Movie Colony East
The neighborhood had been called Ruth Hardy Park for years, after the civic activist who helped shape mid-century Palm Springs politics. In May 2012, residents voted to rename it Movie Colony East — a decision that said something honest about what the neighborhood had always been, even if it had never quite said so officially. The stars had been there all along. Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Hedy Lamarr, Carmen Miranda, Keely Smith: the names read like a Hollywood studio's golden-era roster, and many of them had actually lived here, in houses tucked behind walls and hedges, close enough to downtown to walk to dinner but private enough to rest between pictures.
Twin Palms: Where Sinatra Began
Frank Sinatra's Twin Palms estate, completed in 1947 and designed by E. Stewart Williams, is the neighborhood's defining landmark and one of Palm Springs' designated Class 1 Historic Sites. Sinatra commissioned the house when his career was at its first peak, and the design Williams created for him — low, horizontal, opening onto a piano-shaped pool — reflected the values of a man who understood both glamour and comfort. The house became Sinatra's primary Palm Springs residence for years, the place where he entertained, recovered, and lived between the demands of recording sessions and touring schedules. It is now a vacation rental, allowing visitors to spend nights in spaces where Sinatra actually moved.
A Neighborhood That Grew Up with Hollywood
Movie Colony East developed primarily in the late 1930s and 1940s, when the film industry's relationship with Palm Springs was at its most organic. Studios encouraged — and sometimes mandated — that their contract players spend weekends in the desert rather than in Los Angeles, where they might find trouble. Palm Springs was close enough to return for Monday shoots, far enough to feel like escape. The neighborhood that grew up near the El Mirador Hotel, which had opened in 1928 and attracted the first wave of celebrity visitors, offered the kind of residential privacy that the adjacent, better-known Movie Colony district also provided: mid-century modernist houses with mountain views and hedged yards.
The Roster
Bing Crosby, whose voice defined American popular music for a generation, kept a Palm Springs presence, as did Hedy Lamarr, the Austrian-American actress and inventor whose private life was as complex as her screen persona. Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian actress famous for fruit-topped headwear and vivid performance style, was among the neighborhood's residents during her Hollywood years. Keely Smith, the singer who built much of her career alongside Louis Prima, also lived here. What these residents shared beyond profession was access — to the desert's climate, to the social world that Palm Springs offered its celebrity class, and to the particular freedom of a place where being famous was so common as to be unremarkable.
Modern Memory
The 2012 renaming was a pragmatic act of heritage preservation dressed up as civic identity. By aligning the neighborhood's official name with its actual history, residents signaled their awareness that the district's value — cultural, architectural, real estate — was tied to that celebrity past. The houses from the 1940s and 1950s remain, many of them restored or carefully maintained, their mid-century lines intact. Movie Colony East sits between downtown Palm Springs and the more residential neighborhoods to the east, its character distinct enough to be recognized as a district rather than simply a street or two. The stars are long gone, but the houses they commissioned keep their stories.
From the Air
Located at 33.84°N, 116.53°W in Palm Springs, California, east of downtown. Palm Springs International Airport (ICAO: KPSP) is approximately 1.5 miles to the southeast.