Select Theater
Mineola, Wood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Select Theater was the seventh in a long line of Mineola venues dating from 1886. Mrs. Martha (Mattie) Hooks named the theater for Select Pictures, a Texas motion picture franchise, in 1920. Mrs. Hooks and her husband R. T. Hooks operated the Select Theater for many years. In 1948 the Select was remodeled with such features as a gradually sloping floor and an elevated stage. The new neon tower had a two-part revolving base, stood 24 feel above the ground, and was visible for miles. The theater was managed by two longtime employees from 1961 to 1986, when a theater company assumed operation. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Select Theater was the latest in a line of Mineola entertainment venues reaching back to 1886, named by Mattie Hooks in 1920 for a Texas motion-picture franchise. She and her husband ran it for years, and a 1948 remodel added a sloping floor, elevated stage, and a 24-foot neon tower visible for miles. It anchored the town's Main Street entertainment into the late 20th century.
Why it matters
Small-town movie houses like the Select were the social heart of Main Street America, and its glowing neon tower marks the golden age of the neighborhood cinema.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the time the Select Theater opened its doors, Mineola already had a long habit of gathering to be entertained — the marker traces the town's line of venues back to 1886. That span covers a sweeping change in American leisure: from live acts and traveling shows in the late nineteenth century to the moving pictures that swept the country in the early twentieth.
The theater took its name in 1920, at the dawn of the movie era's great boom, when nearly every town of any size wanted a picture house of its own. Mrs. Martha — Mattie — Hooks named it for Select Pictures, a Texas motion picture franchise, tying the little Mineola house to the wider business of bringing film to Main Street.
This was the age when going to the movies became the central social ritual of small-town America. The picture show was where courtships bloomed, where children spent their Saturdays, where a whole town could sit together in the dark and be carried somewhere else for an evening.
People & events
The Select's story is, at its heart, the story of the family who ran it. Mattie Hooks named the theater in 1920, and she and her husband, R. T. Hooks, operated it for many years — the kind of long, hands-on local ownership that made a movie house feel less like a business and more like an institution.
In 1948 the Select was remodeled and modernized. The improvements were exactly the ones a postwar audience expected: a gradually sloping floor so every seat had a clear view, and an elevated stage. Most memorably, a new neon tower rose over the entrance — its base built in two revolving parts, standing 24 feet above the ground and visible for miles. In an era before interstate signage and glowing chain logos, that tower was Mineola's beacon.
The theater changed hands within its own working family before passing on: two longtime employees managed it from 1961 to 1986, when a theater company took over operations. That succession — from founding owners to trusted staff to an outside company — is the natural life cycle of a beloved local business, and it kept the Select at the center of town entertainment across the better part of a century.
Its place in the American story
The neighborhood movie house is one of the great institutions of twentieth-century American life, and the Select is a near-perfect example of the type. In towns from coast to coast, the local cinema was the social heart of Main Street — a place that belonged to everyone, where the price of a ticket bought a few hours of shared wonder.
The Select's 1948 makeover captures a specific national moment. The years just after the Second World War were the high tide of moviegoing in America, and theaters competed by dazzling their patrons — sloping floors, better sightlines, and above all the electric glamour of neon. That revolving, 24-foot tower, visible for miles, was small-town Texas reaching for the same golden-age spectacle that lit up big-city marquees.
And the naming itself tells a national story in miniature. A local theater christened for a motion picture franchise is a reminder of how the film industry knit the whole country together — how a business born in the movie boom reached into a Wood County town and gave its picture house a name. The Select is a single node in the vast web that made the movies America's shared entertainment.
If you visit
Look up first. The signature of the Select is its neon tower — designed to rise 24 feet with a two-part revolving base and to be seen from miles off. Even standing still, it is meant to catch the eye and pull you toward the entrance, the way it drew Mineola crowds in from the surrounding country. A theater sign is architecture built to glow, and this one was built to be a landmark.
Then consider the building as a piece of Main Street history. The 1948 remodel gave it the sloping floor and elevated stage that defined the mid-century picture house; try to picture the room filling for a Saturday show, the whole town settling in together. This was the seventh venue in a line reaching back to 1886, so you are standing at the culmination of a very long local tradition of gathering to be entertained.
Make it part of a stroll through the heart of town. A historic theater anchors the streetscape around it, and the best way to feel its role is to walk the surrounding blocks and imagine an evening crowd spilling out under that neon. Read the marker for the details, and let the tower do the rest.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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