Archaeology by Laser Light

By JAY COCKS

Remember Buddy Ebsen as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz? Of course not. And Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow? Of course. But the Scarecrow dancing crazily off fences, being bowled over by a pumpkin and sailing high in the air over the cornfield? Well . . .

In fact, Bolger did perform just such a dance number. And, yes, there was an appearance by Ebsen as the Tin Man. But few have seen these scenes for decades, except for a couple of archivists at MGM and some film fanatics. Now they are finally available for home viewing -- but not on tape. They can be seen only on the sumptuous laser-disc Criterion edition of The Wizard of Oz.

Laser discs (basically, CDs with movies on them) may have suffered from consumer confusion in the marketplace. But for film aficionados and filmmakers, from Steven Spielberg to Martin Scorsese, they are the home- viewing medium of choice. With peerless sound and a better picture than even the best VCR can deliver, laser discs do the fullest justice to their theatrical source material. To make them even more attractive to movie buffs and general viewers, disc producers are offering extras unavailable on tape and often even in theaters, such as Bolger's full dance number, which never made it into the Wizard, and Ebsen's brief appearance as the Tin Man.

More and more, such delectable morsels are coming to light as interest in laser grows (distributors predict the laser market will double in sales to $80 million by the end of 1989). But the historical fillips are more than curiosities and commercial come-ons. They make movies resonate with fresh possibilities and new impact.

The Criterion Collection, from the Voyager Co. in Santa Monica, Calif., turns out the most formidable disc library. Its version of Orson Welles' masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons contains, among other items, the entire shooting script, a full set of storyboards, and stills of crucial scenes deleted by the studio. The Criterion edition of Blade Runner has a lavish set of designs by "visual futurist" Syd Mead; the disc of 2001 was personally . overseen by Stanley Kubrick and includes almost a thousand pages of essays and production memos. "We're a significant part of an as yet insignificant business," says Voyager co-founder Robert Stein. But other companies are fast picking up on his lead. MCA's pristine disc of the Anthony Mann western classic Winchester .73 contains a beguiling chat with the film's star, James Stewart. And Image's release of Platoon includes an impressive, intense interview with director Oliver Stone.

Voyager has always been scrupulous about releasing wide-screen films in "letter-box" format (masking the top and bottom of the screen to duplicate the breadth of the theatrical image), and this idea too is catching on. MGM is marketing lavish wide-screen editions of Doctor Zhivago and Ben- Hur, and 20th Century Fox will put out the Star Wars trilogy, as well as the recent smash Die Hard, in the full-frame format. Even E.T. was letter- boxed on disc, and Spielberg's earlier 1941, when it arrives on disc this summer, will be in wide screen and contain some 20 minutes of previously deleted smash-and-grab comedy footage. All this feverish cinema archaeology confirms that laser disc is not only the best way to see movies but also the best way to see a lot more of them.

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty/Los Angeles