Palm Springs: Hollywood's Desert Playground for Stars and Filmmakers

For almost a century, Palm Springs has served as the desert retreat, creative playground, and second home for Hollywood’s brightest. What began as a convenient getaway for early film stars evolved into a full-blown glittering enclave, where privacy, sunshine, and style met mid-century design and glamour.

Why Palm Springs Became the Stars’ Escape

The allure of Palm Springs went beyond its sun-soaked landscapes and serene desert vistas. For Hollywood’s glitterati, the combination of privacy, luxury resorts, and a welcoming desert community made it the perfect escape from the pressures of Tinseltown. In this playground, stars could relax, recharge, and socialize away from the public eye.

Close Enough for the Studios, Far Enough from the Spotlight

In Hollywood’s classic studio era, actors were often under contract and needed to be available at a moment’s notice,  but they also craved escape. Palm Springs, a little over two hours from Los Angeles, offered the perfect balance: reachable when needed, but distant enough to disappear. This dynamic helped spur a migration of stars seeking both accessibility and anonymity.

Desert Scenery Perfect for Films (and Hideaways)

Long before celebrity vacations, filmmakers recognized Palm Springs and the surrounding Coachella Valley as a versatile backdrop. Starting as early as 1915, with films like Peer Gynt, the region’s rugged desert landscapes, canyons, and palm-dotted oases offered ready-made sets for Westerns, adventuring serials, and romance films.

Silent-film icon Rudolph Valentino famously filmed desert scenes for his 1921 hit The Sheik here — a production that helped cement Palm Springs’ reputation as both exotic film set and romantic escape.

In the 1938 film Her Jungle Love (the first jungle film in Technicolor), a scantily clad “native” Dorothy Lamarr is paired with Ray Milland. Hollywood felt it necessary to decorate the 15-mile-long Palm Canyon Drive with $330,000 worth of transported vines and foliage to create an authentic “tropical rain forest.”  Portions of the movie were also filmed in Tahquitz Canyon at the waterfall.

In the gloriously tawdry 1950 film noir The Damned Don’t Cry, Joan Crawford plays a gangster’s moll who hides out at her boyfriend’s estate in “Desert Springs.” Palm Springs Modernist architect E. Stewart Williams designed the mid-century masterpiece featured in the film, which Frank Sinatra owned.

In Sean Connery’s last official outing as 007 and the only Bond film to be shot in Palm Springs, 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, James discovers two bikini-clad female gymnasts inside the 2,400 square-foot Elrod House (a stunning circular house built into a mountainside). They introduce themselves as Bambi and Thumper, of course. The exclusive Southridge Drive retreat was created in 1968 by architect John Lautner for the celebrated Palm Springs interior designer Arthur Elrod.

Learn more about filming in Palm Springs: Hollywood’s Playground: Movies Filmed in Palm Springs

Celebrity Resorts, Clubs & Homes

Palm Springs Racquet Club

Founded in 1934 by actors Charlie Farrell and Ralph Bellamy, the Racquet Club became Hollywood’s private retreat: tennis, cocktails, nighttime parties, and a place to “get away without getting away.” Over time, many stars bought homes nearby, spawning a luxurious estate-heavy neighborhood.

Dinah Shore purchased her home in the Las Palmas neighborhood. Leonardo DiCaprio now owns the Dinah Shore estate on Hermosa in the prestigious Las Palmas neighborhood. 432 Hermosa is available for stays or events. Floor-to-ceiling windows throughout bring the beauty of the desert, the clusters of palm trees, and the majestic San Jacinto Mountains into the estate. This furnished house rental is one of the finest examples of Mid-Century architecture in Southern California, the birthplace of the progressive design movement.

Dinah Shore and George Montgomery at the Racquet Club

Names that echo through Palm Springs’ past, actors, musicians, singers, casually walked among the palms here: classic mid-century modern homes designed by the era’s top architects offered privacy and indulgence.

The Desert Inn and El Mirador Hotel

Long before Hollywood stars turned Palm Springs into their preferred getaway, two legendary resorts set the stage: the Desert Inn and the El Mirador Hotel.

The Desert Inn, founded by Nellie Coffman in 1909, quickly grew into one of California’s most prestigious retreats. Its combination of privacy, impeccable service, and restorative desert air attracted screen legends such as Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, and Marlene Dietrich, who helped establish Palm Springs as a discreet oasis for the Hollywood elite.

Learn how Marilyn Monroe was discovered at the Desert Inn: How Marilyn Monroe was Discovered in Palm Springs

When the El Mirador Hotel opened in 1928 with its iconic bell tower, Spanish Revival glamour, and Olympic-sized pool, it became an instant social hub for the stars. Famous guests included Gary Cooper, Shirley Temple, Bing Crosby, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Eleanor Powell, and Joan Crawford, among many others.

Together, these two iconic properties shaped the city’s early celebrity culture, laying the groundwork for Palm Springs’ enduring identity as Hollywood’s playground.

Parker Palm Springs

Long before the $27 million Jonathan Adler transformation of the Parker Palm Springs into a hip hangout in 2004, the resort opened as California’s very first Holiday Inn in 1959. Yet, in between, a Hollywood-singing cowboy and a TV talk show host/media mogul each separately owned the 13-acre property at one time or another. Gene Autry bought the Holiday Inn property in 1961 and ran it as his namesake hotel.

In 1994, French fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy revamped the place into a mini Versailles in the desert. In 1998, billionaire and longtime local resident Merv Griffin (creator of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune) picked up the property, keeping Givenchy’s name and marble-column-and-trellis aesthetics.

Merv Griffin with Zsa Zsa Gabor, who also owned a home in Palm Springs with her sister, Magna, and mother, Jolie.

Guests can still stay in Autry’s former two-bedroom, two-bathroom on-site residence at Parker Palm Springs.

Hollywood Escapes to Palm Springs

Many Hollywood stars owned homes in Palm Springs, including the Gabor sisters, Bob Hope, Lena Horne, Howard Hughes, Alan Ladd, Liberace, Dean Martin, Debbie Reynolds, and Frank Sinatra, among others. If they didn't own homes, they leased homes for the winter. They would gather at the Racquet Club and El Mirador Hotel for tennis, cocktails, and nightly entertainment. Everyone could be themselves without the eye of the cameras.

Jack Benny played himself on “Here’s Lucy” three times, starting with the second episode, “Lucy Visits Jack Benny” (HL S1; E2) on September 30, 1968. The action was set at Benny’s Palm Springs home,

Hollywood Mayors

Serving from 1988 to 1992, Sonny Bono remains Palm Springs’ most famous mayor (and its congressman up until he died in 1998). He was instrumental in creating the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

But two other legendary mayors of Palm Springs also hailed from Hollywood. The duo were BFFs and a driving force behind the most star-studded retreat Palm Springs has ever known: The Palm Springs Racquet Club. Frank Bogert (mayor from 1958 to 1966 and from 1982 to 1988) appeared in bit parts in Westerns as both an actor and a stuntman. He was also a lifelong friend of Lucille Ball, who also frequented Palm Springs.

John F. Kennedy and then Mayor Frank Bogert at the Palm Springs Airport.

Bogert’s good pal, Charles Farrell (mayor from 1948 to 1953), starred with Janet Gaynor in over a dozen films of the 1920s and 1930s and appeared in two 1950s TV shows.

Movies Filmed in Palm Springs

Palm Springs Confidential: A Hollywood Pedigree

Hollywood's Playground - Part 1