1955 Ford sits waiting to go home with whoever holds the winning ticket. A full hour of cartoons is loaded and ready. The Colonial Drive-In had arrived, and east Orlando had a new favorite way to spend an evening for the next 37 years.
Today the address 6441 East Colonial Drive belongs to law students, lecture halls, and the neatly trimmed lawns of Barry University's Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law.
Yet that quiet campus sits on top of one of the area's more entertaining backstories: a dozen rival theater owners who decided to build something together, a monster screen anchored in concrete, and a marquee that once delivered a holiday message to one very dedicated employee.
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Where the Colonial Drive-In Stood
In 1955, this stretch of Colonial Drive was about as far east as Orlando's growth had reached. The theater claimed a spot along the highway's northern edge, with Semoran Boulevard to the west and Forsyth Road to the east. The grand-opening ad skipped the street number entirely and just pointed folks toward "U.S. 50 East" and told them to keep going past Lake Barton Road. For families on the growing east side, the Colonial Drive-In meant a big-screen night out without the trek across town.
At the height of the outdoor movie craze, Central Florida had 13 drive-ins, and the Colonial was one of them. Two of its cousins happened to share the very same highway, which explains a lot of fuzzy family memories. Way out on the west side, the Pine Hills Drive-In went by 5050 West Colonial Drive. Far to the east near Alafaya Trail, the later University Drive-In took 11500 East Colonial Drive. Three outdoor screens on one road meant decades of debates over which one Grandpa actually took Grandma to.
Opening Night: Cowboys, Cartoons, and a Free Ford
Warner Bros. supplied the main event: The Command, a 1954 western shot in color, with Guy Madison, Joan Weldon, and James Whitmore leading the cast. The movie was really just the entrée, though. A full hour of animated shorts came first, with a "Bugs Bunny Cartoon Review" as the warm-up act. Things kicked off at 7:30 p.m., and anyone hoping to get in had until 10 p.m. to buy a ticket.
The real showstopper landed at intermission. Right around 9 p.m., the Colonial Drive-In pulled a winning ticket for a shiny new 1955 Ford. One family could pay for a night at the movies and roll home in a better car than the one they came in. That was the drive-in formula: sell the whole evening and keep it affordable.
A Theater Built by Friendly Rivals
Here's a twist most Orlandoans have never heard: the Colonial was a 1950s group project. Rather than one owner footing the bill, a dozen partners pooled their money, and they hailed from six different drive-in outfits around town. The theater's Cinema Treasures history shows they did business together as Colonial Plaza Drive-In Ltd. Bob Partlow and Joe Lipson were part of the crew, and so were Carl Floyd, Allen Horton, and Horace Denning.
That company name hints at the original plan to call the place the Colonial Plaza Drive-In. Somewhere between the drawing board and opening night, "Plaza" got dropped, and the sign out front read Colonial Drive-In Theatre. That's why both names still pop up in old records.
Floyd Theatres took over operations in 1963 and kept the Colonial Drive-In running right up to its final show. The chain traced back to Carl Floyd of Haines City and also ran the Pine Hills Drive-In plus a handful of indoor theaters around Orlando.
Eventually Floyd itself got swallowed up. Burnup & Sims scooped up the chain in the late 1970s and later folded into the company now called MasTec. MasTec pulled the plug on Floyd's last remaining outdoor screens in 1996, but by then the Colonial's screen had been dark for years.
Built Tough for Florida
Everything revolved around a CinemaScope screen measuring 100 by 60 feet, propped up on a tower made of concrete. Wooden towers had a habit of blowing over in high winds or going up in flames, so concrete was a smart pick for Florida. Out on the field, each of the 550 parking spots got its own RCA in-car speaker, and the projection and sound gear came from RCA too.
The newspaper's grand-opening spread reads like a thank-you card to the local businesses that built the place. Advertisers proudly took credit for:
- The all-concrete screen and the ready-mix concrete that went into it
- RCA projection and sound equipment
- Plumbing, paving, and grading
- Roofing, sheet metal, and cabinet work
- Candy dispensers, plus concession snacks grown right here in Orange County
So yes, the Colonial Drive-In was a true hometown effort, right down to the snacks.
Life on the Lot
No one saved a full roster of what played the Colonial Drive-In over the years. The early days leaned on family fare like color westerns and cartoons, while later decades shifted toward genre marathons that kept carloads parked into the wee hours.
One former moviegoer's recollection, saved in a local history archive, describes a full night of Lee Van Cleef: The Big Gundown, Sabata, Death Rides a Horse, and Barquero, back to back. That's four helpings of squinty-eyed gunslingers in one sitting. It's one person's recollection, not a dated newspaper ad, but it nails the stay-up-all-night drive-in spirit.
The lot followed the classic drive-in blueprint. Cars rolled past a ticket booth on the way in, then fanned out among rows of speaker posts aimed at the screen tower. Smack in the middle stood one building doing double duty as snack bar and projection booth. Longtime locals describe the wider Orlando drive-in scene with details anyone who grew up here will recognize:
- Kids showing up in pajamas, ready to conk out in the back seat
- Double features as the standard deal
- Grown-ups sitting outside their cars to catch a breeze
- The intermission dash to the concession stand
- Mosquito coils doing battle with Central Florida's most loyal residents
Not every one of those habits is on record at the Colonial Drive-In specifically, but it's hard to picture a summer there without all five.
Right on Time for the Drive-In Boom
Orlando had been watching movies from the front seat for a while before the Colonial came along. The city's pioneering drive-in beat it by a decade and a half, flickering to life on Feb. 7, 1940, over at 1001 S. Orange Blossom Trail. The Colonial was more like the polished, widescreen sequel.
Everything about the 1950s worked in its favor. Paychecks were growing after the war, land was cheap, suburbs kept sprawling outward, and nearly every household had a car in the driveway. Outdoor theaters also cost less to build and run, which let owners charge less at the gate and still throw in a second feature.
The Colonial Drive-In checked every box on the era's wish list: CinemaScope, in-car sound, a huge lot, a packed bill, and a free car to top it off.
By the late 1960s, though, the party was starting to wind down. Drive-ins across the country were battling short operating hours (no movie starts until the sun goes down), rain, bugs, shiny indoor multiplexes, and eventually home entertainment. The toughest opponent of all was the land underneath them. Twenty acres on a busy, growing road was worth a lot more as just about anything else.
The Last Reel: October 3rd, 1992
October 3, 1992, was the final night the Colonial Drive-In lit up its screen. The place had opened when Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House and went dark exactly one month before the 1992 presidential election. As for what played that last night, the title has slipped through the cracks of history.
The reason it closed might surprise you. Bob Partlow reportedly put it plainly: several partners had passed away, and those still around were "all getting up in age." In other words, the Colonial Drive-In outlasted the working years of the very people who built it. Retirement and real estate, not an empty lot, seem to have rolled the credits.
The land changed hands in May 1994. Partlow and Lipson reportedly found their buyer in Florida Technical Systems of School and Colleges Inc., and the price tag came to $843,600. A real estate listing for the address puts the parcel at roughly 21.52 acres and shows a 1995 build date, right as the old movie lot was becoming a campus.
From Double Features to Law Briefs
The school that moved in took a winding path of its own. It got its start in early 1993 as the University of Orlando School of Law, and its very first students arrived in 1995. Four years later, it joined Barry University.
Today the Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law calls those 20 landscaped acres home, roughly a 15-minute trip east of downtown Orlando. Where families once balanced popcorn on the dashboard, law students now cram for the bar exam. Some of them park on the very ground where the Colonial Drive-In once lined up 550 cars facing its giant screen. That's not a bad backstory for a parking lot.
One Last Look at the Marquee
No theater buildings survive, and drive-in databases list the Colonial Drive-In as torn down. The concrete screen tower, the rows of speaker posts, and the snack bar that kept the intermission crowd fed are all gone.
Much of what we can still see exists thanks to Judy Crews Martin. As a longtime Floyd supervisor, she made the rounds among the chain's regional drive-ins, and she had the good sense to bring a camera. Before the bulldozers arrived, she snapped several of those theaters, catching the marquee, the screen, the ticket booth, the parking field, and the snack bar. Without her, we'd be left with memories and a single grand-opening ad from May 9th, 1955.
Her best shot might be the simplest one. Up on the marquee, where the letters usually announced double features and showtimes, someone spelled out a different message: "Merry Christmas Judy." It was apparently a greeting meant just for her, from one of the theaters she helped look after.
It makes a fitting final frame. For 37 years, from that first Bugs Bunny cartoon in 1955 to the last program in 1992, the Colonial Drive-In spent its nights talking to east Orlando: bring the kids, grab a speaker, stay for the second feature.
For one holiday season, at least, it talked back to the woman who made sure we would never forget what it looked like.
🔥 Love Orlando history like this? Well, there's plenty more where this came from, right here.
Sources:
https://orlandomemory.org/places/central-florida-drive-in-theaters/
https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/67858
https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/12195
https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/67749
https://www.yourcommunitypaper.com/articles/the-way-we-were-5/
https://www.floridanetworkrealty.com/realestate/details/99157081/6441-e-colonial-drive-orlando-fl-32807
https://www.lsac.org/choosing-law-school/find-law-school/jd-programs/barry
https://www.barry.edu/en/academics/law/entering-class-profile/
https://barry.helpscoutdocs.com/article/6051-campus-map
https://drive-ins.com/theater/fltcolo/colonial-drive-in
