Monster Bus Is Equipped to Serve As Traveling Movie Theater (Jul, 1931)
Monster Bus Is Equipped to Serve As Traveling Movie Theater
A black and silver thirty-four-foot juggernaut of the road, just completed in California, will bring talking movies to country dwellers, in towns too small to boast theaters of their own. The huge bus carries a complete talkie theater in its spacious interior. When the bus is drawn up at the side of a road and two doors at the rear are opened, a screen is disclosed. An audience of 2.000 can see and hear the pictures that are projected upon it from inside the bus.
Elaborate living accommodations will make its crew of six comfortable during a projected tour of the United States. Pullmanlike berths, a shower bath, and a complete kitchen with a refrigerator and an electric hot water heater are among its fixtures. The driver’s “pilot house” is on a second level above the “engine room,” and is reached by a stairway.Under the screen at the rear of this land cruiser are the huge horns that supply sound for the talkies. They are fed with electricity from a built-in gasoline-powered dynamo. The projection room is guarded against fire by automatic sprinklers.
A drive-around theater as opposed to a drive-in theater.
Where these built? How long did they last? and I’ve got to say it, “where is the rooftop landing strip for airplanes to deliver the new movies?”
I presume the projection room is sprinklered because of the old flammable nitrate film that was still in use then. If a fire got going in there, they’d probably lose the vehicle anyway.
Yet another reason why movies were better in the old days. Why this is a movie waiting to be made in itself!