Lorena Mayer Nidorf, a Southland philanthropist and socialite whose charities ranged from the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles to the Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Springs, died Wednesday at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica.

She was 78 and had cancer.

Mrs. Nidorf began her affiliation with the Music Center in 1962, two years before the opening of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and was one of the Gold Circle Founders who donated a minimum of $50,000.

She had been on the board of The Amazing Blue Ribbon--one of the center's primary support groups--since its founding in 1968. That single support group contributes more than $1 million each year to the Music Center. In 1979 she was made honorary president of The Amazing Blue Ribbon and also was a major supporter of the Children's Festival, which in one week last January drew 23,000 schoolchildren to the center for the Joffrey Ballet.

She and her late husband, Michael Nidorf, also had a home in Palm Springs, and in 1973, two years after the Eisenhower Medical Center opened, she donated the hospital's first CAT scan unit.

Mrs. Nidorf was considered a founding benefactor of the Eisenhower Medical Center and was a trustee at her death.

Her other philanthropies included the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn. and the Huntington Library.

She also was a past director of the Louis B. Mayer Foundation, named for the co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who was her second husband. He died in 1957, and she married Nidorf, a business executive, in 1961.

Her first husband was Daniel Danker, head of J. Walter Thompson's Hollywood advertising office. He died in 1944, and she married Mayer in 1948.

Her survivors include a daughter, Suzanne, by her marriage to Danker; two grandchildren and a brother and sister.

A memorial service has been scheduled at 2 p.m. today at Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills.

Lorena Nidorf