Palm Springs Story

Before Christmas I got an email from someone called Joe Tompkins who lived in Palm Springs explaining that he had found an old sketchbook of mine while tidying out a cupboard in the costume dept at Universal Pictures. The only clue that connected it to me was a note against one sketch which said “Goldie's own“ so a researcher friend had looked up Goldie Hawn's films online, and come up with my name as designer for ”The Girl from Petrovka“. [I had only done the European location stuff for the film, not being allowed to go to Hollywood because of not having a union ticket - but had still been credited with the costume design] So Joe Googled around, found my website and emailed!
When I got to San Diego, seeing that Palm Springs was within driving distance at 140 miles, I got in touch with Joe who invited me over to stay the night. And so I did..
The drive was OK and did much to cure my nerves about driving here. I went through very varied scenery, from orange groves to mountains, past an industrial zone with a 1/4 of a mile long freight train, [where each container seemed about the size of our cottage] through mountains again, past thousand of wind-farm windmills and coming upon the desert very suddenly.
On arrival at Joe's house I was immediately whisked off to lunch - what turned out to be a Mothers' Day buffet at the Palm Springs golf club. Joe had gathered together 7 chaps who were, I thing all associated with costume in some form or other, either designing, film costumer, or teaching the subject in Los Angeles. It was a lot of fun, and it was flattering to be told that Alan, the professor from the design dept in LA had been showing my quite scrappy little sketch book to his graduate students!
In the afternoon Joe took be to see some of the sights, including the old theatre, where the Palm Springs Follies, all ex-pros well into their 70s who could still do the splits and high kicks, were wont to perform, Liberace's house, one of Bob Hope's many houses, and the spectacular desert in a raging wind storm.

Next day we sat and chatted, I looked some more at Joe's collection of delightful painted wood figurines, and drove back to San Diego.. I hope he will be able to come to 1 or 2 of the shows here, must email possible dates.