CURIOUS TRAVELER
BY JERRY CAMARILLO DUNN, JR.
W
hen people talk about Palm Springs, the desert
playground where Hollywood stars once hid
out and partied hard, it’s invariably “Sinatra this”
and “Sinatra that.” In the 1940s, the singer built
a modern house in the Movie Colony neighborhood, complete with
a piano-shaped pool. (The house is now available to rent for private
vacations and parties.) He regularly drank at Melvyn’s Restaurant &
Lounge. (If you care to emulate him, order Jack Daniels.) He dined for
three decades at the Lord Fletcher Inn; on one occasion Sinatra strolled
over to a nearby table as a candle-lit cake was brought out and sang
“Happy Birthday” to a flabbergasted stranger. Sinatra was generous to a
fault (and that fault was usually his latest girlfriend or his boozer buddies
from the Rat Pack).
But Ol’ Blue Eyes wasn’t the biggest name ever to hit town. In the
1930s, Albert Einstein was a regular houseguest at a Mediterranean-style
villa set against golden mountains on the sandy edge of town. It was the
home of his friend Samuel Untermyer, the first lawyer ever to receive a
$1-million fee. During his visits, the great physicist liked to sunbathe, often
on a hilltop behind the house – and not always with his clothes on.
Recently my wife, Merry, and I got to spend the night in Einstein’s
actual bedroom in what is now The Willows Historic Palm Springs Inn.
Ours was a comfortable sanctuary decorated with dark wood furniture. In
the morning, sunlight streamed through a door leading to a private patio,
and I woke up with my mind as clear as a desert sky.
My first thought:
Holy Theory of Relativity! Einstein slept here!
Did
occupying the same space as this luminous mind make me brighter? A
genius, even? Well, I liked to think so.
At least I’d been smart enough to winnow out the eight-room
Willows from all the other hotels and resorts in Palm Springs and the
surrounding desert. Over the years, the home’s guest list has included
HOT AND COOL:
PALM SPRINGS
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