Mid-Wilshire’s Vagabond Is Returning to the Classics : Movies: At a time when cable TV and home video make film classics more accessible, Tom Cooper is back to a labor of love.

Between 1975 and ’85 Tom Cooper ran the venerable mid-city Vagabond Theater on Wilshire Boulevard, presenting in repertory a treasure trove of movies from Hollywood’s Golden Era. After a six-year absence he is back at the Vagabond, which he reopens today with a timely retrospective in honor of Frank Capra, who died Sept. 3. The 18-film series commences with “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

“I may be absolutely nuts to get back into this, but I love doing it so much,” said Cooper in a phone interview. “It really gives me a charge. The reason I got out in 1985 was that I was sort of burnt out--remember, I was running the Tiffany on the Sunset Strip as well. Also, home video and cable were coming into their own, and I thought they would kill me.”

A boyish, enthusiastic 45, Cooper now thinks that people are ready again to leave the tube for his frankly nostalgic programming. “I tried to take over the Los Feliz in 1987, but the theater is too big for revivals and special programs. All it takes is a hundred people at the Vagabond--it seats 330--and you feel you’re with an audience. You never really get that with home video or cable. It just isn’t the same thing. Besides, the area has been cleaned up and is much safer than it has been in years.”

Cooper’s trademarks are obtaining both the best prints possible and personal appearances by vintage stars. (Jane Wyatt, leading lady of Capra’s “Lost Horizon,” will appear tonight.) He has fond memories of persuading the initially reluctant Alice Faye and Esther Williams to appear to affectionate ovations that he said overwhelmed them. He has already lined up Kathryn Grayson (Oct. 6), Tippi Hedren (Nov. 22) and Ruby Keeler (Dec. 1).

“Rita Hayworth made one of her last public appearances at the Vagabond--it was 1981 or ‘82--with ‘Gilda’ and ‘Lady From Shanghai,” Cooper recalled. “She came to my house for dinner the next evening and said, ‘I was so thrilled at the ovation and felt so much love, I cried all night. How wonderful that people would love me that much.’ ”

Cooper’s special affection for musicals is understandable because he began as a singer. “When I was 19, I dropped out of my sophomore year at Northwestern and started singing professionally in nightclubs all around the country,” he said. “But by the early ‘70s things started getting slow, so I started teaching math at David Starr Jordan Junior High in Burbank and then Miraleste High in Palos Verdes.”

Although he had given up his singing career, he still yearned to be a part of show business and started presenting Tuesday matinee screenings for senior citizens at the old Academy Theater in Pasadena. “The studios told me that I had to be crazy to show old Jeannette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy musicals that were already on television,” he said. “But I finally built an audience of about 500 people, and the studios were amazed. Now people are telling me I’m crazy all over again.”

* The Capra retrospective will run Wednesdays through Saturdays until Oct. 19. Information: (213) 387-2171.