One response of the Hollywood studios to the rapid audience loss of the late 1940s and the 1950s was to emphasize the motion picture's capacity for spectacle. Television was limited by a small screen, poor visual definition, black and white (rather than color), and mediocre sound quality. Film could do better in all these areas. Further, with the increased affluence of the 1950s, people were buying automobiles, taking vacations, and experiencing the sights and sounds of the United States and foreign lands. Film was capable of bringing these experiences to the local theater, albeit in a passive and not completely satisfactory way. Several popular genres stressed the power of the image in the early 1950s: the musical (AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, 1951; GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, 1953), the Western (SHANE and DIE NAKED SPUR, both 1953), the Biblical epic (QUO VADIS?, 1951; DAVID AND BATHSHERA, 1951), the exotic adventure film (KING SOLOMON'S MINES, 1950; THE CRIMSON PIRATE, 1952), even the suspense film NIAGARA, 1953; TO CATCH A THIEF, 1955). Though the musical was, in general, bound to soundstages for a few more years, other spectacle-oriented movies derived much of their power from location shooting. Thus, many Westerns took advantage of harsh and majestic landscapes of the Western states, and NIAGARA never strayed far from the awesome spectacle of Niagara Falls.
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