Hollywood loves a good comeback story, and Palm Springs has one for the books.
In 1936, the dusty desert town’s Plaza Theatre staged its grand opening with the premiere of George Cukor’s romantic tragedy “Camille,” starring Greta Garbo at the height of her powers. Spotlights beamed into the night sky, a red carpet lined the entrance to the 800-seat Spanish Colonial Revival theater and flashbulbs burst on famous faces, including Frank Capra, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, Tyrone Power and Shirley Temple.
The splashy affair helped cement the reputation of the burgeoning community of about 1,000 full-time residents as a vacation retreat for Hollywood’s movers and shakers. Over the next 90 years, Palm Springs grew to become a world-famous resort town, with a population of around 45,000 that can swell to nearly twice that number with seasonal visitors, especially during its mild winters.
The Plaza Theatre, however, fell on hard times.
Despite serving as a gravitational center for the city’s entertainment scene for decades, it was shuttered in 2014. It sat run-down and vacant until 2019, when a campaign to revitalize it gained steam. On Dec. 1, after a $34-million renovation, the city’s cultural crown jewel reopened with a concert featuring superstar Cynthia Erivo at the height of her powers, backed by a jubilant Palm Springs Pops Orchestra. Spotlights beamed into the night sky, a red carpet lined the entrance and cameras flashed. The historic venue had come full circle.
“This is not a remodel,” said J.R. Roberts, president of the Palm Springs Plaza Theatre Foundation, which spearheaded the effort. “If we walked in here in 1936, this is exactly what it looked like, down to every color, every detail, every light.”
The only two aesthetic exceptions are an LED screen behind the stage and the theater seats, which were white leather and are now plush red. Gone are the swaths of burnt orange paint and neon flair that were part of the theater’s final incarnation as the home of the Fabulous Palm Springs Follies, a popular vaudeville show that ran for 23 seasons until the venue’s close in 2014.
The most substantial recent changes to the Plaza are in the guts of the place, unrecognizable to the naked eye: the heating, cooling and electrical systems have been redone, and the light and sound systems modernized.
The Plaza was built as an atmospheric theater — an immersive style pioneered by architect John Eberson in the 1920s. The hallmarks of these evocative, dreamlike spaces are architectural elements that evoke idyllic outdoor settings in far-off places. The Plaza features quaint Spanish village scenery built out of its side walls with background illumination that glows pink and then deep purple, emulating a setting sun as the lights go down. The domed blue ceiling is mottled with pinpricks of shining light, like stars emerging in the darkness.
Many of these original elements had been covered with drywall, partially destroyed, rebuilt with new elements or otherwise obscured, said Jason Currie, an architect and senior associate from Architectural Resources Group, which was contracted by the foundation to do the painstakingly detailed restoration. Equipped with the original blueprints, ARG embarked on a full-scale rehabilitation.
“The proscenium — this really decorative concrete that has stencil painting on it — was in place, but it had been covered over with a plaster wall to hide it and parts of it had been painted black,” Currie said. “The tile roof up above it had been completely removed and another one had been put on. So we took off all of the elements that had been built on top of it and restored it back to the original.”
The original was a unique stunner in its day, said historian Jim Cook, who recently published a book about the theater with Catherine Graham, “Desert Dream to Silver Screen: The Story of the Historic Palm Springs Plaza Theatre.”
The project was commissioned as part of the La Plaza shopping complex by Julia Carnell, the heiress to a national cash register empire based in Dayton, Ohio.
“In the midst of the Great Depression, she had oodles of cash,” said Cook. “And she loved to come out here and would stay just across the street at the Desert Inn, which was run by Nellie Coffman.”
Coffman didn’t just run the legendary resort, she imagined it when Palm Springs was still an Old West outpost on the way to L.A.
“Our town was built by these gutsy, powerful women — so unusual in this harsh desert environment,” Cook said, reclining in a seat on the theater’s mezzanine after a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Palm Spring Mayor Ron deHarte. “And those two names are at the center of the female wave that made this whole town what it is today.”
Carnell hired architect Harry Williams to build the La Plaza complex, which in addition to the movie theater, included a then-revolutionary mixed-use shopping center, which was centered around the rise of the automobile. There was a two-story parking garage where patrons could have their limousines serviced as well as casitas to rent for the season and a dormitory for working women above the shops.
“Julia was also very much about empowering women. She was a suffragist, and she wanted to make sure women had their place in this because it was an era where they often were forgotten,” Cook said.
History marched on, and the Plaza with it — segueing from an independently operated movie theater to a community arts center with live performances, including vaudeville and a sold-out Louis Armstrong show. In the early 1940s, the Plaza became a major hub for live radio broadcasts, beginning with Jack Benny, who was the first radio host to broadcast nationwide with his Sunday night show “Live From the Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs.” Toward the end of World War II, Frank Sinatra transferred his weekly radio program to the Plaza for a limited run.
In the 1970s, the Plaza was leased to a company that split the theater into two with a flimsy wall down the center and tore down the historic tiled box office out front — a much-lamented move that ultimately sparked the modern Palm Springs preservation movement, Cook noted.
Now that the Plaza is fully restored, the foundation brought on John Bolton from live event hospitality firm Oak View Group to serve as general manager. His first order of business was to invite a veritable who’s who of local arts groups and events to call the venue home. These include the Palm Springs Symphony, the Palm Springs Gay Men’s Chorus, Modernism Week, the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the Palm Springs International Jazz Festival and the soon-to-be-announced Classical Coachella music series.
“From a programming perspective, that also gives stability to the theater because national touring acts go in cycles,” said Bolton, adding that he is hoping to create annual traditions that last, including a sing-along Christmas Eve at the Plaza. “Another part of our mission is to push economic development downtown.”
The restored Plaza Theatre is expected to be a linchpin in the city’s downtown revitalization efforts, attracting people from far and wide to the area’s many hotels, restaurants and shops.
To date, Bolton has lined up more than 100 shows, which have attracted more than 10,000 ticket buyers from all 50 states. According to council member Jeffrey Bernstein, the venue is expected to accommodate approximately 135,000 patrons per year who will potentially generate more than $40 million in spending. The city expects the economic impact, including sales and hotel taxes, will be at least $21 million a year in small business support.
When Erivo’s concert ended on opening night, a cheerful crowd of more than 800 people rushed into the darkened streets looking for a nightcap and a bite to eat.
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