BROADWAY TO HOLLYWOOD: SURVEYING SHOW BUSINESS.

Byline: Tom Nolan and Dick Lochte Special to the Daily News

This month, it's chronological surveys of show-business sectors that command our attention. Covering a large section of the theater world are ``The Best Plays of 1995-1996: The Otis Guernsey/Burns Mantle Theater Yearbook'' (Limelight Editions, 372 pages; $47.50), the latest edition of the indispensable series now edited by Otis Guernsey Jr. and Jeffrey Sweet; and Gerald Bordman's ``American Theatre, 1930-1969'' (Oxford Press, 472 pages; $55), Volume 3 in the author's planned survey of every nonmusical play to appear on Broadway.

The ``Best Plays'' series, celebrating its 77th year, is the same successful mixture as before. The top 10 productions of the season, including Jonathan Larson's ``Rent,'' Jon Robin Baitz's ``A Fair Country,'' August Wilson's ``Seven Guitars'' and Terrence McNally's ``Master Class,'' are synopsized with scene highlights included. Al Hirschfeld's unique caricatures form their own annual history. And there's a listing of all plays produced in New York, as well as a directory of productions of new plays performed by leading companies throughout the country, including South Coast Repertory, the La Jolla Playhouse, the Old Globe Theater, the East-West Players, L. Theater Works and the Mark Taper Forum.

The new edition of historian Bordman's ultra-ambitious survey of every nonmusical theater offering covers a particularly fertile period. In its course, Tennessee Williams wrote ``A Streetcar Named Desire,'' Eugene O'Neill wrote ``Long Day's Journey Into Night,'' and Edward Albee wrote ``Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?''

It is an era in which actors like Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, not to mention Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, did arguably their best work. Bordman includes them all, presenting the plays in chronological order, complete with plots, production details, leading players, directors and little bits of noteworthy information. He relies very heavily on critical notices, which makes a certain amount of sense.

But if you compare his 1967-68 season with William Goldman's wonderful book about the same period, ``The Season,'' you realize that the New York critics of the time were not the most reliable of arbiters, often changing their minds and contradicting themselves, sometimes in the same review.

So when Bordman dismisses Mary Mercier's ``Johnny No-Trump'' as a ``one-shot fiasco,'' he's correct: The show closed after one performance. But he neglects to note that this was primarily due to the New York Times review by then newcomer Clive Barnes and that quite a few people disagreed. Goldman considered it ``the best new American play of the season.'' And another critic, Marilyn Stasio, thought well enough of it to include it in her splendid anthology, ``Broadway's Beautiful Losers.''

The 1995 movie year is covered in some detail in ``Screen World 1996 Film Annual'' (Applause, 336 pages; $49.95 cloth, $27.95 trade paperback), edited by John Willis with Barry Monush. Volume 47 in this popular series covers all of that year's film releases, from ``Houseguest,'' which arrived in January, to ``Grumpier Old Men,'' which arrived during the Christmas season.

The unwavering format finds each major film represented by cast and crew and three or more stills; the rest get less space. Also listed: the top 100 box-office films (no surprise that ``Toy Story'' is No. 1), promising new actors (Don Cheadle, Alicia Silverstone and Gwyneth Paltrow are among those given the nod), Academy Award winners and nominees, brief biographies of an amazing assortment of performers, and obituaries. It's an indispensable reference book for the film fan.

Capsule reviews, multiple awards lists and a show-biz calendar-chronology of 1996 are a few of the lures contained within the ``1997 A&E Entertainment Almanac'' (Houghton Mifflin, 807 pages; $13.95), a hefty trade paperback edited by Robert Moses, Alicia Potter and Beth Rowen. Films, books, theater, TV, CD-ROM, radio and the Internet are among the categories covered. Included in the mix are multiyear compilations of major Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Obie winners, as well as recipients of such printed-word laurels as the National Book Award and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Brief essays (such as Ross Wetzstein's theater piece) recall '96 highlights in various fields; and several ``all-time best'' and ``must-have'' lists (original and recycled) are good for starting arguments or jogging memories. As a reference tool or a time-waster, this awkward-to-handle but easy-to-get-sucked-into almanac would seem to have something for everyone. But at least a few of its pronouncements should be treated with caution - like the Gerry Mulligan obit that states, ``Mulligan may be best known for his membership in the prime Dave Brubeck ensemble.'' Oh really?

While the A&E cable network has gone for the big entertainment picture with its ``Almanac,'' the publishing division of San Francisco PBS station KQED has decided to narrowcast its attention on just one program. But it's a show worthy of such singular focus. For 17 years, a long run by any TV standard, the series ``Mystery!'' has been delighting American audiences with the filmed adventures of such beloved British crimebusters as Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Inspector Morse, Rumpole of the Bailey and Albert Campion.

But even the staunchest viewer may have forgotten some of this remarkable series' best moments, and those who have arrived late to the party may not have known they existed. ``Mystery! A Celebration'' (KQED Books, 320 pages; $24.95) has arrived to solve those problems. Not only does it include a text by television columnist Ron Miller that is filled with information and anecdotes about the series' various episodes, it provides a complete listing of all the shows (and the major credits) and interviews with such participants as novelists Dick Francis, P.D. James and Colin Dexter and performers such as Roy Marsden (Adam Dalgleish), Helen Mirren (Jane Tennison) and David Suchet (Hercule Poirot). There are enough photos to fill a mug book, and topping off this handsome trade paperback are illustrations by the series' own mysterious and whimsical artist, Edward Gorey.

Finally, we come to a couple of additions to a new subgenre within the entertainment category that, for want of a better title, we might categorize as ``snide guides.'' Using Kenneth Anger's gossip-jammed ``Hollywood Babylon,'' the ultimate show-biz snide guide, as their model, these trade paperbacks dish out the dirt with gleeful abandon. The better of the two is the handsomely produced ``Hollywood Handbook'' (Universe Publishing, 256 pages; $25), a perverse, but thoroughly fascinating salute of sorts to the Chateau Marmont, edited by the hotelier who restored and revived that establishment seven years ago, Andre Balazs.

Much of the success of ``Hollywood Handbook'' comes from its attitude - heavy on the irony and sarcasm.

``Hollywood Confidential'' (Plume, 322 pages; $12.95), verbosely subtitled ``An Inside Look at the Public Careers and Private Lives of Hollywood's Rich and Famous,'' is, by way of contrast, rather too devoted to its stated purpose. Its author, Coral Amende, described in a press release as an ``indefatigable gossip-hound,'' certainly lives up to her billing. If there's a painful, disturbing, embarrassing or unpleasant gossipy truffle, real or apocryphal, that has been attached to a celebrity (or a member of a celebrity's immediate family) in the past 30 or 40 years, she's uncovered it for this book.

Facelifts, gurus, pets, pranks, lawsuits, sexual preferences, links to Heidi Fleiss, these are all grist for Amende's mill. Did you know that Woody Allen takes his temperature every two hours?