Rancho Mirage isn’t just a playground for the presidents. It’s a hideaway for stars, politicians and hoodlums.
When Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned in disgrace, pleading no contest to tax evasion in 1973, he went into seclusion in Rancho Mirage at the Springs Country Club.
When Frank Sinatra was seen in a 1976 photo with New York’s top Mafia figures, the media found one mobster, Tommy Marson, living near Sinatra in Tamarisk Country Club – on Halper Lake Drive, around the corner from Marx Road, where “Walking Dead” producer Gale Anne Hurd grew up.
Tamarisk was founded in 1952 by developer Lou Halper and members ofthe 20th century comedy team, the Marx Bros. That's reflected by street signs at a Tamarisk north gate onPalm View Road, but they’re located at a shortdead end, so they’re as hidden from the general public as the Marx Brothers’ fictional nation of Freedonia.
Architecture enthusiast Melissa Riche says Rancho Mirage is known for its hideaway neighborhoods, or resort-style communities, as she calls them. She and her husband, photographer Jim Riche, have collaborated on thenew book, “Mod Mirage: The Midcentury Architecture of Rancho Mirage,” and it includes a whole section on neighborhoods hidden in plain sight, titled “Communities.”
Similar planned communities can be found throughout the Coachella Valley, but research indicates Rancho Mirage had a unique vision for being a conglomerate of communities well before it incorporated in 1973.
Itsplanned housing developments include its first one, Magnesia Falls Cove, off Highway 111 southeast of Bob Hope, and Desert Braemar, the desert's first apartment/townhouse cooperative, nestled behind gates on Highway 111 next to Kobe Japanese Steak House. The "Communities" section also includes photos and text of the nation’s first luxury mobile home park, developed by singer-actor Bing Crosby and designed by William F. Cody, subject of a 2016 documentary titled “Desert Maverick: The Singular Architecture of William F. Cody.”
More: Barbara Sinatra's romance with Frank began at Tamarisk
More: Modernism preview among top things to do in desert this week
Most pages in this section are devoted to the labyrinth of neighborhoods Riche calls the Tamarisk Communities. These developments occupy nooks and crannies around Tamarisk from Frank Sinatra Drive, where Nancy Sinatra has a home in Tamarisk Village, to near Gerald Ford Drive, about a mile north of the fairway home of the late President Ford in Thunderbird Country Club.
These Tamarisk communities have names like Valley of the Sun, Green Acres, Tamarisk West, Cody Court andTamarisk Ranchos, where the Riches live. They are clusters of uniquely designed homes on mostly modest-sized lots, making them housing tracts that literally threw away the mold.
“I thought that talking about these communities was as interesting as talking about the individual homes that were owned by rich people because the people who were buying these houses in these smaller communities – which then became bigger communities – were looking for something a little different,” said Melissa Riche, a UK native who moved to Rancho Mirage in 2013. “They were looking for a home that was lower maintenance but gave them a neighborhood feel, living in a group of people.”
"Mod Mirage" seeks to explore the unique architecture in Rancho Mirage, not showcase celebrity homes, like another coffee table book released for this weekend’s Fall Modernism Week Preview, “Hollywood Modern: Houses of the Stars,” by Michael Stern and Alan Hess.
Riche is a little cryptic about the information she divulges about these resort-style communities and their past and present residents. She devotes six pages to Hurd’s house, for example, without telling what street it’s on, or that Gale Anne Hurd ever lived there, or that the producer also lived on CarolynCourt. She also doesn’t say that the “Green Acres” community she writes about is CarolynCourt. It's the name developers first used to advertise the cul de sac across Tamarisk Lane from Tamarisk Ranchos.*
"Mod Mirage" feature photos and text about the architecture of homes that once belonged to the likes of Sinatra, Crosby, Red Skelton, Harpo Marx and his brother Gummo, and Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball in a section called “Celebrity Homes.” But it doesn’t tell you what streets they're on.
“I didn’t mention people’s names unless they felt really comfortable about it.” Riche saidshe talked to Gale Anne Hurd on the phone. “That wasn’t really what it was about. I didn’t mention any of the owners’ families specifically unless I felt comfortable doing it.”
Ride-along
Riche will give a community tour of the Tamarisk area during Modernism Week in February, and she agreed to give The Desert Sun a golf cart tour of several Tamarisk resort-style communities.
She drove with a videographer riding shotgun and this reporter standing in the back of the cart, where the golf bags are usually strapped, riding tailgate with my hair flying in the wind like an unkept field of grass.
We drove through Tamarisk Ranchos, which was designed by William Krisel, architect for the Elvis Presley Honeymoon House in Palm Springs, which Look Magazine called “the House of Tomorrow.”
We turned left from Palm View onto Tamarisk Lane and inhaled the intoxicating site of Tastee-Freez founder Leo Maranz’s house near the fourth tee at Tamarisk, designed by Val Powelson with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof resembling an Albert Frey gas station.
We drove back across Palm View Road and turned left on CarolynCourt, where Riche said a house owned by Songwriters Hall of Fame co-founder Howie Richmond had been rebuilt after a fire in a style contrasting other "Green Acres" homes.
We drove down Palm View Road, passing Gummo Marx’s Val Powelson-designed home, nicknamed “Sputnik” because it was built the same year the Russian satellite was launched. Gummo’s son, Bob, built that, Green Acres andthe Maranz house.
We motored past the Dr. Henry Jaffe home, resemblinga movie front with its flat roof and long, cream-colored brick wall with a louvered front door looking more like the entry to a closetthan its spectacular indoor-outdoor world built around a pool. It was built by former Palm Springs Mayor Bill Foster from a design by William Cody.
We drove south toward Chappel, viewing a house built by developer Fred Mottle, and Riche offered to tell me some stories about my block, Mottle Circle. But, frankly,there are other neighborhoods much more storied.
We ultimatelyturned right into Cody Court, eight flat-roofed homes on one-and-a-half-acres of land that was known as the 10th Fairway Condominiums before Cody’s name became such a commodity. It's accessible by a long, shared driveway and the fairway homes look out across the 17th fairwayto Frank Sinatra's compound.
Riche has the code to the Tamarisk gate, so we enteredthe private grounds to view the Hurd house, designed by Christer Barlund with a "building within a building" theme. Next door is the Sydney Charney residence, designed by the firm of Wexler & Harrison with such a classic mid-century modern motif, aphoto of it wasselected for the cover of “Mod Mirage.”**
Egalitarian mix of residents
To Riche, these Rancho Mirage communities are historic because of the dazzling designs by architects such as Cody, Krisel, Donald Wexler and Richard Neutra. Palm Springs also has a wealth of resort-style communities, where one can easily get lost amid the glow of spectacular architecture in districts such as old Las Palmas, the Movie Star Colony and the Canyon Country Clubneighborhood.
But Riche says the concept of communal luxury desert living was born in Rancho Mirage.
“I think it was adopted by Palm Springs later on,” Riche said. “When Rancho Mirage started building its resort-style communities, Palm Springs mostly had hotels and trailer parks and individual homes. They weren’t building communities that had a central pool. So, they actually started copying what was happening in Rancho Mirage.”
But to a resident of the area, the Tamarisk communities are real neighborhoods where some folks might be rich or famous, and others might be middle-class folks who can afford the modest plot sizes. The egalitarian nature of the community makes it as enticing as the fact that Frank Sinatra lived across the fairway.
When we drove into Cody Court, I recalled usingthe community Jacuzzi as a guest of Harpo’s widow, Susan Marx. Riding the golf cart into CarolynCourt, I remembered playing tennis in the Richmond back yard. Heading down Tamarisk Lane, I noted that the co-founder of People magazine, Hal Wingo, lives in a cul de sacwe were passing.
But this was also where our kids went trick-or-treating. The beautifully-landscaped lawns were yards where I picked up our dogs' poop. Bullies scared my kids near Tamarisk Country Club just like they do in more notorious neighborhoods.
The city of Rancho Mirage commissioned a Historic Resources Survey in 2003 that determined what was most"peculiar" to Rancho Mirage wasits "cooperative clusters of single-family homes."
“There were approximately five such clusters built in Rancho Mirage,” said the Leslie Heumann and Associates study, “each consisting of privately owned homes, usually similar in style, grouped around communal grounds, swimming poolsand sometimes driveways and carports. Inherent in the cooperative plan is the belief that a country club/resort atmosphere naturally encourages socializing in common areas before retreating to private dwellings."
The Cody Court and Tamarisk Rancho complexes were found to be "substantially intact" and were recommended as historic districts, which they became. A cluster of homes between Early Times Road and Country Club Drive and the Tierra Del Sol development off Bob Hope Drove were found to be "fragmented" with intact individual homes.
The survey doesn't shy away from giving the addresses of these significant houses. In Tamarisk Ranchos, it notes that Groucho Marx lived at 36-928 Pinto Way, next to his banker, Al Hart, CEO of City National Bank, who also came up with the quick ransom money for Sinatra in 1963 when Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped.
But one can't really understand the distinction between living on a fairway and a resort-style community until you’re standing on a communal lawn looking at how the architecture encourages, perhaps demands close relationships with your neighbors.
Groucho’s modest, turquoise-trimmed house has a flat roof and a stone front reminiscent of the rock wall at Krisel’s Elvis Honeymoon House. You can imagine Groucho sitting on a patio chair, smoking a cigar and throwing barbs at neighbors like screenwriter Harry Tugend (who wrote films from Shirley Temple’s “Poor Little Rich Girl” to Jerry Lewis’ “Who’s Minding the Store”) and Lawrence Weingarten (who produced the Marx Bros.’ “A Day at the Races” and Sinatra’s “Tender Trap”).
Golfers can literally see into the living rooms at the larger homes on the fairways. In the resort-style communities, the party is more intimate, but it's closed to outsiders.
“Houses that were built on golf courses usually were built by people with very deep pockets, especially at Tamarisk,” said Riche. “They were people who were very philanthropic. They had big art collections;they had a lot of parties. Facing the golf courses, you’re kind of making a statement because everyone on the golf course, whether you’re President Eisenhower or Leonard Firestone or Kirk Douglas, is going to be is walking by your house going, ‘Oh, that’s cool!’
“So, it’s kind of the architectural equivalent of dress to impress, whereas, if you’re off the golf course in a smaller community, you’re not trying to create the same impression.”
Book events
Saturday: Fall Modernism Week Preview book launch. Sold out. Modernismweek.com
Sunday: Book-signing, 1-3p.m., Just Fabulous, 515 N. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs. Justfabulous.com
Nov. 11: Book-signing, 2 p.m., Barnes & Noble, Westfield Mall, Palm Desert.(760) 346-0725
Nov. 13: Talk and book-signing, 2 p.m., Rancho Mirage Public Library, 71-000 Highway 111, Rancho Mirage. Ranchomiragelibrary.org
Modernism Week Fall Preview
When: Oct. 18-21
Information and tickets: modernismweek.com
*An earlier version of this story misspelled the street name Carolyn Court.
**The Historic Resources Survey reported the Charney residence was designed by William Cody, but Riche found evidence that the architects wereWexler & Harrison
