Fifty years ago, in The Deer Park, Norman Mailer described an exuberant modernist oasis situated 90 miles east of Los Angeles. "Painted in the lemon-yellow of the Yacht Club, it was open to the sky," he wrote of the fictional Laguna Room. "[A]n amoebic pool strayed between tables, rounded a portion of the dance floor, and ended behind the bar, a play of colored lights changing the water into a lake of tomato aspic, lime jello, pale consomme, and midnight ink." This aquatic fantasy existed in a mythic mid-century resort that Mailer called Desert D'Or. The name fooled no one; Desert D'Or was unmistakably Palm Springs. Like the aging nightclub chanteuse who holds court over Desert D'Or's well-heeled, well-oiled Hollywood hustlers, Palm Springs is atimeless, somewhat campy siren, forever beckoning hip-seeking bonsvivants. Nestled at the base of the purple mountain majesty of San Jacinto, it is a city of sybaritic charms. At the turn of the century, when it was first developed, Palm Springs served as a health retreat, offering year-round sunshine, dry air, and restorative waters. By the 1930s, it had developed a reputation as a Hollywood playground, a discreet and decadent getaway that would swing to the strains of "Anything Goes."
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