James Lloyd, Malco Summer drive-in employee for 54 years, has died
For years, James Lloyd had what some movie fans might call the best seat in the house.
In fact, it was his house.
A Malco employee for 54 years, Mr. Lloyd lived in a five-room apartment above the concession stand at Memphis’ last outdoor cinema, the Summer Quartet Drive-in.
From his windows at night, he could look across acres of parked cars to the drive-in’s hundred-foot-tall screens, which this week pulsed with images of a gun-toting Will Smith, a Pixar elf, a mallet-wielding Margot Robbie and Sonic the Hedgehog.
Most nights, however, Mr. Lloyd eschewed the state-of-the-art digital technology and 21st-century glamor offered up by Hollywood’s new releases. Instead, he watched old Westerns and reruns of “Gunsmoke” on the television in his living room, where on warm summer evenings the audio from hundreds of car radios tuned to movie soundtracks competed with John Wayne’s gunfire.
Mr. Lloyd died Monday at Baptist Memorial Hospital-memphis. According to friends and relatives, his health had been in decline since emergency surgery in January.
“He died at 9:51 p.m., two hours and nine minutes before his 84th birthday,” Malco technician Don Swindal said on Tuesday. “Today is his birthday.”
Despite his age, Mr. Lloyd had no interest in retirement. At the time of his death he was still working for Malco Theatres Inc., the Memphis-based cinema circuit that originally hired him in 1966. His title was vice president of operations, a somewhat highfalutin descriptor for Mr. Lloyd’s hands-on approach to theater work.
“He’s been there since carbon arcs and reel to reel,” said Swindal, referring to equipment associated with the oldschool projection of reels of film. “And now we’re no film at all, and all digital, and it’s almost culture shock.”
During his career, Mr. Lloyd – a true movie-theater James-of-all-trades and trouble-shooter – worked all types of jobs, managing cinemas, repairing equipment and so on.
At various times, he was in charge of Malco properties all over the circuit, from Columbus, Mississippi, to Marion, Arkansas, to Sikeston, Missouri, to Owensboro, Kentucky.
Some of the sites he managed were unpaved “cow pasture” drive-ins, where his duties included mowing down foliage with a Bush Hog to create “parking lawns” for the cars.
“He was known throughout the six states,” Swindal said, referring to the states – Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, Missouri and Louisiana – where Malco currently operates its 37 cinemas. “He had no enemies. Everybody liked him.”
Before Mr. Lloyd moved “upstairs” at the Summer Drive-in at 5310 Summer Ave., he lived for close to 14 years inside an apartment built into the base of the screen at the old Southwest Twin Drivein on South Third. In those days, it was common for larger drive-ins to have living spaces for on-site managers, who often had to work all night.
“That was back when we had speakers on every pole, and heaters on every pole,” said Malco co-chairman Jimmy Tashie, referring to a time before car radios could be tuned to the movie soundtrack, when a patron who wanted to hear the movie had to park next to a pole with a speaker on a wire, which could be placed inside the car.
“It really was a time when the driveins were very active.”
As concession sales became an increasingly important revenue generator for theater chains, Mr. Lloyd became a specialist in food-and-beverage equipment – a skill that did not diminish with age. “He was the popcorn machine pro,” Swindal said. Confirmed Tashie: “He was known to be able to repair any popcorn machine that we had.”
In fact, Mr. Lloyd first entered the movie business as a 14-year-old Arkansas farm boy who earned money by pushing a popcorn cart between the rows of cars at the old Starvue Drive-in in Blytheville.
“I ate enough popcorn and popped enough popcorn in my life that I don’t particularly like popcorn anymore,” Mr. Lloyd admitted to The Commercial Appeal in a 2009 interview. And although he lived only a flight of stairs away from the drive-in’s smorgasbord of cheeseburgers, hot dogs and nachos, he generally prepared his meals in his apartment’s small kitchen, where he also prepared food for his various pets. (At the time of his death, he shared his apartment with two cats, Nibbler and Ava.)
“He was so independent,” said Mr. Lloyd’s daughter, Leann Nichols of Millington. “He just wanted to be at the drive-in, he wanted to keep working.”
Mr. Lloyd also enjoyed sitting on a bench outside the Summer drive-in concession stand, smoking his pipe and people-watching the patrons. That activity became somewhat more interesting in 2014 with the launch of the “Time Warp Drive-in,” a monthly series devoted to cult cinema. Said Tashie: “He used to say, ‘Boy, there’s some weird people out there,’ but eventually he warmed up to ‘em.” (A bespectacled Mr. Lloyd discusses the drive-in and participates in a “popcorn baptism” in the short film “A Day at the Drive-in” by Mike Mccarthy, the co-curator of the Time Warp series.)
Besides Mrs. Nichols, Mr. Lloyd leaves four grandchildren, and his exwife, Shirley Trahin of Fayetteville, Tennessee. Another daughter, Rachael Ann Grace-lloyd, died in 2009 at 42 after a lifelong battle with diabetes. She had lived with her father at the Summer drive-in, which explains the presence of the electric wheelchair ramp that runs along the flight of stairs leading to the projection room and to what was Mr. Lloyd’s apartment.
Funeral services will be at 3 p.m. Friday at Roller-citizens Funeral Home in West Memphis, with visitation starting at 2 p.m. Mr. Lloyd will be buried in Crittenden Memorial Park in Marion, next to his daughter. Mrs. Nichols said the image of a 1972 El Camino will be on his tombstone, in recognition of Mr. Lloyd’s beloved and painstakingly maintained Chevrolet utility vehicle.