The most recorded voice in human history in the middle of the 20th century was that of Bing Crosby. His lilting baritone was instantly recognizable, his conversational style felt intimate and his songs were familiar to everyone. So, when Crosby named his desert development for his hit record of the Irving Berlin tune "Blue Skies," it was understood as just good fun.
Along Highway 111 in Rancho Mirage, Blue Skies Trailer Village was founded after Crosby appeared on a radio broadcast with Jack Benny at the El Mirador Hotel in Palm Springs. Benny regularly relocated his popular show to the desert for the winter. Crosby decided he wanted a nearby retreat where he could unwind with friends and have fun. It turned out to be just that.
Crosby had been
the second buyer of a golf course lot at the newly subdivided Thunderbird Ranch and Country Club. The first had been his movie star pal and "Road" picture compatriot, Bob Hope. Hope was featured in a Benny show at the El Mirador Hotel in March 1950. Both he and Crosby were increasingly around the desert, as both were thoroughly enamored of golf.
Thunderbird under the management of Frank Bogert had attracted lots of luminaries and golf afficionados, including Texas oilman D.B. McDaniel, movie star Randolph Scott, businessman Leonard Firestone, baseball phenom Ralph Kiner, TV stars and moguls Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball and bandleader Phil Harris and his movie star wife, Alice Faye. Within a year all the lots were taken.
Crosby sold his golf course lot in 1952 and, with his first wife Dixie Lee, purchased the first house in what would become Thunderbird Heights, on the new hillside development above the club. He would eventually move from Thunderbird Heights to Silver Spur Ranch along with his friend, songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen. And that same year, Crosby also bought land along Highway 111 for his new business venture, Blue Skies Trailer Village.
Many of his other associates and friends were also in the desert. Even Sol Siegel, who had produced the 1946 film "Blue Skies" that featured the tune of the same name, was a desert regular himself. Crosby was always looking for another business opportunity. This time he would involve his friends.
Crosby's concept was novel. He didn't simply build lots and rent them out. Instead, he brought in friends as investors and the named the streets for them. Forty-eight Hollywood heavyweights and business titans signed up, among them Barbara Stanwyck, Jack Benny, Jane Wyman, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Humphrey Bogart, Claudette Colbert, Danny Kaye, Sam Goldwyn, Greer Garson, William Perlberg, Freeman Gosden, Rosemary Clooney, Jose Ferrer, Joe Schenck, Ray Ryan, Bob Kenaston, Bill Edris and Ira Gershwin.
Blue Skies wasn't an isolated experiment. By the late 1950s, scores of trailer parks existed across the Coachella Valley, many of them treated as master-planned, landscaped, socially organized communities rather than temporary parking for travel trailers. Blue Skies offered upscale amenities, including a central clubhouse, individually customized lots of varying size and abundant landscaping. Crosby is credited with personally planting more than 200 palm trees on the property, and as the city required streetside trees to be up lit at night, the whole community softly glowed after dark.
Completed during 1955, the roughly 22-acre property boasted a tennis court, 65-foot-long swimming pool, spa, dance hall and clubhouse. At its center, Starlite Circle outlined a pitch-and-put green and was accessed through the main gate, which featured a silhouette of Crosby with his fedora and pipe, on Bing Crosby Road. Each trailer space was angled to avoid any sense of crowding and to maximize views. Lots included a 10-by-30-foot colored cement patio, parking space, storage and a small lawn. The master plan placed the utilities underground, adding to the village feel "no unsightly poles or overhead wiring detract from clumps of palm trees or interfere with the view."
There were communal facilities, "a utility house screened by a redwood fence contains a laundry room with washers, dryer and ironing facilities, and two completely enclosed drying areas. Here, too, is a restroom with tub and showers and dressing room."
The newspaper recorded the opening: "Here are trailers that are homelike, with ramadas and cabanas, with flagstone terraces or stepping stones, and redwood flower boxes, and each possesses amazing individuality."
The clubhouse, known as Tanner Hall in honor of a close friend of Crosby's who was instrumental in the development, was designed by William Cody. The imprimatur of the modernist architect whose design for the Thunderbird and El Dorado clubhouses put Blue Skies in good architectural company. The centralized building hosted shuffleboard tournaments, potluck suppers and variety shows echoing the Western- and luau-themed parties Crosby hosted there. The more silly and fun, the better.
In March 1955 an article in The Desert Sun featured a Gayle Studio photo captioned "Bing Crosby mingled with the trailerites and guests and tried his hand a flipping blueberry hotcakes. Here he is dishing them up for Phil Harris." The article noted that Blue Skies Village trailer park had opened New Year's Day "right next door to beautiful Thunderbird Country Club."
The park was touted as having a country club atmosphere, creating another oasis in the desert. "In a 45-foot Pan-American trailer of chrome and raspberry sherbert color enamel live the Joy Bradleys of Portland, who plan to spend half of each year at Blue Skies. They own a Cessna plane and fly back and forth, landing at Desert Air Park … They have lived in Australia and have tried all the best known vacation spots and their reaction is 'We have not seen anything as beautiful as this.'"
Life and Look magazines also ran enthusiastic stories about Blue Skies, fueling its success. A star-studded party would open each season along with the investors, and guests Phil Harris, Alice Faye, Bill Holden, Lauren Bacall and Frank Sinatra with daughter Nancy Sinatra attended.
In time, mobile homes replaced trailers with fanciful designs that mimicked movie sets. Residents over the decades built out highly personalized dwellings which have become famous for whimsy. A Japanese Minka with a tea house, an Egyptian Tomb and a mini-replica of Tara from "Gone With the Wind" were all accommodated in the neighborhood. The improvements were made possible by the site itself being on fee-simple land and individuals being able to own the ground under their home.
The most amusing feature of the development was a nod to Jack Benny. Endless teased and teasing himself in an ongoing joke on his show about his frugal tendencies, his friends at Blue Skies installed a parking meter near the entrance to the park. It was numbered 39, as Benny claimed to be perpetually 39 years old starting in 1948 when he famously celebrated his same age year after year. His penny-pinching and perpetually youthful, decidedly not middle-aged personae made for the joke. With the parking meter money actually going to charity, passersby dropped a nickel in the lone meter to supposedly help with Benny's "Benefit Retirement Fund." It remains the only parking meter in the entire City of Rancho Mirage. Fun!
Tracy Conrad is president of the Palm Springs Historical Society. The Thanks for the Memories column appears Sundays in The Desert Sun. Write to her at pshstracy@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Big Fun at Bing Crosby's Blue Skies Trailer Village
