The Daughter of Niagara depicts the tragic story of a tribal chief’s daughter, played by the great serial star, Pearl White, who is offered as a sacrifice to the gods. She is sent over the thundering Niagara Falls in a canoe, followed by her lover who can not bear to be without her.
Pearl White was born in 1889 in Missouri where she joined the Diemer Theatre Company as a high school sophomore and began touring with a stock company at the age of 18. She was signed by the Powers Film Co. of New York in 1910 and began her fourteen-year film career that included over two hundred titles. Best known for The Perils of Pauline, with this serial, and others like it, White became an international star, of extraordinary popularity. Her appeal was rooted in her blonde good looks, her athletic stunts, and her earnest, charming characterizations of determined women who could overcome villains of all types. She did not do well in feature films and retired in 1923 to France where she died 15 years later. Though less than half of her prolific film output survives, White’s popularity endures with historians as well as audiences.
