The Celebrities Who Made Sun Valley Famous
Near Sun Valley, Idaho
From its earliest seasons, Sun Valley was designed to attract famous people, and it succeeded in ways that shaped its reputation for generations. Averell Harriman hired one of the country's most effective publicists, a man named Steve Hannagan, who had built his reputation promoting Miami Beach, to introduce the new resort to the American public. Hannagan understood that a photograph of a film star on a ski slope was worth more than any advertisement, and he worked accordingly.
The celebrities came. Gary Cooper, a Montana native comfortable in mountain country, was among the earliest and most faithful visitors. Clark Gable came.
Errol Flynn came. Bing Crosby came. Lucille Ball.
Marilyn Monroe. Members of the Kennedy family. The roster reads like a survey of mid-century American stardom.
Sun Valley became a place where the famous went to ski, relax, and be photographed in a setting that photographed extremely well. Hannagan coined the resort's name and its first slogan, which was winter sports under a summer sun, playing on the unusual combination of snowpack and sunshine that Count Schaffgotsche had identified when he selected the site. The celebrity connection was always partly a publicity strategy, but it became something more real than strategy over time.
Writers and artists followed the actors. Sun Valley genuinely attracted people who wanted serious outdoor recreation combined with social life in the same small valley, and the community that formed around that combination has persisted for nearly ninety years.
