Palm Springs Ephemera

On this page we feature other sorts of media about the Palm Springs area including View-Master reels, a promotional film strip, a few slides, a couple yearbooks, and even some music. The captions in [brackets], whenever possible, include labels from the original item in “quotation marks.” We add estimated dates and other details. For best viewing experience, choose the 720p or higher setting on the player. Click images to enlarge.

View-Masters & Film Strips

FS#1. [“Palm Springs” 1940.] 35mm. Silent. Faded color. Stereoscopic filmstrip originally produced by Tru-Vue for tourists. Digitized (sadly not stereoscopically) and music added by Melissa.
VM#1. [Sawyer’s View-Master “Palm Springs, California” #186, ca. 1940s.] Silent. By View-Master Manufacturing Inc.
VM#2. [View-Master 3-D Tour, Reel A “Resort Area, Palm Springs, California,” 1978.] Silent. By View-Master Manufacturing Inc.
VM#3. [View-Master 3-D Tour, Reel B “Indio and Coachella Valley, Palm Springs, California,” 1978.] Silent. By View-Master Manufacturing Inc.
VM#4. [View-Master 3-D Tour, Reel C “Aerial Tramway, Palm Springs, California,” 1978 (or 1968? Others in 3-pack say 1978.)] Silent. By View-Master Manufacturing Inc.
Reels VM#1-4 were projected with this 1949 View-Master Projector made by Sawyer’s Inc.

Stereo Realist Slides

Music & Stuff

Plaza Theatre Poster, March 30, 1957

Indio National Date Festival Pageant Souvenir Album 1983 featuring John Easton Stuart as Prince Kassim and Kathy Westmoreland as Princess Scheherazade. Produced and Directed by Larry Canady. Listen here on Internet Archive. (We nearly put this album in the “Weird Stuff” category, but it was recorded for the Date Festival.)

Premiere of the film THE TALL “T” starring Randolph Scott, who was also Grand Marshall for that day’s Desert Circus parade.

The Miami Herald, September 7, 1958. AP News (feature by John Beckler on Coachella Valley.) “Palm Springs: Incredible Oasis in the Desert” Caption reads:
“Wealth and poverty in the famed desert resort of Palm Springs, Calif., are contrasted in these pictures. Top photo shows one of the many plush homes, some costing up to $250,000, that give the city an appearance of a modern Baghdad. Below is the shack home of one of the 2,500 people who perform the menial chores that make the good life possible for wealthy visitors. There is a movement afoot to clear the slum section of Palm Springs to make way for a housing development…” To read more.
Handbill for the January 24, 1981, gala opening for “A Film Retrospective in Honor of Frank Sinatra” at the Palm Springs Desert Museum. Click to read.

Slides

Postcards

Yearbooks

From travelogue maps for The Happy Wanderers television (KCOP then later KNBC and KTLA, Los Angeles). Click each to read.

See article on the right about Willie McDavid.
Life Magazine article about “Hubcap” Willie McDavid who lived outside Palm Springs (probably the Whitewater area?) and sold found hubcaps and bottles in Banning.