Anyone who spends a couple hours chatting with Greater Palm Springs historian Jim Cook will leave the conversation with a new understanding of Hollywood’s desert playground. Cook, a docent with the Palm Springs Historical Society, is on the committee involved with restoring Palm Springs’ historic Plaza Theatre. Cook has designed exciting lectures to coincide with the reopening of the Plaza Theatre in 2025, and he speaks about Greater Palm Springs history for charitable causes. The historian tells a captivating tale of two cities in his presentation titled “Hollywood at Home in Palm Springs.”
In Hollywood lore, actress Greta Garbo watched her star turn in the world premiere of Camille (1936) from the back of the Plaza Theatre. For decades to come, Greater Palm Springs would be a haven for stars of film and television. But among such greats as Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, Dinah Shore, and Liberace were also child actors who found relaxation and recreation in the area. “This was getting away from work in Hollywood. That's what Palm Springs always was for any celebrity, adult or child. It was a getaway,” Jim Cook tells Visit Greater Palm Springs. Three young actors, Margaret O’Brien, Shirley Temple, and Jackie Coogan grew up on movie sets but came to know Greater Palm Springs as an oasis at different times in their lives, through ups and downs of their show business careers.
Margaret O’Brien
Margaret O’Brien, best known for her juvenile Oscar-winning performance in the film “Meet Me in St. Louis” alongside Judy Garland, has been a Palm Springs-frequent ever since she was a little girl. “Palm Springs is 100 miles away from Hollywood … in a desert and you wouldn’t expect anything to be in the middle of it because almost all you can see is sand. But all of a sudden you drive over a hill and there is the prettiest town you ever saw,” she explained in a news piece she wrote in 1948, capturing the appeal for busy child stars resting from work. “It’s not like a regular town because people only go there on their vacations. And the reason it is so popular is I guess [because] the sun shines almost all the time there.”
As a guest at Palm Springs' Ingleside Inn during her childhood, O’Brien took her time each morning deciding between all the activities Greater Palm Springs has to offer — including horseback riding, swimming, biking, skating, or playing tennis. Now 87, she has appeared at many charity events in Palm Springs in the past decade and was honored with a special display of her Oscar and other memorabilia at the McCallum Adobe Museum downtown.
She presented Mel Haber — of Melvyn’s Restaurant fame — with the Golden Halo Award of Film Achievement and has spoken in special discussions at the restaurant, as well. “It was a lot of fun being at the Ingleside Inn,” the actress told journalist Gloria Greer. “It brought back many memories to me because, of course, I came here with my mother when I was just a little girl.” In those days, the inn would have been owned by Ruth Hardy, the city councilwoman credited with having palm trees decorating either side of Palm Canyon Drive. Haber’s 1975 purchase of the inn’s property and addition of a lounge and restaurant were well-received. “The cool thing about Mel is, he sort of brings that old Hollywood glamour into the 1970s,” Jim Cook explains.
Shirley Temple
America’s sweetheart of the 1930s, Shirley Temple, was also known to catch some sunshine in Greater Palm Springs. She enjoyed the riches of a resort culture established by Desert Inn proprietor Nellie Coffman, whose sanatorium evolved into a hotel destination. In his presentation, Cook makes it clear that women-built Palm Springs, and Coffman was one of them.
One clip of Shirley Temple snacking and making other children laugh in Palm Springs was a staged opportunity to depict “Miss Curly Top” as a regular kid, Cook says. Temple’s time in Greater Palm Springs appears to have been a much-needed respite from her bustling, but challenging, career.
Temple’s professional path as an adult was one of diplomacy and ambassadorship rather than film sets, but she reportedly returned to Greater Palm Springs from time to time for charitable events.
Jackie Coogan
Before Margaret O’Brien and Shirley Temple, Hollywood was swept away by child actor Jackie Coogan. Born in 1914, he was a popular boy of his own day and found success in the 1921 Charlie Chaplin film “The Kid.” “Like Shirley Temple, Coogan created styles in hair, clothing, and temperament into which hundreds of thousands of America’s children were expected to fit,” The New York Times observed in 1972. Coogan seems to have enjoyed Palm Springs not in his childhood, but as a young man. Jim Cook explains, “In the silent [movie] era, in the ’20s, this was pretty rugged territory,” most likely predating when kids like Coogan would have played under the desert sun.
By the time Coogan was a young adult in 1936, he was featured in the MGM short film “Sunkist Stars at Palm Springs” with the actress he would marry the following year, Betty Grable. Like the couple’s marriage altogether, their 1937 honeymoon in Palm Springs was relatively brief. They had to get back to work on a film, The Associated Press reported. News of the duo’s nuptials garnered attention for “millionaire” Coogan. But he wasn’t to be a millionaire. Coogan’s father had passed away and his mother and stepfather withheld his earnings from him, per The New York Times in his 1984 obituary. The outlet reported that he “agonized for two years before deciding to file suit to recover the money.” A mere $35,000 was all Coogan received in adulthood for his child labor.
Greater Palm Springs clearly had something to offer Coogan later in his life, as he dismissed the smog (and baggage, hopefully) of Hollywood for the desert in the late 1960s. Today, he leaves a legacy by having inspired the “Coogan Account,” a trust wherein “15% of the minor’s gross wages are required to be withheld by the employer and deposited … within 15 days of employment,” per the Screen Actors Guild. A plaque at Our Lady of Solitude Church in downtown Palm Springs, where the actor was quite involved, recognizes Coogan: “His personal suffering has blessed future generations.”
Jim Cook notes that Greater Palm Springs is still a place for grown-up child stars to find a new home. “Danny Bonaduce of ‘The Partridge Family’ just retired here and moved to a home here in the valley. So, we still get former child stars that want to come out and, now, enjoy the area in a different way than they could have as a child,” he says. Bonaduce’s Instagram is filled with photos of him living his best Greater Palm Springs life, including his “quest” to find the best date shake in the desert. (Shields and Hadley were both contenders, but Great Shakes was the winner!)
Stories of child stars finding their desert oasis remind us why they needed such a respite, though the problems they were facing were much more than they could solve without a trustworthy guardian or advocate. Today, Greater Palm Springs is waiting for folks of any age to discover, and they’ll soon be able to see glimmers of Hollywood history at the reopened Plaza Theatre. For now, fans can visit the Ingleside Inn, or find the site of the former Desert Inn, to walk in the tracks of favorite actors who have inspired us — and to imagine the Palm Springs those stars experienced.
