Mineola Theatre

I remember this theater. Thanks for posting the photo links.

My parents took me to see a production of the operetta The Student Prince at the Mineola Playhouse when I was five years old and it started my love affair with music. This was probably around 1963-64. It’s one of my earliest memories.

I used to go to the Mineola movie theater when I first moved to Mineola in 1980, when I was 13. It was 80 cents in 1980!! I saw Caddyshack there that summer, among other movies. It was a beautiful theater, but it was demolished at some time in the 80’s to put up a big office building with an attached parking garage. BOO!! I still live in Mineola and remember it clearly. But we must plow forward and not look back..even though it’s hard not to want to go back in time. Remember Lot’s wife….

I remember seeing Carol Channing in Shaw’s “The Millionairess” at the Mineola in the 60’s. She came out on stage after the performance and did a small “one woman show” constantly referring to the “min-EEEE-OOOO-LAAA” theater in “min-EEEE-OOOO-LAAA”, Long Island. She was hilarious and grand! When the theater was spruced up for these plays, it too wa grand. A true Broadway house planted in the wrong setting (“min-EEEE-OOOO-LAAA”)

This was a huge theater that stood a few blocks from the LIRR station. It was a dollar theater late in its game, and I believe its marquee was used for a few years in a Newsday ad about the paper’s movie listings.