One of the best parts of starting this blog is the many connections I’ve been able to make with people who share this unique predilection of mine. I recently had the pleasure of meeting up with mid-century-modern-house-stalker George Smart, of the USModernist website, who was in town for Palm Springs’ annual Modernism Week. He had some ideas about a couple of future collaborations between our two sites and also invited me to appear on his podcast USModernist Radio (aka the “Car Talk” of design podcasts). We recorded the bit at the Skylark Hotel, a fabulous mid-century lodging at 1466 North Palm Canyon Drive that George and his team had taken over for the duration of their visit. I was unfamiliar with the locale prior to showing up for my interview and was enthralled by the property’s sleek lines, bright colors, and retro touches. I was even more intrigued when George informed me that the place is a filming location! As he explained, Skylark Hotel appeared in the 2017 movie Palm Swings, which I had never heard of. I, of course, streamed it the second I got home. Sadly, the flick was not good. At all. Thanks to its gorgeous architecture, though, I figured the Skylark was still worthy of a blog post.
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Surprisingly, I was not able to dig up much of the hotel’s history online or elsewhere. In fact, there was not a single mention of the place – past or present – in any of my Palm Springs history or tourism books.
From what I was able to glean, the property was originally established in 1955. I believe it initially operated under its current moniker, Skylark Hotel.
Though I haven’t been able to verify it, according to several blurbs I came across online (here and here), the site was a major celeb hot spot in its early days with such stars as Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Peter Lawford, Jayne Mansfield, and Marlon Brando all frolicking in the 9-foot-deep central swimming pool.
Per an article in the San Bernardino Sun, by 1988 the hotel was being operated as the Palm Springs Canyon Inn.
That same year, it was purchased by Fran and Bill Flesher, the owners of Treehouse Fun Ranch, a nudist camp in San Bernardino. The couple renamed the site “Treehouse Too Hotel” and transformed it into a clothing-optional lodging.
They also added a clover-leaf-shaped spa to the grounds.
As some point, the hotel was again transformed, this time into the clothing-optional gay resort Camp Palm Springs. It was then that it began to fall into disrepair.
By the time that hotelier Jesse Rhodes got his hands on the lodging in 2013, many of the original mid-century modern touches had vanished. As he told Palm Springs Life, “Everything was covered up and painted very dark. But when I walked into the property, I knew that under all that stuff they had covered up the original architecture would be there – and it was.” So he set about rehabilitating the structure, which required a virtual gutting of each of the site’s 29 rooms.
The result is nothing short of retro-fabulous, though that doesn’t come as much of a surprise being that restoring old hotels is old hat for Rhodes, who has also worked on such storied properties as New York’s Plaza Hotel and San Diego’s Hotel Del Coronado.
Of the renovation process, he said, “I didn’t remodel the hotel, I restored it back to what it was. There’s a book called Palm Springs Holiday and it has a photograph of the hotel from 1955 with a caption that says, ‘The long-vanished Skylark Hotel.’ Well guess what? It didn’t vanish. It’s reappeared exactly the way it was except for the fact that it has Egyptian cotton sheets, flat screen televisions, Wi-Fi, and dual-pane glass windows. But if you look at that photo from 1955 and compare it to now, it looks the same.”
One notable difference is the AstroTurf chaise lounge that now graces the hotel’s entrance. While initially displayed at the Pepper Tree Inn (now Alcazar Palm Springs), the Blue McRight-designed piece, titled “Lawn Chair,” was relocated to the Skylark in 2013.
Other modern amenities include Danish mahogany and walnut furnishings, custom-made pillow-top mattresses, and mountain and pool views.
Clothing is also no longer optional, which means children are now welcome. As Rhodes says of the resort, “Instead of it being straight-friendly or gay-friendly, we’re just friendly.”
Back to Palm Swings. The racy flick (which plays much like a Lifetime Original Movie) revolves around Allison Hughes (Sugar Lyn Beard) and her husband, Mark Hughes (Jackson Davis), a young couple who have just moved to the desert. As they quickly discern, their neighbors (and pretty much everyone else in the area) are swingers. (Talk about a cliché.) So the two decide to test the waters. (When in Rome, I guess.) Skylark Hotel shows up twice in the flick. It first pops up very briefly in the movie’s opening montage in which Allison and Mark are shown driving their U-Haul into town.
Skylark Hotel is later the site of the raucous annual “Palm Swings Weekend” swingers party, hosted by Ms. Cherry Bomb (Tia Carrere). (See what I mean? Come aawwwwnnnn! Could the premise be any more ridiculous?)
The Palm Swings Weekend party takes place mainly around Skylark’s pool.
According to the Desert Sun, not only did Palm Swings utilize the hotel as a filming location, but the cast and crew stayed there during the three-week shoot, which took place in the summer of 2014. (The fact that the movie was not released until over three years later, and then only digitally, is quite telling.)
A rendering of the hotel also appeared on the flick’s poster.
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Big THANK YOU to George Smart, of the USModernist website, for telling me about this location! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Skylark Hotel, from Palm Swings, is located at 1466 North Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs’ Uptown Design District. You can visit the property’s official website here.
