Swinging Back to the ‘40s : Merv Griffin’s Coconut Club offers a return to sumptuous settings of the big-band era.

The Coconut Club, which opened last week in the Beverly Hilton Hotel, isn’t exactly a jazz club. Its luxurious retro setting, in fact, resonates more with swanky ‘40s and ‘50s nightclubs such as Mocambo or Ciro’s than with dedicated jazz venues such as Birdland or Bop City.

The new room, created by Merv Griffin, entertainment business mogul, onetime TV talk-show host and former big-band singer, will have a music policy strongly oriented toward big bands and swing music. Still, there will be some occasional jazz sounds as well.

The opening act, trumpeter Jack Sheldon and his band, continues for the first few weeks at the room. Sheldon is best known for his wry vocals and his witty, spontaneous exchanges with Griffin when he was the music director of “The Merv Griffin Show” in the ‘70s and ‘80s. But he also is a first-rate jazz player with credentials that include gigs with Jimmy Giuffre, Stan Kenton, Wardell Gray, Art Pepper and others.

Griffin, however, prefers to emphasize the supper club dancing qualities of the room.

“Swing and touch dancing are on the upswing everywhere,” he says. “People are rediscovering the delights of dancing to big-band hits. So I thought, ‘Wow! Wouldn’t it be great to return to the great supper clubs of yesterday.’ ”

Using his own Beverly Hilton as a setting, Griffin asked production designer Bob Rang to find a way to transform the hotel’s Grand Ballroom into the Coconut Club every Friday and Saturday nights.

The result is a complex procedure that calls for a team of workers to construct and take down the room’s tropical setting, with its gold and silver palm trees, every weekend.

In addition to its fascinating ambience, the room provides, via table, banquette and private booths, seating for more than 450 and features a 900-square-foot midnight-blue dance floor.

The choice of a name for the stylish new venue was easy. The Cocoanut Grove was a legendary supper club also in a hotel--the now-closed Ambassador--and from Griffin’s 1950 hit song was “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.”

Future entertainment will concentrate on big-band swing music with occasional seasonings of Latin jazz, salsa and Brazilian music.

The Coconut Club, Griffin says with typically ebullient enthusiasm, “will become the meeting place for big-band music and dance lovers. We believe it will be the supreme supper-dance club on the West Coast.”

BE THERE

The Coconut Club at the Beverly Hilton, 9876 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Fridays and Saturday nights, $20 cover, which includes one complimentary drink. (310) 285-1358.