You Must Remember This by Robert J. Wagner Read Free Book Online Page A

geographical remoteness made for some wild times. As far as the people, it was the crème de la crème of the industry.
    What was wonderful about Palm Springs was that it was anentirely different environment than Los Angeles, and yet it was only two hours away. Palm Springs is surrounded by mountains—the San Bernardino Mountains to the north, the Santa Rosa Mountains to the south, the San Jacinto Mountains to the west, and the Little San Bernardino Mountains to the east. It’s situated in a valley, and gets unbelievably hot in the summer—a temperature of 106 is normal, and it can go even higher, then falling to anywhere from 77 to 90 degrees at night.

    Playing in a singles match at Palm Springs Racquet Club.

Everett Collection
    But that’s in the summer. In the winter, it’s idyllic; it rarely gets over 85 degrees or so, and the nights are cool.
    The first time I went to Palm Springs was before World War IIwith my father. I was immediately enchanted. We went riding in the desert, and tied our horses up at a place in Cathedral City where we bought delicious fresh orange juice.
    Palm Springs then was the sort of town with no streetlights—after dark, the only illumination was the moon, but in the desert that’s much brighter than you think. I remember the mountains, the orange groves, the swimming pools, the desert sunsets, the air—so invigorating I always believed the oxygen content had to be higher than in the city.
    Even then, the town had great bars. Don the Beachcomber’s had a beachhead there, as did the Doll House. And there was a restaurant called Ruby Dunes, which became one of Frank Sinatra’s favorite places.
    Eventually, the unique environment of Palm Springs called for unique kinds of houses, and American modernist architects like Richard Neutra flourished there. Neutra’s Kaufmann House—built for the same man who’d commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Pennsylvania—was built in 1946.
    Neutra stole at least one of my friend the great California architect Cliff May’s central ideas: the place is built around a courtyard and includes a fair amount of natural materials—the stone walls and chimney came from nearby quarries and match up with the colors of the adjacent San Jacinto Mountains. And Neutra went with an early version of xeriscaping, as he filled the front yard with large boulders and desert plants that didn’t need much water.
    Neutra’s success in Palm Springs brought more commissions, and more modernist architects followed in his wake, although few of them had Neutra’s dominating personality. “I am not International Style,” he once said. “I am Neutra!” It wasn’t long before John Lautner, Albert Frey, and Rudolph Schindler were building thereas well. The result was that Palm Springs became a hotbed of modified Bauhaus aesthetics. But when I was first going there, most of the architecture was Mexican or Spanish villas.
    In the ’60s, the houses were open in design, with air-conditioning—Palm Springs could never have been settled in a large way without the invention of air-conditioning—and windows that made the desert landscape part of the dwelling.
    I remember the Palm Springs of my youth as something out of a western movie or, more specifically, a dude ranch. It was very western; hotel employees dressed up as if they were the Sons of the Pioneers, in embroidered shirts and cowboy boots. The bartender at the Racquet Club was actually named Tex. Tex, the lawyer Greg Bautzer, and I once got into a big fight at the Racquet Club with a couple of obnoxious out-of-town drunks. Tex could not only mix a killer martini, he could also clean out a room, and quickly.
    The important thing to note about Palm Springs is that it was actually a small town, an intimate place whose population was mostly an extension of Hollywood.
    There was, for instance, Alan Ladd Hardware, which I suspect had been started by Ladd or his wife Sue Carol as a hedge against the vagaries of