opening to as many theatres simultaneously as possible. U.S. releases The roadshow format had been used since the days of silent films, but the rise of widescreen and stereophonic sound in the 1950s made it especially attractive to studio executives, who hoped to lure audiences away from television by presenting films in a way that an audience at that time could never hope to see at home. Possibly, the first film ever shown in a roadshow engagement was the French film Les Amours de la reine Elisabeth in America in 1912, a 53-minute motion picture which starred the legendary stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. Films shown in a roadshow format before 1951 included: The Birth of a Nation (1915) Intolerance (1916) The Covered Wagon (1923) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) The Ten Commandments (1923) Ben-Hur (1925) The Big Parade (1925) Wings (1927), the first Best Picture Academy Award winner The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature length part-talkie Chicago (1927), the silent film based on the play that inspired the Kander and Ebb Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film The Broadway Melody (1929) Show Boat (1929), a part-talkie based not on the 1927 stage musical but on Edna Ferber's original novel from which the musical was adapted Hollywood Revue (1929) The Desert Song (1929) Rio Rita (1929) Paris (1929) Sally (1929) Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (1930) The Sign of the Cross (1932) Grand Hotel (1932), winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture Cavalcade (1933) A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) The Great Ziegfeld (1936) In Old Chicago (1937) Lost Horizon (1937) Gone with the Wind (1939) Fantasia (1940) Best Foot Forward (1943) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) The Song of Bernadette (1943) This Is the Army (1943) (shown only in roadshow format on initial release) Since You Went Away (1944) Spellbound (1945) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) Duel in the Sun (1946) Mourning Becomes Electra (1947) Ingrid Bergman'''s Joan of Arc (1948)Samson and Delilah (1949)Quo Vadis (1951). However, the theatre exhibitors of Quo Vadis took the unusual step of opening the film in two New York theatres simultaneously, where it was shown in roadshow format in one theatre, while the other one ran the nearly three-hour film in the more conventional, "continuous performances" manner. Selected notable British releases British films that were shown as roadshow attractions in the US included:Henry V (1944 in England and 1946 in the