You Can't Spell Oscar Without DVD.

• Author: ROTHENBERG, ROBERT S.
• Position: Digital video disk

As DVDs take over more and more of the home video market, Academy Award-winners are pouring out of movie studios' vaults, enabling viewers to build extensive libraries of film classics.

IT HAS TAKEN a relatively few years for DVD players to establish a firm foothold in the home entertainment market. Once the price came down to be competitive with VHS, viewers decided that DVD's far-superior performance balanced the disadvantage of its being unable to record (as yet) and have flocked to make the players the hottest sellers in the electronics industry.

Simultaneously, as the studios have begun to drop their prices on DVDs, a rather interesting phenomenon has occurred. People are buying DVDs in increasing numbers to collect them for permanent film libraries, while VHS is becoming more of a rental medium for one-time watching. Movie buffs, film aficionados, and cinema students are almost compulsively building up extensive libraries, and the average consumer is not far behind, scooping up favorite pictures--especially family fare--in ever-increasing numbers. The explanation is quite simple: DVDs are virtually indestructible, and the 20th watching of a film is as crystal-clear as the first, unlike VHS, which can deteriorate with successive playing.

The studios have come to realize that there's a gold mine in their vaults--a vast backlog of old movies, ranging from the classics to potboilers, waiting to be doled out to collectors. Prominent among them are the cinematic pieces de resistance--Academy Award-winners galore. The following is an extensive--though far from exhaustive--assortment of Oscar's best that can be found on DVD shelves.

WARNER HOME VIDEO

Ben-Hur (222 minutes, $24.98) is the gold standard for Academy Award-winners, walking off with a record 11 Oscars (matched by "Titanic" in 1997). The original 1925 silent black-and-white version with Ramon Novarro in the title role and Francis X. Bushman as the evil Messala is credited with being the movie that created MGM. The 1959 remake, in turn, may have saved the motion picture industry, staggering from the impact of free television programs flowing into Americans' living rooms and keeping them enthralled--and out of movie theaters. "Ben-Hur" taught Hollywood a lesson that it assiduously clings to today: Spectacle sells tickets! The film won for best picture, director (William Wyler), actor (Charleton Heston), and supporting actor (Hugh Griffith) among its domination of the 1959 Academy Awards.

Following the trend of piling on myriad special features to make DVDs even more attractive to collect, Warner has come through with a whopping 68 minutes worth, including a commentary by Heston and a behind-the-scenes documentary, "Ben-Hur: The Making of an Epic," featuring a bitchily virulent inside look by author Gore Vidal, who did extensive writing of the script (as did playwright Christopher Fry), though Karl Tunbert received sole onscreen credit. Vidal reels off the list of actors considered for the lead--such as Marlon Brando, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, and Rock Hudson--and relates first-choice Paul Newman's classic turndown of the offer. Still smarting from the vicious critical response to his first film, "The Silver Chalice" Newman rejected MGM's overtures, stating that he "never again would appear in a movie where he had to wear a cocktail dress"! Most fascinating is stunt director Yakima Canutt and his stuntman son Joe relating how the famed chariot race was shot.

The Fugitive (130 minutes, $24.98) garnered seven 1993 nominations, including best picture, though star Harrison Ford was ignored. The sole winner was best supporting actor Tommy Lee Jones as the relentless U.S. marshal in dogged pursuit of the innocent Richard Kimble, wrongly convicted for the murder of his wife. The DVD's special features include "On the Run with the Fugitive" a "Making of ..." documentary, but the highlight is "Derailed: Anatomy of a Train Wreck," which lovingly dissects how the spectacular crash that frees Kimble to pursue the one-armed killer was filmed. Directors are notorious lovers of train wrecks--perhaps dating back to childhood frustrations when Daddy wouldn't let them play with the electric trains--and Andrew Davis' gleeful description of this cinematic set piece proves the point.

COLUMBIA TRISTAR HOME VIDEO

All the King's Men (109 minutes, $24.95), the film version of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is a thinly disguised portrayal of Louisiana's Depression-era governor (and later senator) Huey Long's rise and fall. The movie captured best picture in 1949; Broderick Crawford's tour-de-force performance as Willie Stark (the fictionalized Long) took best actor; and Mercedes McCambridge was named best supporting actress for her role as a cynical political advisor. Among these honors, though, screen-writer-director Robert Rossen was an also-ran, despite the picture's critical acclaim. Like many older Oscar-winners figured to have good, but not blockbuster, sales, the DVD is sparse on special features, settling for the original trailer and "filmographies" of the principal actors and the director. In this case--and many of the films below--the picture is the draw.

Tootsie (116 minutes, $14.95) riotously portrays the plight of a talented, stubborn actor desperate for a role who resorts to dressing as a woman to win a part on a soap opera. Dustin Hoffman is brilliant in his many-nuanced performance in the title role, not only hysterically funny in drag, but poignant as he learns to appreciate women's travails in a chauvinistic milieu. The picture was nominated for 10 1982 Academy Awards, but was buried under the "Ghandi" juggernaut, Hoffman losing best actor to Ben Kingsley, though Jessica Lange came away with the best supporting actress Oscar (beating out costar Teri Garr). Special features are limited, settling for trailers and filmographies of the principals, though the double-sided disc provides widescreen and full-screen versions. The bargain price, however, makes the DVD well worthwhile.

Glory (122 minutes, $29.95) is director Edward Zwick's painstaking tribute to the 54th Massachusetts, the nation's first black regiment, and its Civil War role in the Union Army's ultimate victory, even though the outfit was decimated in an unsuccessful attack on Ft. Wagner, near Charleston, S.C. Denzel Washington walked away with the 1989 best supporting actor Oscar as a bitter runaway slave who ultimately becomes a key member of this regiment, and the picture picked up cinematography and sound awards as well. This Special Edition DVD is loaded with extra features, including both widescreen and full-screen versions, necessitating two discs. Particularly effective are "Voices of Glory," the reading of letters sent home by members of the unit, and "The True...