Racquet Club attracted Hollywood to Palm Springs

On July 23, 2014, a massive fire destroyed part of what remained of the historic Palm Springs Racquet Club, putting an end to any hope that one day this iconic part of the history of Palm Springs could be resurrected. At the time of the fire, the Racquet Club was on a city list of the six most endangered historic buildings, but sadly, the destruction came before the city could provide either the security or the laws to protect the property.

The history of the Palm Springs Racquet Club started very simply when tennis lovers Charlie Farrell and Ralph Bellamy were looking for a spot where they could enjoy the sport they loved without any limitations as to the time of day or the duration of the time spent playing the game they loved. The Racquet Club started out with tennis being the single focus but soon it grew into a glamorous desert escape for those involved in the business of making movies.

The Racquet Club, according to co-founder Farrell, wasn’t planned; it just seemed to evolve. When Charlie Farrell first visited Palm Springs, he was with his mother and they stopped off in the city after a personal appearance in Phoenix. They arrived by train and stayed at The Desert Inn. A couple of years later, Farrell’s good friend and co-star, Janet Gaynor, suggested that Farrell return to the desert and find a place where he could stay for the season. She told him to look up a realtor by the name of Harold Hicks, whose father had been an early developer and the founder of the Palm Springs Water Company. Hicks found him an apartment at the Casa Palmeras, which is still located at the corner of Tamarisk Road and Indian Canyon Drive.

Racquet Club fire cause classified as 'undetermined'

The beautiful weather attracted many of Farrell’s friends to the desert and tennis was the game that they all enjoyed. The El Mirador Hotel had tennis courts but Farrell and his friends had to wait hours to be able to play a set. According to Farrell, the town was filled with tennis players who couldn’t get the time they wanted on the courts at The Desert Inn or the El Mirador Hotel because the hotels did not want them to crowd out their paying guests.

One day, when Farrell was playing polo at the Palm Springs Polo Club, he ran into Hicks and Hicks told him about 200 acres that was for sale way out on the north side of Palm Springs. He told him that it was one-half mile north from the El Mirador Hotel and that it was only $30 per acre. Farrell said he was unimpressed, but when he talked to his friend and tennis partner, actor Bellamy, they decided that the price was too good to pass up and they purchased the property. They hired the best court constructor they could find and instructed him to build not one but two courts right in the middle of the 200 acres. They planted Tamarisk trees around the courts to cut down on the wind and the sand that would blow across the desert.

They opened their courts on Christmas Day in 1934 and charged $1-a-day to play. The charge was the same if you hit one ball or if you played for the entire day. No longer did they have to feel guilty if they played from sunrise to sunset because they had two of the finest tennis courts money could buy. More and more of their friends came to play and they decided that forming a tennis club was the way to go.

At first a membership cost $50 per year and then they raised the yearly fee to $75. Each time they raised the rate they sold more memberships. The number of memberships soared when they started charging $100 and they realized that they needed more courts. They hired the same contractor and instructed him to build two more tennis courts.

Farrell and Bellamy starting adding accessories to the club-like patios. They added bathrooms, a clubhouse with lockers, showers and eventually they dammed up the irrigation ditch to make a swimming pool. They sold off sections of the original 200 acres to finance the improvements to the club. They hired Mitch Leisen, a top Hollywood director and an original member of the club, to design the bar. To celebrate the completion of their bar, the Bamboo Room, they invited many of their friends and locals to come and enjoy the truck loads of Chicken a la King brought by Melba and Frank Bennett, owners of Deep Well Ranch. Some of those attending the party were Marlene Dietrich, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Robert Taylor, Ginger Rogers, Paul Lukas, Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Frank Morgan and Will Rogers. Not only did the Racquet Club attract celebrities, local business owners and influential citizens of Palm Springs came and hobnobbed with Hollywood.

The Racquet Club from the beginning always attracted movie stars, movie moguls, businessmen and political leaders, but the true stars were the ones who shone the brightest on the tennis courts. The Davis Cup Team trained at the Racquet Club and Alice Marble not only trained, but worked in the sports shop before she went on to make tennis history. They hired professional tennis players to give lessons and keep the level of competition on the courts at a consistently challenging level.

Eventually Farrell constructed guest cottages that were situated around the actual clubhouse, tennis courts and pool and he served as both the manager and the host of what had become a private resort hotel. He returned to Palm Springs after serving in the Navy during World War II and became very active in the city’s politics. He was persuaded to run for city council and won. He served in that capacity and as mayor throughout the 1940s and ‘50s. He sold The Racquet Club in 1959.

Over the years, the property was sold multiple times and each new owner had a new idea of how to capitalize on the history of The Racquet Club while utilizing the buildings for a different purpose. In September of 2013, Judy Dlugac, president and founder of Olivia Cruises & Resorts, purchased the property and planned to create an "LGBT and friends" housing project on the site. All of her plans were suspended after the fire and as of today no plans for development of the property have been announced.

Renee Brown is director of education and associate curator for the Palm Springs Historical Society.