Ah, Hollywood in the 1950s where, as one character puts it, “the goddesses of the silver screen frolic in tasteful two-pieces: lavender ladies, far from the glare of Eisenhower America. At dusk, they mix dry martinis and rhumba beside the turquoise pool.”

Those “lavender ladies” were gay and closeted, unwelcome in polite ‘50s society, so they hung out at the Desert Knight Hotel in Palm Springs, where they could cavort beyond the glare of the anti-gay ’50s spotlight.