Finding the English Patient in the desert

The keyhole entrance to the Korakia lobby.

I don’t think I’ve ever stayed at the same place twice out here in the desert. Well, that’s not true. I’ve hung out at the La Quinta Resort, where I’m currently holed up, many a time, but that doesn’t count. I consider La Quinta my desert home-away-from-home. There are just too many interesting places to stay out here to make a habit of this place or that place (with the exception of La Quinta).

One place I’ll never forget is a little pensione (I know, right?—a pensione out in the desert?) in Palm Springs where I spent a memorable week shortly after it opened some twenty years ago. Built in 1924 by Scottish artist Gordon Courts to resemble a Moorish castle, Dar Morroc—as the place was originally known—was an artists’ retreat in the ‘20s and ‘30s. For decades afterwards it languished as a run-down apartment complex, Then an architect, G. Douglas Smith, bought the property, which was a total mess at the time, in 1989, and gutted it, discovering, as he did so, things like Korakia’s distinct keyhole-shaped grand entrance housing a set of ornately carved Moorish wooden double doors, all of which had been covered up by stucco for years.

One of the things Smith wanted to do with the Korakia was attract an eclectic, offbeat crowd. Which he did. The week I stayed there guests included rocker Gregg Allman, the English film director and screenwriter Anthony Minghella (who was sitting around the pool in Bermuda shorts and dark socks working on something that turned out to be the screenplay for The English Patient), and a Canadian opera star who sang arias every morning outside her room before breakfast.

The Korakia in the '20s.

A couple of times during the week, Smith would cook up some simple family meal—like pasta marinara—and invited anyone who was interested and didn’t have anything else going on to sit at a long table next to the pool and join him for dinner. What I remember is that Minghella always brought the wine and Allman was always stoned. What I don’t remember—unfortunately—is any of the conversation. Too much of that good wine, I fear. Or perhaps it was the Allman herb. Ah, well.