It’s a Week for the Playwrights to Step Forward : VINTAGE VIDEO

Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, William Inge and Thornton Wilder are names much more associated with theater than with movies or video, but they’re the real stars of this weekend’s new videocassettes. Five films based on their plays have been released on tape for the first time by Paramount Home Video for $19.95 each.

The best of the varying bunch is Inge’s “Come Back, Little Sheba” (1952). Shirley Booth won an Oscar for her role as a housewife who is put through an emotional crisis due to her alcoholic husband (Burt Lancaster) and an inquisitive boarder (Terry Moore).

The biggest disappointment is Williams’ “The Rose Tattoo” (1955). Even though it earned another best-actress Oscar (for Anna Magnani) and good reviews, this adaptation doesn’t hold up well at all--especially in the first 40 minutes, before Lancaster (this time cast as a happy-go-lucky truck driver) shows up. Part of the fault can be laid on director Daniel Mann; his work here is as choppy as it was smooth in “Little Sheba.” But most of the blame belongs to Williams, who makes Magnani’s grieving-widow character unbearably obnoxious.

A far better, if still flawed, version of a Williams play can be found in “Summer and Smoke” (1961), one of the most poetic works by one of America’s greatest playwrights--and one of his least violent. Geraldine Page recaps her stage role as a woman who breaks away too late from her parents’ and her small town’s sexual repression.

Wilder’s “The Matchmaker” (1958) is gently amusing throughout and also mildly fascinating for several reasons, including its unusual beginning (where the characters speak to the audience as they’re introduced) and future-star-filled cast (Shirley MacLaine, Anthony Perkins and Robert Morse support Shirley Booth’s title role), and because this work was later revised into the musical “Hello, Dolly!”

“Desire Under the Elms” (1958) is a dreary adaptation of O’Neill’s drama, starring Perkins and a miscast Sophia Loren.

Those aren’t the only interesting oldies. Paramount has also released “Carrie” for $19.95. This isn’t the Brian De Palma horror film but an intelligently mounted 1952 version of Theodore Dreiser’s novel “Sister Carrie,” starring Jennifer Jones and Laurence Olivier. And for even less ($14.95) the same company is offering “But Not for Me” (1959, with Clark Gable) and “Elephant Walk” (1954, with Elizabeth Taylor).

And fans of the wacky early ‘30s duo of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey will enjoy “Kentucky Kernels” and “Hook, Line and Sinker” (Turner, $19.98 each). Others beware--these boys get very silly indeed.

RECENT MOVIES

Nothing exciting: Dyan Cannon’s “The End of Innocence” (Paramount, no list price, R), the horror spoof “Popcorn” (RCA/Columbia, $89.95, R) and the weak kids’ sequel “The NeverEnding Story II” (Warner, $92.99, G).

COMING ATTRACTION

Next week: “The Grifters,” “Reversal of Fortune” and “Kindergarten Cop.”

Future features: “Green Card” (June 12), “Postcards From the Edge” (June 15), “GoodFellas” (June 19), “Edward Scissorhands” (June 27), “Misery” and “Once Around” (July 11), “The Russia House” (July 17), “L.A. Story” and “Flight of the Intruder” (July 18), “Home Alone” (Aug. 22, $24.98).