A River of Words, a Cascade of Astonishment

Marketing for natural wonders inevitably marries the sublime with the ridiculous. P.T. Barnum would have turned green with envy at the sheer chutzpah of a campaign for the Grand Canyon: “The Greatest Earth on Show.” A major American insurance company that specialized in fire insurance at its founding (in 1819) is named Aetna, the Latin name for Sicily’s fiery volcano, Mt. Etna. And the largest bottled water company in the U.S is called Niagara. There has been a cavalcade of references to Niagara Falls over the centuries since its discovery by Europeans, many of them involving love and marriage (sex, that is) or hair-raising adventure (in other words, death). Antony Shugaar explores the long history of publicity and marketing that swirls around the Falls, from Frederic Church’s rollout of his great portrait of Niagara, like a Hollywood premiere without searchlights, all the way up to Andy Warhol’s use of a publicity still for the film Niagara as the basis for his “Marilyn” portraits.