Also lost were an estimated 5,000 movie posters owner Bob Groves said he had collected through the years and stored beneath the screen, along with some reels of old 35-mm films.

Groves, who said he was in Cary when the fire started, stood dejected in front of his nearby house trailer.

"It'll make a grown man cry," he said, sniffling. "There's just so many memories."

Neighbors said they saw flames shooting out of the historic structure shortly before 2 p.m. About 25 firefighters from the city and a nearby volunteer department put out the blaze within a half hour.

The screen was not insured, but Groves said he hopes to rebuild within 60 days. The snack bar, which houses a small gun store, and the adjoining projection room were not damaged. The flea market held in the parking lot each Saturday morning will continue, he said.

"We're not out of business," said Groves, 52. "We're going to keep it going, the good Lord willing." With fewer than a dozen drive-ins left statewide, the Starlite is something of a throwback. Built a year before Pearl Harbor was bombed, the Durham theater was a forerunner of a fad that swept through the country in the heady postwar boom of spacious new cars and exploding birthrates.

There were more than 4,000 drive-ins in the United States at their peak in 1958. Now there are fewer than 500 in operation, a number that shrinks each year as city lights swallow suburbs and land values rise. Raleigh's last drive-in, The Forest, was plowed under in the late 1980s.

The Starlite made ends meet by showing porno flicks, a practice that Groves ended when he bought the theater from his employer in 1987. He kept the theater open year round and started selling handguns and renting videos to help sustain the business through the lean winter months.

Seeing a movie at the Starlite offered the freedom to smoke, drink beer and intimately smooch with a sweetie -- not allowed at a modern megaplex. Groves said about 30 cars had come to Saturday night's last showing of "Alien vs. Predator."

Betty Moore, Durham's assistant fire marshal, said the origin of the fire is not yet known. Groves said he used the space beneath the four-story-tall screen to store lawn mowers, old popcorn machines and a deep freezer full of french fries.

A long line of cars slowed to survey the smoldering damage Sunday afternoon. Kelly Caudill, who lives in a house next to Groves' trailer, struggled to stop tears from trickling down her cheeks as she explained how her 8-year-old step-daughter had spotted the fire.

The girl had been skating in the driveway when she clopped inside, saying there were guns shooting over at the drive-in. The sound turned out to be the crackle of burning lumber. Firefighters were there less than five minutes after the Caudills called 911, but the blaze was soon burning so hot that neighbors across the street scrambled to move their cars.

"Everyone knows the Starlite," said Caudill, who had been going to the drive-in since she was a girl. "It's a Durham landmark. This is just awful."