Business Notes Entertainment

Despite the box-office success of such recent blockbusters as E.T. and Star Wars, no movie has topped Gone With the Wind. When measured in inflationadjusted dollars, the 1939 saga of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara has reaped $400 million in ticket sales, making it the biggest film bonanza of all time.

Now GWTW is storming the family living room. Since it appeared on store shelves a month ago as an $89.95 double- videocassette package, the 3-hr. 51- min. epic has zoomed toward the top of the sales charts. For the past three weeks it has claimed second place behind leader Star Trek III, which sells for $29.95. So successful has the debut been that the tape's producer, MGM/UA Home Video, expects sales to reach $27 million by the end of the year.

GWTW still has a way to go to become the all-time videotape best seller. That record is held by Jane Fonda's Workout ($59.95), last week's No. 3, which in three years has raked in more than $40 million. Boasts Court Shannon, a vice president of Karl-Lorimar Home Video, which produced the exercise guide: "Jane Fonda has greater endurance than Scarlett and a longer-lasting beauty." Perhaps, but tomorrow is another day.