News that York is to become home to Britain's first drive-in cinema was welcomed by local people today.

Asda plans to use its York store, at Monks Cross, as the pilot for a nationwide chain of car park cinemas before the end of the year.

Filmgoers would be able to watch films for only a pound a car, and listen to the sound in stereo, through an FM radio signal. Non-motorists would be able to join in the fun from a 500-seat viewing area.

Family films like The Lion King, Toy Story and A Bug's Life will become regular feature presentations at the store with profits going to a local charity yet to be named.

Usherettes on roller skates will serve popcorn and other celluloid snacks and a "Snack Shack" will add to the atmosphere. Today shoppers at the Monks Cross retail complex gave the scheme the thumbs-up, and said they were looking forward to the first screening.

A spokesman for Asda said the store will be the first in the world to have a drive-in cinema, and even its parent company in America - Walmart - does not have one.

Wendy Neale, spokesman at the Monks Cross store, said: "We need to get an entertainments licence from the council. Once we get that we'll have to make sure the screen is angled away from the road because it could distract drivers otherwise.

"For people familiar with our site, the screen will roughly be where our recycling bins are now, with room for cars in front and the seating area behind them."

If the trial is a success Asda plans to set up cinemas at 50 other stores across the country.

A spokesman added: "It's part of our retail-tainment, linking the shopping experience for our customers to entertainment. Market research shows it's something they look to."

Drive-in movies became an institution in America during the late 1950s, with rocketing car ownership and the arrival of the "teenager".

Shopper Vikki Lyle said: "I think it's a brilliant idea. I've just come back from America, where I saw the Blair Witch Project at a drive-in in Kentucky.

"The only problem with having one here is the weather. You'll miss half the film because of the windscreen wipers going backwards and forwards." Her shopping partner, Tracey Ashton, said she thought it would be good for children.

Hannah Judson, of Colton, near Hovingham, said: "It sounds like a great idea. I would definitely come."

Father-of-two Alan Green, from Filey, said he would bring his young children to York to see a film in a different way.

Meanwhile Mrs Pat Askey, of Stockton on the Forest, said: "It's a great idea. We're going all American, aren't we. I love going to the cinema and this is very inventive."

Osbaldwick's Mary Melia, in the same car, added: "An outdoor cinema for York would be marvellous. Of course, we'd need to have the weather for it."

Invented in 1933

B-MOVIES, bench seat cars, and beehive hairstyles of the fifties are synonymous with the drive-in cinema.

But they go back much further than that, with the first said to have been invented by Richard Hollingshead in 1933, in New Jersey.

According to the Internet shrine to the genre, Drive-In Theater, he hung a large sheet in his back garden to make the screen and mounted a 1928 Kodak projector to the bonnet of his car with a radio behind the screen for sound.

In the following decades Richard's invention boomed, with about 5,000 drive-ins around the world by 1958.

One of the largest - according to the website - was an all-weather drive-in outside New York, with space for 2,500 cars and a 1,200 seat air-conditioned viewing area.

The drive-in has itself played a central role in several films. When Sandy left Danny singing "stranded at the drive-in" in the 70s hit, Grease, the teenage ne'er-do-well played by John Travolta was left crooning to a giant screen while sitting in his car.

And the fifties B-movie, The Blob, saw hundreds of hysterical teenagers screaming into the camera before running in terror from the amorphous creature.

The drive-in starred in the classic, American Graffiti, which helped launch the careers of Richard Dreyfuss and Ron Howard, who went on to star in the fifties-themed series, Happy Days.

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