Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975)

Jaws lobby card set image courtesy Heritage Auction Galleries

Director Steven Spielberg and Universal Pictures delivered Jaws to movie theaters in 1975. Roy Scheider plays the embattled police chief, with Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss along for the terrifying ride.

Peter Benchley’s Jaws

Jaws is based on the 1974 best-selling novel of the same name by American author Peter Benchley (1940-2006). Benchley had first submitted a four-page outline for Jaws to an editor at Doubleday in June 1971. The completed manuscript was later delivered, with Benchley receiving a $7,500 advance spread out over a period of months.

Benchley’s Jaws was internally hyped by Doubleday as a potential bestseller, with Bantam paying a staggering $575,000 for the paperback rights in spirited bidding. The book clubs soon joined in with their various deals and the publishing buzz was in the air for a possible blockbuster novel about a rogue shark run amok off the eastern coast of the United States.

Movie producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown had gotten wind of Jaws while it was still an unpublished manuscript. They went in for the kill, purchasing the movie rights and a future Peter Benchley screenplay for $250,000.

Steven Spielberg Directs Jaws

Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb wrote the Jaws screenplay for Zanuck/Brown Productions and Universal Pictures. Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler’s List) directed. John Williams created the eerie music score and Bill Butler served as cinematographer.

Roy Scheider (Martin Brody), Robert Shaw (Quint) and Richard Dreyfuss (Matt Hooper) head the cast. Other players include Lorraine Gary (Ellen Brody), Murray Hamilton (Mayor Larry Vaughn), Carl Gottlieb (Meadows), Jeffrey Kramer (Hendricks), Susan Blacklinie (Chrissie), Jonathan Filley (Cassidy), Chris Rebello (Michael Brody), Jay Mello (Sean Brody), Lee Fierro (Mrs. Kintner), Jeffrey Vorhees (Alex Kintner), Craig Kingsbury (Ben Gardner), Dr. Robert Nevin (Medical Examiner) and Peter Benchley (News Interviewer).

Jaws Filmed on Martha’s Vineyard

Made at cost of $12 million, Jaws was shot primarily on Martha’s Vineyard, located off the Massachusetts coast. Filming began on May 2, 1974. The first scene shot was the discovery of the remains of a young woman on the beach by Chief Brody, Deputy Hendricks and a young college student. The next week, beginning on Monday, the production company swung into high gear, working six days a week, 14 hours a day.

Three mechanical sharks, constructed at a lot in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, soon joined the production. All nicknamed “Bruce,” the trio of robotic sharks measured 25-feet in length and weighed 2,000 pounds each. Made of tubular steel and a special formula that mimicked shark skin, each model served a unique purpose. One was entirely open on the left side, the other on the right side, with the third being solid and complete.

The mechanical sharks proved to be as unpredictable as their real-life brethren. Oftentimes, filming had to be halted because of malfunctions or other difficulties with the steel monsters. One special problem involved the shark’s artificial skin, which had to be constantly touched up with paint.

Jaws: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss vs. the Great White Shark

Jaws begins at a late-night beach party on peaceful Amity Island. A young blond girl breaks away from the gathering and embarks on a midnight swim in the ocean. Following her is a drunken college kid, who passes out at the water’s edge. The young girl, Chrissie, is soon dragged under by some unseen terror, with her remains later washing up on the beach the next day.

The girl’s death is initially ruled a shark attack, prompting Amity Police Chief Martin Brody to take steps to close the beaches. Amity, however, depends on tourist dollars for the summer season, with the medical examiner bowing to political pressure and ruling the death a boating accident instead.

The summer season opens, with huge crowds packing Amity’s beaches. The festival-like atmosphere soon turns deadly when young Alex Kintner is savaged by a huge shark. The boy’s distraught mother then posts a $3,000 reward for the capture of the beast. A group of local fisherman later snare a large tiger shark, with many believing that the crisis is now over.

Matt Hooper of the Oceanological Institute arrives on the island and performs an autopsy on the dead shark. Just as he had suspected the tiger had come up from southern waters, as he produces a Louisiana license plate, a beer can and other debris from the shark’s belly. Absent, however, are any remains of the Kintner boy.

Professional shark hunter Quint is hired by the town council to kill the great white shark that has staked out Amity Island as its personal feeding ground. Quint, Hooper and Chief Brody set sail on the Orca to find and kill the great white, but soon become the hunted when the 25-foot monster cripples their boat and swims in for the kill.

Jaws First Screened in Dallas, Texas

Prior to its general release of June 20, 1975, Jaws was test screened in several locales around the country. The first came in Dallas, Texas, on March 26, 1975, where the picture played with The Towering Inferno. Two days later, in Long Beach, California, Jaws made a second appearance at a theater in a shopping center.

“Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is a sensationally effective action picture – a scary thriller that works all the better because it’s populated with characters that have been developed into human beings we get to know and care about. It’s a film that’s as frightening as The Exorcist…” reported Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times (6/21/75). 

“Getting right to the point, Jaws is an artistic and commercial smash…The Universal release looks like a torrid moneymaker everywhere,” observed Variety (6/18/75).

“If you think about Jaws for more than 45 seconds you will recognize it as nonsense, but it’s the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun, if you like to have the wits scared out of you at irregular intervals,” opined Vincent Canby of The New York Times (6/21/75).

Jaws Box Office, Academy Awards, Trivia, DVD

• Jaws grossed $129.549 million at the American box office, earning the #1 position on the list of the top moneymaking films of 1975.
• Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Film Editing (Verna Fields, won), Best Original Music Score (Williams, won), Best Sound (Robert L. Hoyt, Roger Heman Jr., Earl Madery, John R. Carter, won).
• A fiberglass replica of Quint’s boat the Orca was constructed by production designer Joe Alves and his art company. A perfect duplicate above the waterline, the Orca II was sunk and recovered 24 times during the boat’s climactic battle with the shark.
• The final two scenes filmed were the discovery of Ben Gardner’s submerged boat and Richard Dreyfuss’ deadly confrontation with the shark. Both scenes were shot in the waters off California’s Catalina Island and in a rented water tank at MGM.
• Quint’s fee for killing the shark: $10,000.
• Quint’s riveting personal story of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis on July 30, 1945, which resulted in the deaths of 883 crewmen, many of them by shark attack, was scripted by Howard Sackler, John Milius and Robert Shaw.
• The 13-foot tiger shark displayed as a trophy on the pier was acquired in Florida by Teddy Grossman and Fred Zendar. The two men flew down to Sarasota with a couple thousand dollars in Universal cash and told some local shark hunters what they needed. They wrapped their dead shark in plastic, packed it in ice, rock salt and an open case of Airwick and shipped it north in a 15-foot casket via a private jet dispatched by production executive William Gilmore Jr.
• Jaws sparked a number of shark stories upon its release in the summer of 1975, including one account where a commercial fisherman reportedly hooked a great white and battled it for hours off the coast of New York. 
• Sequels: Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983), Jaws: The Revenge (1987).
• On DVD: Jaws 30th Anniversary Edition (Universal, 2005).

“I’m pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have, in fact, caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers,” Mayor Larry Vaughn tells a reporter.

Right, Mayor. One of the “injured bathers” washed up on your beach missing her head, legs and other body parts…