During the holidays I spent some time with my father. Dad had finally splurged and replaced his old and trusty 17" tv set with a new HDTV. And he had a new copy of the the classic musical An American in Paris. It was made at the behest of Gene Kelly who saw it as an excuse to flim the Gershwin ballet of the same name. He also used it to spotlight his discovery of a young French ballerina. Leslie Caron made her debut, and she is introduced as a dancer with some really amazing curves. The movie is a ton of fun, and was made in 1951 when musicals were at their peak.
The thing is during the 1960's the musical made a significant decline in the marketplace, with many expensive failures like Doctor Dolittle or Dolly. Yeah we have them now and then. Moulin Rouge did pretty well but Across the Universe was a major bomb at the box office. Grease, Flashdance and Dirty Dancing had their moments, but they were exceptions rather than the rule. Then it occured to me that the decline of the musical almost exactly coincided with the rise of stereophonic sound reproduction. So I asked my father, who has an even better stereo than I do, what sound equipment was like when An American in Paris made its debut. He told me that home equipment of the day was horrible, but theater sound was probably the only place (besides a concert hall) where the sound quality was good enough to really enjoy clear sounding recorded music.
And so began to wonder if the rise of reasonable quality home stereos are really what killed the musical. Nowdays if I want to hear great sounding music all I have to do is put in a CD or LP. But in the 1940's the best home reproduction gear sounded tinny at best, and records were expensive and prone to scratches. Concerts were fun, but expensive and you got only one or two shows before Duke Ellington and Orchestra left town. But if you went to a movie you often combined some really good music (does it get any better than Gershwin or Rodgers and Hammerstein?) with some very skilled dancing, singing, some awfully pretty people (have human legs ever suprassed Cyd Charisse?) and a story when the alternatives were tinny and scratchy.
Of course one might argue other causes such as growing cynicism rising out of the Vietnam War. Maybe people needed less romanticism in our films as World War II and the Great Depression faded from our memory. The Hollywood studio system was in its death throes. But I think the real reason was the hi-fi. Once people had stereo at home, good music was just a touch of the button away.