And the classics fans have spoken

Warner Home Viewers’ Choice

Warner Home Video, $20 each

For the second year in a row, Warner Home Video allowed fans to choose five vintage titles they would like to see on DVD. This year’s picks: 1940’s “The Letter,” 1942’s “Random Harvest,” 1950’s “King Solomon’s Mines,” 1952’s “Ivanhoe” and 1968’s “Ice Station Zebra.”

The Letter

In this tantalizing 1940 melodrama, Bette Davis received a richly deserved Oscar nomination for her performance in this Somerset Maugham tale of a married woman living on a rubber plantation in Southeast Asia who murders her lover. Davis’ character claims it was self-defense, but when an incriminating letter comes to light that could put her in jail, she does everything in her power to retrieve it. Beautifully and sensuously directed by William Wyler, this drama also features first-rate performances from James Stephenson as her anguished attorney, Herbert Marshall as her clueless husband and Gale Sondergaard as the lover’s vengeful wife.

Extras: A less-effective alternate ending, a trailer and two “Lux Radio Theatre” versions of the movie with Davis and Marshall.

Random Harvest

This 1942 classic is one of those great romantic dramas that Hollywood seems incapable of making these days. Based on James Hilton’s bestseller of the same name, “Random Harvest” revolves around a young man (Ronald Colman) who loses his memory in World War I. After escaping from the military hospital, he meets, falls in love with and marries a vivacious entertainer (Greer Garson). But when a car hits him one day, his memory returns and he forgets his life with Garson. Will the power of love reunite the two? Just have a few boxes of tissues handy. Nominated for several Oscars, including best film, best actor and best supporting actress for Susan Peters, “Random Harvest” is an addictive delight.

Extras: A Garson trailer gallery.

King Solomon’s Mines

Animal lovers will have a difficult time watching the first 10 minutes of this 1950 Technicolor action-adventure shot in Africa when a rugged guide named Allan Quartermain (Stewart Granger) leads a group of fuddy-duddy Englishman on a safari to shoot elephants. Thankfully, the rest of the film is less politically incorrect when it comes to animal violence. Granger, Deborah Kerr and Richard Carlson star in this fast-paced adaptation of H. Rider Haggard’s often-filmed tale of a woman and her brother, who hire the guide to find her missing husband.

Nominated for three Oscars, it won for cinematography and editing.

Extras: The trailer.

Ivanhoe

This is an exhilarating 1952 adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s novel about a young man’s heroic efforts to restore Richard the Lionhearted to the throne of England. Shot on location in England in vibrant Technicolor by the renowned Freddie Young, the film features rock-stolid Robert Taylor as Ivanhoe, Joan Fontaine and Elizabeth Taylor as the women in his life, George Sanders as the villain and the legendary actor-playwright Emlyn Williams as the tragic Wamba. Miklos Rozsa supplied the rousing score.

Extras: Trailer and a vintage “Tom and Jerry” cartoon.

Ice Station Zebra

John Sturges, who directed such classic action films as “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Great Escape,” helmed this dated but exciting 1968 popcorn flick. Based on Alistair MacLean’s bestselling thriller, “Ice Station” stars Rock Hudson as the commander of a nuclear submarine who is assigned to rescue the staff of a weather station near the North Pole. But when he is ordered to take an enigmatic British agent (a scene-stealing Patrick McGoohan) and a platoon of Marines with him on the venture, he knows there is some other agenda to the mission.

Extras: Trailer and a vintage featurette, “The Man Who Makes the Difference.”