The above advertisement for a porn film appeared in a Lykens Valley newspaper in October 1972. The film, Country Cuzzins, was shown at the Sky-Vu Drive-In Theatre in Gratz on the weekend of 6 October to 8 October. It was rated “X” and therefore those “under 18 [were] not admitted.” The leader for the film stated:
Heard the one about the traveling salesman who came to dinner, and had the farmer’s daughters for dessert?
In 1969, the Collonade Theatre in Millersburg was purchased by Marvin Troutman and Ada Troutman, who turned the operation of the theatre over to their son Marvin Troutman, who ran it as a sideline to his undertaking business. Marvin, and his wife, Doris R. [Hoover] Troutman, decided they liked the movie theatre business better than undertaking, and moved full-time into it with the purchase of the Gratz Sky-Vu Drive-In and Halifax Drive-In. Shortly afterward, they formed Martro Theatres, Inc., and by 1972, they formed the Cinema Supply Company, which supplied necessities to the theatres.
The soft-porn films that were shown at this Gratz outdoor theatre were part of the “sexual revolution” that began to take place in 1960s. There is no evidence to indicate that the Martro Theatres, in these early years of operation by the Troutman’s, showed anything but pornography. But without a market for this type of entertainment in the Lykens Valley, the Troutman’s would have never made the decision to run a chain of porn theatres. It was unfortunate though for the residents of the Lykens Valley that in order to see a non-X-rated film they had to travel a good distance from their homes – or stay at home and watch a movie on TV. Where once, many communities had a “movie house,” a social gathering place, by the late 1960s, nearly all of these theatres, such as the ones in Lykens and Elizabethville, had closed.