Very interesting article by one of the original Hollywood stunt men. It certainly seems like this was an even more extreme profession in the early days:
“I had to wear the blood-spattered clothes in which Jack Silver—”Old Silvertip”—died the day before I did his stunt. It was a leap from a train crossing a trestle to the water beneath. Hesitating a fraction of a second, Silvertip had struck pilings on the far side of the stream and been killed. We must not hesitate.”

CHEATING DEATH for a LIVING
By BOB ROSE
I BELONG to a strange fraternity. After nineteen years, only six of the original 150 remain. We are the motion-picture stunt men.
I have seen most of the others die, one after another, in performing dangerous feats. Yet, during my own career I was never seriously injured in doing 560 parachute leaps, eighty plane changes in the air, 150 dives from heights above ninety feet, 180 automobile wrecks, riding horses over cliffs sixty-five times and staging fights atop ninety-foot ship masts and making the proper fall into the water so many times I have lost count. The pioneer stunt men who remain besides myself are Cliff Lyons, Yakima Canutt, Duke Green, Gordon Carveth and Frank Clark.
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And it only took us another 50 years or so before it became commonplace.
“SOLID MUSIC”
“Three-Dimensional” Sounds Created
LIKE pictures on a screen, the best of public-address amplification and loudspeaker reproduction hitherto available has lacked reality. It is not that the instruments are defective in their reproduction of pitch and volume; but the ear is a fairly selective instrument, and hard to deceive when aided by the eyes. The sounds are right, but the directions from which they come are wrong. However, a recent demonstration, staged by telephone engineers, has the astonishing effect of overpowering the testimony of the eyes. Unseen players, singers and dancers seem to move tunefully or noisily across an empty stage.
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According to wikipedia this was the 3rd drive-in to open in the U.S.

California Autoists View Movies in New Open Air Theatre
LOS ANGELES motorists, movie bound, may now sit in their cars and enjoy the latest sound pictures in a giant open air theatre recently completed.
The frame which holds the 40 by 50 foot screen is a structure 72 feet high and 132 feet wide. Three huge loudspeakers, each 22 feet long and 7 feet across the mouth, are mounted on top of the structure. These loudspeakers are directed at the tops of the cars, whose soft fabric is said to make an ideal sounding board.
The fenced – in spectators’ area holds 450 cars which are parked in lanes graded at an angle so that the cars point up at the screen. This inclination enables back-seat spectators to obtain a unobstructed view of the screen. Projection machines are in a low building in front of the screen, said to be the largest in the world. Installed in a low building in the second row, these machines work at an up-shot angle, instead of the customary down-shot used in indoor theatres.