Long Island movie firsts: How many do you know?

Long Island may be a long way from Hollywood, but a history of the region can be told through its movie theaters. As local farmland and villages turned into suburbs, cinemas sprung up to serve a growing populace, often keeping pace with national trends. Here’s a timeline of the region’s theatrical firsts.

FIRST MOVIE HOUSE

In the early days of movies, they were sometimes shown at live venues, which means Long Island’s very first public screening — of any movie — could have occurred at a venue like the Huntington Theatre (now the Paramount) or the still-operating Patchogue Theatre. There’s some online evidence to suggest that the long-gone Carleton Opera House in Bay Shore began showing films in the mid-1910s. In terms of purpose-built cinemas, however, the earliest known local example is the Bellmore Movies and Showplace, which opened in 1915 according to its website. It’s still in operation as a single-screen theater.

FIRST (AND LAST) DRIVE-IN

Valley Stream’s Sunrise Drive-In was the first of its kind not just in the region, but in the state, according to CinemaTreasures.com, which cites the opening date as Aug. 10, 1938. The towering screen and parking lot looked a little lonely in the still-developing ‘burbs, according to old photographs, but they would soon have company. By 1958 there were 4,063 drive-ins across the country, a record high for the industry according to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association. Alas, that number has since dwindled to fewer than 300. On Long Island, the Westbury Drive-In was the last of its breed; it closed in 1998. (The Sunrise Drive-in closed in 1979.)

FIRST CULT MOVIE THEATER

The Uniondale Mini Cinema opened in 1970 on a nondescript block of Jerusalem Avenue, but the venue itself would prove to be quite colorful. By all accounts, its 415 seats were usually occupied by arty college kids, amiable druggies and other counter-culture types eager to see such leftfield titles as "El Topo," "Pink Flamingos" and "The Harder They Come." The Mini Cinema became a midnight home for "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and its fervent cult, but it had proper repertory programming, too. As one patron told Newsday recently, it was the kind of place where "you could smoke pot and watch Marx Brothers movies." The Mini Cinema closed around 1981.

FIRST NON-PROFIT

In 1973, Vic Skolnick and Charlotte Sky, bohemian transplants from Brooklyn, hung a bedsheet in a friend’s dance studio on Huntington’s Main St, borrowed a projector and began showing whatever films struck their fancy. Their makeshift venue grew into the Cinema Arts Centre, Long Island’s first not-for-profit movie theater. Member funding helped it survive the pandemic, and today it looks like a model for a sustainable independent theater. The Sag Harbor Cinema and Southampton Playhouse are both not-for-profits, while the shuttered Malverne Cinema and Art Center is set to reopen as one.

FIRST MULTIPLEX

 In Nassau County it was the Sunrise Multi-Plex Cinema in Valley Stream, built on the site of the old Sunrise Drive-In. It opened in 1979 with a then-rare six screens, according to CinemaTreasures.com, and later expanded to 11. A few years later, however, major excitement surrounded the opening of the Commack Multiplex Cinemas, the first such in Suffolk County. "New complex to have 10 theaters," Newsday marveled in a 1983 headline. It seemed so novel that the paper sent a reporter there to watch as many films as possible in one day. (She filed a roughly 1,000-word story about the experience, which she dubbed "plexing out.") Today, multiplexes are so commonplace they’re often cited as an example of overbuilding and oversaturation. The Commack closed in 2011; the Sunrise lasted until 2015.

FIRST IMAX 

The history of the proprietary large-screen format goes back to 1967, but the first IMAX screen on Long Island came with the Cradle of Aviation, which opened in Garden City in 2000. It initially played three shorts every hour on the hour, according to The New York Times: ''Space Station,'' ''The Magic of Flight'' and ''The Island of Sharks." Even today, IMAX auditoriums exist in only five locations on Long Island, according to information at the company’s website: Deer Park, Farmingdale, Southampton, Stony Brook and Westbury.