Select Theatre

teecee on August 3, 2005 at 4:42 am

The Select, 78 miles east of Dallas on Highway 80, has its own lush history. R.T. Hooks Sr. and wife Mattie founded the theater in 1920 and named it (nothing exciting here) after the Dallas distribution company that fed them their movies. Later, they moved to Lubbock, Texas, and turned over operations to a man who, according to local legend, proved not to be a very good manager.

So son R.T. Hooks Jr. bought the theater back and agreed to keep on a 16-year-old employee who had been working there since he was 12.

James Oscar Dear swept floors and poured Cokes and did just about everything to make the Select feel loved. When Hooks Jr. passed away in 1961, Dear and fellow employee Truman Thomas bought the Select from Hooks' widow and the Hooks estate. And the two men ran it as partners for 25 more years, until 1986, when they donated it to the Lake Country Playhouse. Four times a year, it stages live plays.

Now 89, Dear has played a key role in sustaining the Select, whose survival has been facilitated with more than $250,000 from the town’s Meredith Foundation, which, in 2001, financed the theater’s renovation, including $98,750 used for those 248 gorgeous new seats.

Celia Hansell, 44, is the daughter of parents who grew up near Mineola. She loves coming to the Select, as did her dad, who tells stories about riding into town in the back of a pickup truck to see Western serials for a nickel on Saturdays.

“It’s really neat when you think about how long people have been coming here,” says Hansell, sitting with her husband, Mark Hansell, 49, and their children, 6-year-old Luke and 5-year-old Lauren Grace. “I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, I hope it never dies.”

Source: Dallas Morning News, The (TX), Jul 07, 2005

Michael Furlinger on August 21, 2006 at 7:31 pm

DON -wrong pic thats the tyler ………

kencmcintyre on February 3, 2008 at 8:08 pm

Here is an undated interior photo:
http://tinyurl.com/yrnbve

jeffdhurley1 on March 12, 2010 at 12:57 pm

news on the Select :
new ADA compliant but historically accurate restrooms

a documentary about the Select is in the works and funding to switch from 35mm to digital is beings searched for as a non profit

will be featured in opening segment of extreme home makeover last show of 2010 season i believe may 9th
still open every Friday and Saturday first runs when not doing live theater

MichaelKilgore on June 16, 2020 at 11:55 am

Motion Picture Exhibitor, April 25, 1962: “A tornado wrecked much of the business section at Mineola, Tex. About 80 children in the Select watching "One, Two, Three,” escaped injury although the theatre front was blown out. Employees evacuated the children without panic."