PALM SPRINGS, Calif. — “From 20 pounds of feathers to a hard hat, I tell you,” Marcia Harp joked as she walked through a hallway full of construction inside the Plaza Theatre.
Harp knows this place forwards, backwards and in heels. A former Follies girl, she distinctly remembers clambering up the dark skinny staircase to the stage.
“You’d make your entrance and come out, you know, barely dressed, and tell how old you were and all those things,” she recalled.
She was 67 at the time, but even now at 83, the memory is never far from her mind — especially when she’s on stairs.
“To this day, when I’m hanging on a railing, I always feel like I’m back in the follies,” she said in a dreamy, wistful voice.
For nearly a quarter of a century, “The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies” were a beloved staple at the theatre until the building was shuttered in 2014.
“How many people have seen the Follies?” Kevin Corcoran asked the crowd during a recent hardhat tour of the site. “Most of you. Alright.”
Corcoran is the vice president of the Plaza Theatre Foundation, which was formed a few years ago to bring the storied landmark back to its original 1936 glory. For him, the project is personal.
“I’ve lived in Palm Springs for over 20 years, and the theater has always been kind of the downtown living room, the heart and soul of Palm Springs,” he said. “I got involved because I wanted to see us bring that back to life.”
A simple renovation would have been a lot easier, he admits, and a lot less expensive, but wouldn’t have honored the majestic space’s rich history.
“Some people felt we should just paint it and be done with it,” Corcoran explained. “The Foundation and other city leaders really were committed to bringing this back to its original design. They wanted to capture that original spirit that became so important between Hollywood and Palm Springs.”
The Plaza Theatre has always been at the heart of the connection between the two cities. Opened as a movie house, it soon grew into a multipurpose venue with musical acts, theatrical events and live tapings of national radio shows hosted by the likes of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.
“I love it here,” Bob Hope can be heard saying in an archival recording from one of those broadcasts. “I’ve got a little vine-covered cottage here in Palm Springs.”
“So the history of Hollywood mirrors the history of this theater,” board member and historian Tim Cook said.
That history will be told in a museum planned for the site. The collection, says Cook, keeps growing and will ultimately include everything from original movie posters to some true Hollywood treasures.
“We’re going to have things like Harpo Marx’s wig and the bulb horn,” he explained. “We’re going to have the small Oscar that Margaret O’Brien won for her film portrayal in Meet Me in Saint Louis with Judy Garland. Lucy and Desi [Arnez], their daughter, has contributed a Desilu Emmy Award for us to display.”
But what’s most remarkable, he said, are the details that have been discovered during the construction — original features like the painted murals that had long been assumed lost.
“We took down some walls and oh my gosh, there it was. The original Spanish town scene on the sides of the wall,” he gushed. “The stenciling on the proscenium arch above the theater. We uncovered so many things that have been hidden away.”
What they haven’t uncovered yet though is a bit of a buried treasure — a time capsule of sorts from the 1936 opening, which included a reel from the film "Camille" encased in concrete.
“Some of the luminaries wrote their names in the concrete, and it was buried somewhere in the patio here,” he said. “We conducted a ground penetrating radar search to look for it. Haven’t uncovered it yet, but stay tuned.”
Even though the building is owned by the city, nearly 70% of the $27 million renovation is being raised privately. That fundraising effort continues with another $8 million or so still needed.
In the meantime, the Plaza Theatre is set to reopen in December with An Evening with Lily Tomlin as the inaugural show.
After that, it will once again be a hub of activity, used for film festivals and movie showings, music, dance and theater and lecture series.
As for the follies, if they come back, as much as she loved it, Harp doesn’t plan to don her feathers.
“I probably will leave that spot for somebody else to have the dream,” she said.
A Hollywood dream in the desert that’s ready for a comeback.
