Jazz Films to Assist Orpheum

The big-band sounds of Duke Ellington and Count Basie and the voices of Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Anita O’Day will fill the Orpheum Movie Palace beginning tonight as Friends of the Orpheum launch a four-week jazz film series with proceeds targeted for reviving the 64-year-old downtown Los Angeles landmark.

The opening program includes a live jazz show by Dave Pier’s Stardust Big Band and a screening of “Jazz on a Summer’s Day,” a concert film shot during the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.

Subsequent Thursday night screenings, featuring restored or fresh prints, include the 1944 “Reveille With Beverly,” starring Ann Miller with appearances by Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and Lena Horne, and the 1943 Vincente Minnelli musical “Cabin in the Sky” (next Thursday); the 1948 “A Song Is Born,” with the music of Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, and the 1958 “St. Louis Blues” (Oct. 18), and the 1933 “Betty Boop in Snow White,” a surreal jazz short with Cab Calloway, plus the uncut version of Martin Scorsese’s 1977 “New York, New York” (Oct. 25).

Admission is $7.50 for tonight’s program; $6.50 for all others. The four evenings all start at 7:30 p.m. Information: (213) 239-0950.