Of the many things written and spoken about Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), the most incontrovertible is the fact that it changed Hollywood forever.
The Golden Age of the Studio System had come to an end in 1948, with the passage of the Paramount Decrees that stopped the studios from owning their own theatre chains. With guaranteed outlets vanishing at the very moment that television had started competing for the attention of the American public, front offices across the film community began cutting costs to stay afloat. Attempts were made to lure audiences back into theatres with widescreen and three-dimensional technology. But, with many more families quitting city neighbourhoods for the suburbs, people lost the habit of going to the movies once or twice a week.
Efforts were made to pander to the younger generation with exploitation shockers and rock musicals. But they couldn't prevent the studios from being bought out by major corporations, with the result that the bottom line became the deciding factor in the making of motion pictures. The ending of the Production Code in 1968 was aimed at freeing film-makers influenced by the various European new waves from the constraints that had prevented them from tackling weighty themes in an adult manner. But, as Kenneth Bowser's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (2003) reveals, New Hollywood was appreciated primarily by a niche, cine-literate audience.
By contrast, Jaws had a mass appeal that enabled it to blow Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) out of the water when it came to box-office records. Recognising that a combination of blanket advertising and tie-in merchandising could generate buzz around a picture and increase its profits, the studios abandoned the old practice of the staged roll-out in favour of
opening simultaneously in hundreds of venues nationwide and using the summer weekend grosses to transform a box-office hit into a blockbuster.
Not every such release would become a cultural phenomenon like Jaws. But the bean-counters at the parent conglomerates were so delighted with this model that it became the norm. Indeed, it still holds sway five decades later in an era dominated by CGI, DC, and MCU. And that's all down to a film about a shark that had been a living nightmare to make.
Writers, Writers, Everywhere
Peter Benchley was only five when his grandfather died in November 1945. As a contributor to The New Yorker, humourist Robert Benchley had been a member of the famous Algonquin Round Table. However, he reached his biggest audience in Hollywood, as a writer and performer.
He was best known for comic monologues like How to Sleep (1935), which won the Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short. In addition to contributing to the script and guesting in Robert Z. Leonard's Dancing Lady (1933), Benchley also doubled up in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940). Cinema Paradiso users can also see him with Deanna Durbin in Nice Girl? (1941), Veronica Lake in I Married a Witch, Ginger Rogers in The Major and the Minor (both 1942), and Betty Hutton in The Stork Club (1945). His collaboration with Walt Disney on The Reluctant Dragon (1941) is currently unavailable, but why not try a double bill of Benchley's teamings with Fred Astaire in You'll Never Get Rich (1941) and The Sky's the Limit (1943) ?
Son Nathaniel Benchley also became a writer and wrote biographies of his father and his own friend, Humphrey Bogart. His novel, Sail a Crooked Ship, was adapted for the screen in 1961, while The Off-Islanders became a hit for director Norman Jewison as The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966). This Cold War satire imagines a Soviet submarine running aground on a sandbar near Gloucester Island, off the New England coast, and it was here that the young Peter Benchley spent many a childhood weekend and vacation.
Benchley was a reporter for The Washington Post when he heard that Montauk-based fisherman Frank Mundus had caught what he called 'a monster shark' off Long Island in 1964. The story stuck in Benchley's head and, having seen Peter Gimbel and James Lipscomb's seminal shark documentary, Blue Water, White Death (1971), he plumped for it over a pirate adventure when he tried his hand at novel writing. Doubleday gave him a $1000 advance and he wrote part of the text in a converted chicken coop at a farm belonging to his in-laws.
With just 20 minutes to go before editor Thomas Congdon sent the text to press, Benchley was still stuck for a title. He had considered everything from Leviathan Rising to White Death. His father had even suggested, What's That Noshing on My Leg?, before Benchley chose Jaws, because it was short and pithy. When Steven Spielberg first saw the word on a galley proof in the office of producers David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck, he thought it must be a book about dentists. However, he took the proof home and returned to the Universal Studios lot to plead with Brown and Zanuck to let him direct the film.
Brown had also believed the text would make an exciting movie after he had learned about the manuscript from a book reviewer at Cosmopolitan magazine, which was edited by his wife, Helen Gurley Brown. The publisher was looking for advance quotes during its campaign to secure a Book of the Month recommendation and Brown and Zanuck agreed after reading Jaws overnight to bid for the film rights. Brown would later joke that had he read the book a second time, he would have realised how difficult it would be to adapt and walked away.
But Brown and Zanuck persisted and Benchley agreed to a $150,000 sale, with an additional $25,000 fee for writing the screenplay. Adjusted for inflation, this would amount to $1,240,000, while he was also scooping in royalties on the 5.5m copies of the book that was soon riding high on the New York Times Bestsellers List. However, Benchley had never written a screenplay before and he toiled over the adaptation, while the producers sought a director.
John Sturges was their first choice, as he had brought the best out of Spencer Tracy in a 1958 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. As he was unavailable, they turned their attention to Dick Richards, who had just made The Culpepper Cattle Company (1972). While he was enthusiastic about the project, he kept referring to 'the whale' over lunch and Brown and Zanuck decided to look elsewhere.
It was then that Spielberg came across the manuscript and convinced the partners that he was the right man for the job on the strength of his 1971 TV-movie, Duel, and his feature debut, The Sugarland Express (1974). This had yet to be released, but they were taken by the 27 year-old's enthusiasm for tackling another story about a leviathan troubling an everyman. Indeed, it was this part of the story that interested Spielberg most and he would upset Benchley by letting slip that he didn't think the rest of the book was particularly good.
He made it clear that he wanted to lose all references to the mayor's mafia connections and drop the affair between the chief of police's wife and the visiting ichthyologist, as it would jeopardise the camaraderie between the shark hunters on the 'Orca'. Spielberg later remembered saying, 'I'd like to do the picture if I could change the first two acts and base the first two acts on original screenplay material, and then be very true to the book for the last third.' Brown and Zanuck concurred and Benchley submitted two more drafts of the script before standing down after admitting 'I'm written out on this, and that's the best I can do.'
Feeling the characters were still too unlikeable, Spielberg asked John Byrum to take a look at the script. When he declined, Spielberg decided to take a pass himself and came up with three new sequences, including the Sunday roast fishing expedition. However, he came to regret being unable to accommodate the other two. The first was to have shown Quint, the shark hunter, emptying the Amity movie theatre by roaring with laughter at John Huston's version of Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1956). Gregory Peck had played Captain Ahab in the film and he refused to give Spielberg permission to use a clip, as he didn't regard it as his finest hour.
The second scene was to have been filmed in the harbour master's office, as he was brewing coffee while watching Charles Walters's Don't Go Near the Water (1957) on television. Through the open door, the skyline was filled with sailboats bobbing on the horizon at dusk. Suddenly, each craft lurches slightly, as though something had rocked its hull, and the scene was designed to end with the shark leaping out of the water to snatch the harbour master as he emptied the coffee grounds into the ocean.
According to Carl Gottlieb, who had been invited to help polish the script and serve as on-location improvisation co-ordinator, Spielberg also thought about giving cameos to Alvin T. Nocker (A.L. Camp) and his wife (Jessie Lee Fulton), the elderly couple from The Sugarland Express whose 1956 Buick Roadmaster is stolen by Lou Jean (Goldie Hawn) and Clovis Poplin (William Atherton). While this might have been amusing, however, he concluded that their presence in Amity would be an unnecessary distraction.
Still unhappy with the screenplay, Brown and Zanuck approached TV writers William Link and Richard Levinson (the creators of Columbo, 1971-2003). They were too busy, so Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Howard Sackler came aboard. He knew about the fate of the crew of the USS Indianapolis during the Second World War and used this tragic sinking in shark-infested waters as Quint's motivation for hunting the Amity predator. In order to complement this, Spielberg decided that Chief Brody should be scared of water, as he was 'coming from an urban jungle to find something more terrifying off this placid island near Massachusetts'.
Eager to leaven the 'dark shark hunt' with some humour, Spielberg had turned to actor-writer friend, Carl Gottlieb, to do a 'one-week dialogue polish'. However, he also asked him to play Meadows, the editor of the local newspaper, so that he would be on set throughout the shoot to handle any rewrites or eleventh-hour tweaks. Gottlieb saw similarities between Jaws and Henrik Ibsen's play, An Enemy of the People, which would later be filmed by George Schaefer in 1978 and by Satyajit Ray in 1989. He also acknowledged the influence on the picture of such sci-fi classics as Christian Nyby's The Thing From Another World (1951), Jack Arnold's It Came From Outer Space (1953) and Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), and Arnold Laven's The Monster That Challenged the World (1957).
Spielberg reckons that 27 scenes in the finished film were not in the book. So, what was the reworked story all about?
Three Men in a Boat
Breaking away from their partying friends on the beach at Amity Island, Chrissie (Susan Backlinie) and Cassidy (Jonathan Filley) go for a nocturnal dip in the ocean. He is too drunk to strip off, but Chrissie swims out to the buoy, where she is viciously attacked by an unseen force. The next morning, Cassidy explains what he can remember of the night before to Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), a New Yorker who has just become the local chief of police. As they talk, they are called by Deputy Leonard Hendricks (Jeffrey Kramer) to inspect the crab-infested remains of Chrissie's mangled corpse.
Having moved to Amity with his wife, Ellen (Lorraine Gary), and their young sons, Michael (Chris Rebello) and Sean (Jay Mello), Brody is determined to fit in with the island cliques. So, when Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) persuades the coroner (Robert Nevin) to declare that the victim died in a boating accident, Brody goes along with the reasoning that a shark panic will decimate the tourist trade on which the island economy depends. But Brody keeps an anxious vigil when the locals flock to the beach. In addition to the bathers, a dog called Pipit chases a stick on the tideline. However, it disappears and, soon after Mrs Kintner (Lee Fiero) gives young son Alex (Jeffrey Voorhees) permission for one last dip on his inflatable, Brody is horrified to see blood spurt into the air, as the boy is pulled down by the predator.
The next day, Brody is humiliated at the harbour when a black-veiled Mrs Kintner slaps him across the face and accuses him of recklessly opening the beach when he knew that a shark was lurking. She puts up a $3000 bounty on the beast and a raucous town meeting is silenced when veteran fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) runs his nails across a blackboard and demands $10,000 for 'the head, the tail, the whole damn thing' in reminding the eager amateur hunters that they're dealing with a killing machine rather than 'bluegills and tommycods'. This view is reinforced by newly landed oceanographer Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) after he examines Chrissie's remains and offers to help Brody tackle the giant shark.
Using a Sunday roast joint for bait, locals Charlie (Robert Chambers) and Denherder (Edward Chalmers, Jr.) go on a midnight fishing excursion. They are lucky to escape with their lives, however, after Charlie is pulled into the water and the shark destroys part of the pier. Despite the mayor's insistence to the local newspaper editor, Meadows (Carl Gottlieb), that the crisis is over when a tiger shark is caught and put on display on the harbour, Hooper is convinced the fish is too small to have swallowed Alex Kintner.
After coaxing Brody into leaving the dinner table, Hooper cuts open the tiger shark's belly to confirm his theory. He also lures the thalassophobic Brody on to his boat to scour the inshore waters. They find the half-submerged boat of fisherman Ben Gardner (Craig Kingsbury) and Hooper dons a scuba suit in order to investigate. While trying to remove a shark's tooth that has become embedded in the hull, the ichthyologist is scared by Ben's head floating out of the cabin and he shoots to the surface.
On the eve of the Fourth of July weekend, Vaughn ignores Hooper's warning that a great white shark is on the loose and declares the beaches open for business. A couple of kids cause a tremor by swimming with cardboard dorsal fins on their backs. Brody has told Michael to stay in a sheltered lagoon rather than paddle his boat off the beach. But the shark ventures into the estuary and Michael winds up in hospital after managing to get away while the shark devoured its latest victim (Ted Grossman). At the hospital, Brody shames Vaughn into hiring Quint and informs Hooper that he will be joining them aboard the 'Orca'.
Humming a shanty about Spanish maidens, Quint taunts Hooper about being a soft city boy. He also mocks Brody for his phobia, as he covers his nose while chucking chum into the water to attract the shark. Stunned when the animal rises out of the water, Brody informs Quint that they're going to need a bigger boat. Racing on to the deck, Quint manages to harpoon the shark with a line attached to a yellow flotation barrel. But the creature disappears, leaving the trio to marvel at its 25ft length. As they get drunk that night, Quint and Hooper exchange stories about their bite scars. However, silence descends as Quint recalls being part of the crew of the USS Indianapolis, the ship that had delivered the first atomic bomb and which had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. He recalls how hundreds of men had been attacked by sharks as they floated near the wreckage and his determination to avenge them is stoked when the shark rams the boat and the power supply fails.
Having worked through the night to repair the engine, Quint smashes the radio when Brody attempts to contact the coastguard. On sighting his prey, Quint gives chase and secures another barrel. But, such is the strength of the creature, that it pulls the 'Orca' backwards until the cleats holding the line snap off. Deciding to retreat into shallower waters, the hunters find themselves exposed when the engine gives out.
With the vessel taking on water, Hooper volunteers to be lowered in a shark cage so he can attempt to hit the shark with a hypodermic spear laced with strychnine. Such is the ferocity of its charge, however, that Hooper drops the harpoon and flees the broken cage. As Brody looks on, his quarry leaps on to the stern and snatches Quint, who screams as he's devoured. Aware the boat is sinking, Brody hurls a scuba tank at the fish and it wedges in its jaw. Clambering into the crow's nest, as the boat begins to lurch, Brody gets off a rifle shot that hits the tank, which explodes and obliterates the shark. As Brody falls back with relief, Hooper resurfaces from the ocean bed and the pair share a joke as they cling to the flotation barrels and begin to paddle towards the shore.
We're Going to Need a Better Shark
Despite putting in all the work on the screenplay, Steven Spielberg had a moment's doubt about making Jaws, as he didn't want to become known as the 'truck and shark director'. He toyed with moving to 20th Century-Fox to shoot Lucky Lady (1975), with Gene Hackman and Liza Minnelli, but Universal refused to sanction the loan. Moreover, David Brown reassured him that he was about to become so big that he would be able to make any film he wanted.
As he was adamant that 'the superstar was gonna be the shark', Spielberg refused to cast big names, as he felt they would distract from the story and prevent the audience from believing that they could also get caught up in a situation like the one facing the residents of Amity. He did insist, however, on having locals in the minor roles in order to heighten the authenticity of the action. Indeed, Craig Kingsbury made such an impression on Spielberg and Gottlieb that they modelled Quint on him and even used some of his phrases for dialogue.
Lorraine Gary was among the first to be cast, as she was married to studio chief Sidney Sheinberg and it was hoped that he would go easy on a picture featuring his wife if it experienced a few difficulties. She was disappointed to lose the adulterous subplot from the novel and lamented the removal of a speech about sea otters from the scene in which Hooper comes to the Brody home bearing bottles of wine. But she was more than willing to play a part in keeping the Universal front office sweet when the production started falling behind schedule.
Murray Hamilton was quickly picked for the shady mayor, with Gottlieb averring that he was 'gifted with an uncanny ability to portray weakness posing as strength'. Stunt performer Susan Backlinie was also an early selection, as could swim and had the experience to advise on the safety aspects of filming Chrissie's terrifying ordeal. But the three male leads proved more problematic.
Robert Duvall turned down the part of Brody because he wanted to play Quint, which had been offered to Lee Marvin. Charlton Heston made inquiries, but Spielberg felt he was too imposing a screen presence to convince as the hard-pressed police chief. When Roy Scheider met Spielberg at a drinks party, he remembered thinking how eccentric the story sounded, while the director worried that the actor wouldn't be able to modulate the tough guy shtick that had been so effective in William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971). But doubts were sufficiently overcome on both sides to allow Scheider to sign up.
With nine days to go before the start of principal photography, the roles of Quint and Hooper remained uncast. With neither Lee Marvin nor Sterling Hayden being interested in Quint, Brown and Zanuck suggested Robert Shaw, who had just played the mark opposite Paul Newman and Robert Redford in George Roy Hill's The Sting (1973). Despite being a RADA graduate and a renowned playwright, the hard-drinking Shaw was ultra-competitive and quick with his opinions. He had loathed the book and had to be talked into the role by actress wife Mary Ure, who insisted it would be his most iconic turn alongside Red Grant in Terence Young's second Bond movie, From Russia With Love (1963).
With Jon Voight turning down the part of Hooper, Spielberg considered Timothy Bottoms, Jan-Michael Vincent, Joel Grey, and Jeff Bridges before pal George Lucas alerted him to Richard Dreyfuss, whom he had directed in American Graffiti (1973). However, Dreyfuss only wanted to see Jaws rather than be in it, as he guessed that the shoot would be arduous and protracted. On seeing his display in Ted Kotcheff's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974), however, Dreyfuss quickly changed his mind, as he felt his performance could kill his career stone dead. In fact, it was widely acclaimed and the combination of insecurity and ego put Dreyfuss in Shaw's crosshairs and they endured a frctious relationship throughout the shoot - a situation that was not made any easier by the fact that Shaw had to limit the number of days he could reside in the United States for tax reasons, forcing him to spend most weekends in Canada or the Caribbean in order to avoid a sizeable liability.
With a budget of around $3.5 million and a 55-day schedule, the shoot was pencilled in to commence on 2 May 1974, as rumours were rife about a possible strike by the Screen Actors Guild and Universal wanted the film to be in the can by the end of June. As Richard Dreyfuss recalled, however, their expectations were misplaced, as 'We started the film without a script, without a cast and without a shark.'
Production designer Joe Alves had chosen Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts as the principal location, as it looked like the kind of resort where the steady flow of tourist dollars was vital to its continued prosperity. But, while hoteliers and restaurateurs were delighted by the boost to off-season trade, not everyone on the island was thrilled to welcome a film crew. Consequently, petty obstacles were placed in the way of building Quint's shack on a vacant harbour lot in Menemsha, while a good deal of sabotaging and pilfering went on as the departure date kept being delayed.
Another reason the location had been chosen was the fact its ocean bed was never deeper than 35 feet for 12 miles out from shore, which meant it was ideal for anchoring cast and crew boats during filming without the coastline being visible, while it could also accommodate the underwater mechanisms required to operate the shark. Determined to shoot on the ocean rather than in a studio tank, Spielberg tasked cinematographer Bill Butler with devising a waterproofed camera box for filming underwater and a buoyancy regulator that would keep the camera still regardless of the waves. He also asked Alves to avoid using the colour red so that the blood on the water seemed more alarming.
Having quickly realised that it would be impossible to train a great white shark to perform the various attacks, the film-makers decided to commission three life-sized pneumatically powered props - a 'sea-sled shark' that could be pulled along the ocean bed on a 300ft line and two 'platform sharks', which had their respective left and right flanks exposed to allow maintenance access to the mechanised innards.
After months of research, Alves designed the shark props and entrusted their construction to Rolly Harper's Motion Picture & Equipment Rental in California. Over 40 technicians were involved in the process, which was supervised by SFX guru Bob Mattey, who had created the giant squid for Richard Fleischer's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and came out of retirement to work on Jaws. Mattey was a boundless optimist, who always believed there was a solution to every problem. But they started to arise in abundance once the sharks had been trucked to the island, as no one had thought to test the mechanisms in salt water.
Initially, Spielberg was happy to work around the shark sequences, while Alves and Mattey got their props ship-shape. But he soon began running out of things to keep the actors occupied and became convinced that the studio would fire him because he was falling so far behind. However, a combination of Brown, Zanuck, Sheinberg, and Gary kept the suits sweet, while the presence of editor Verna Fields in a cabin on Martha's Vineyard meant that Spielberg was able to demonstrate that the completed sequences were hanging together well.
Robert Shaw was also becoming concerned about his tax status and his tetchiness led to a few run-ins with the spiky Dreyfuss. On one occasion, Shaw was too drunk to do a scene and he sought to repay Spielberg's faith by rewriting the USS Indianapolis speech that had been expanded to a 15-page monologue by John Milius. It proved to be one of the highlights of the picture and brought about a rapprochement between Shaw and Dreyfuss, who envisaged playing together on Broadway as Hamlet and his father's ghost and Lear and his fool.
Meanwhile, the tourist season had started and 55,000 off-islanders had to be kept out of shot and stopped from taking snaps of the prop sharks that they could flog to the newspapers. With boatmen threatening to strike and Teamsters fuming about a crew member cycling to the set rather than being driven by a union man, the line producer also had to factor in the rise in hotel fees. This swelled the budget, as did the continuing delays with the sharks, who had earned the collective nickname of 'Bruce' after Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Ramer. The director started to refer to Alves's crew as 'the special defects department', while the feature was dubbed 'Flaws' by some of the cast. When Brown and Zanuck came to assess progress, Spielberg was mortified when the sled shark capsized and had to be retrieved from the ocean bed. Moreover, he had to admit that he had not anticipated how difficult it was going to be filming with boats that were prone to drifting (so that land was in sight in the distance) and weather changes that made strict continuity a luxury rather than a necessity.
He also had to contend with regatta yachts sailing into shot and losing light while they floated by. According to Spielberg, eight hours were often lost during a 12-hour day because of problems out of his control. As he recalled, 'we would shoot five scenes in a good day, three in an average day, and none in a bad day'. In later interviews, Spielberg would concede: 'I was naive about the ocean, basically. I was pretty naive about Mother Nature and the hubris of a film-maker who thinks he can conquer the elements was foolhardy, but I was too young to know I was being foolhardy when I demanded that we shoot the film in the Atlantic Ocean and not in a North Hollywood tank.'
Naturally, he couldn't prevent cast and crew members from getting seasick and things might have been considerably worse had Gottlieb been decapitated by a boat propeller or Dreyfuss had been trapped in a shark cage. But there were imponderables, such as the failure to capture a tiger shark locally, which necessitated one having to be snared in Florida and flown by private jet from Sarasota. Despite it being packed in salt and ice, the fish had started to decompose before the cameras turned and the stench was unbearable by the end of the fourth day of shooting the harbour scene.
The 'non-absorbent' neoprene foam used for Bruce's skin had the benefit of not smelling. But it soaked up liquid and left the shark looking bloated until an array of heaters and blowers had been used to dry it out. Soon after its arrival, one of the sharks got a dent in its chin and it cost $50,000 to remove the Kirk Douglas-like dimple. Its teeth also had to be soiled because they looked too white on camera. The sled shark kept becoming entangled with seaweed, while the metal frames began to buckle under the pressure of the water and the engines started to corrode. No longer able to pad out the day with cast scenes, Spielberg hit upon the idea of suggesting the shark's presence so that he no longer had to rely on unreliable props. Taking his cues from Alfred Hitchcock (who was preparing his final feature, Family Plot, 1976), he created a sense of unseen menace that would be made all the more intense by John Williams's masterly score. There was even a hint of Bernard Herrmann in the famous 'bar-dum bar-dum' sequence and Gottlieb was not alone in believing that Jaws would have the same impact on beach swimming that Psycho (1960) had had on showering in hotels.
Looking back, Spielberg would opine, 'The film went from a Japanese Saturday matinee horror flick to more of a Hitchcock, the less-you-see-the-more-you-get thriller.' Elsewhere, he remarked, 'The shark not working was a godsend. It made me become more like Alfred Hitchcock than like Ray Harryhausen.' If the latter isn't familiar to you, why not rent Ray Harryhausen: The Early Years Collection (2005) or Gilles Penso's excellent documentary, Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan (2011) ?
The problems with the sharks also impacted upon Spielberg's approach to the human drama. 'The more fake the shark looked in the water,' he explained, 'the more my anxiety told me to heighten the naturalism of the performances.' He also had Verna Fields incorporate authentic shark hunt footage that Peter Gimbel associates Ron and Valerie Taylor had filmed in the waters off Dangerous Reef in South Australia. As the sharks were much smaller, it was decided to lower 4ft 9in stuntman Carl Rizzo into the water in a scaled down cage. An industry veteran who had doubled for Elizabeth Taylor in Clarence Brown's horse-racing classic, National Velvet (1944), Rizzo had never dived before and was spooked when the shark rammed his cage. As his oxygen tank had also been made to scale, he only just had enough air to get him to the surface and, unsurprisingly, he refused to go down for a second take. As a result, the footage depicted and empty cage and this prompted Spielberg and Gottlieb to change the ending, as Hooper (who had perished in the book) got to survive in the film.
Roy Scheider on the other hand was lucky to get through the shoot in one piece. While he was inside the cabin, the 'Orca' started to sink and divers had to be scrambled to free him. Two more raced to the ocean floor to retrieve a couple of cameras that had gone down with the boat and there was huge relief when the Technicolor laboratory reported that the waterproof casing had preserved the footage, which was duly edited into the film.
Often in the freezing water in a wetsuit alongside his crew, Spielberg didn't spare himself during the shoot. At night, he worked with Fields and Gottlieb before going to bed at 10pm for an early morning call. But the fates kept conspiring against him. Reflecting later, he said, 'I thought my career as a film-maker was over. I heard rumours...that I would never work again because no one had ever taken a film 100 days over schedule.' Anxious to avoid being thrown overboard after the final shot had wrapped, Spielberg left his assistants to supervise the shark explosion, while he caught a flight home. This early exit has since become a superstition that continues to be honoured.
Spielberg's job was far from over, however. He reported to the MGM lot in Culver City to use the enormous tank that had been built in the 1940s for Esther Williams's aquatic ballets and employed stuntmen Dick Warlock and Frank James Sparks to double for Dreyfuss in a retake of the cage sequence. Still striving for a final jolt as October approached, Spielberg borrowed Verna Fields's pool and spent $3000 of his own money to re-film the discovery of Ben Gardner's severed head, with powdered milk being used to make the water cloudy and a tarpaulin being draped overhead to darken the depths. The uncomplaining editor kept beavering away and Zanuck later revealed, 'She actually came in and reconstructed some scenes that Steven had constructed for comedy and made them terrifying, and some scenes he shot to be terrifying and made them comedy scenes.'
There's no question that Fields was the production's unsung heroine, as her tireless efforts on Martha's Vineyard enabled Spielberg to see how the picture was coming together and find ways to improve both performances and shooting strategies. In all, 400,000 feet of film had been exposed, with only 11,000 making it into the final cut. All that remained, as paperback sales continued to go through the roof, was to see whether the film could match the success of its source.
Five Record-Breaking Decades Later...
Spielberg laughed when John Williams first played him 'the shark theme', as he was expecting more than two notes. Yet, the ostinato played on a tuba by Tommy Johnson has become one of the most recognisable pieces of screen music and remains shorthand for approaching menace. Indeed, Frankie (Michael Imperioli) jokes that it was 'our theme song' when the notes give brother Lenny (Jack Black) the creeps in Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, and Rob Letterman's animation, Shark Tale (2004).
The score played a key part in Universal's pioneering advertising campaign, which saw $700,000 of the $1.8 million marketing budget going on two dozen 30-second national television spots, which succeeded in whipping up public curiosity in the two days before the film's release on 20 June 1975. Zanuck and Brown had been on the chat show circuit with Benchley since the previous autumn, as they sought to tie in the movie poster with the paperback cover, which shared an illustration that Bantam artist Roger Kastel had created with the help of Allison Maher, a Wilhelmina model who had posed as the girl swimming unsuspectingly above the rising shark by lying across a couple of studio chairs.
Leaving nothing to chance, the producers also signed a number of merchandising deals that led to the launch of such tie-ins as 'a soundtrack album, T-shirts, plastic tumblers, a book about the making of the movie, the book the movie was based on, beach towels, blankets, shark costumes, toy sharks, hobby kits, iron-on transfers, games, posters, shark's tooth necklaces, sleepwear, water pistols, and more.' Well-publicised spring test screenings in Dallas, Long Beach, and Hollywood meant that everyone in America knew about Jaws before it opened on an unprecedented 464 screens across the United States and Canada. Ordinarily, major movies were launched in a handful of big cities on the back of regional premieres. Going on the opening weekend box office to gauge demand, the studios then rolled out more prints to take advantage of newspaper reviews and word of mouth. But it could take several weeks, if not months, for a hit picture to reach venues in the less-populated states. In the case of Jaws, the blanket release strategy helped turn it into a blockbuster that changed how Hollywood operated.
A batch of glowing reviews did no harm to the cause, either. Pauline Kael declared Jaws 'the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made', while Roger Ebert reckoned it was 'a film that's as frightening as The Exorcist, and yet it's a nicer kind of fright, somehow more fun because we're being scared by an outdoor-adventure saga instead of a brimstone-and-vomit devil'. A less convinced Vincent Canby called it 'the sort of nonsense that can be a good deal of fun', although Molly Haskell rebelled further in The Village Voice by branding it 'a scare machine that works with computer-like precision...You feel like a rat, being given shock therapy.'
Having racked up a record $7 million over the opening weekend, Jaws went into profit within 10 days, as it amassed $21,116,354. It became the first film to gross $100 million after just 59 days and overtook The Godfather as the most successful film of all time, during its record 14 weeks atop the box-office charts. Rentals reached $123.1 million before Jaws was taken out of circulation, although the figure rose to $133.4 million following reissues in 1976 and 1979. Impatient overseas audiences finally got to see the picture in December, with records tumbling everywhere it played. In the UK, it launched in 100 cinemas, with queues forming for each screening.
Suitably impressed, BAFTA rewarded Jaws with nominations for Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Editing, and Sound, while Richard Dreyfuss was nominated for Best Actor. But the Golden Globes only doled out three nominations and Spielberg bitterly resented being overlooked for Best Director at the Oscars. John Williams, Verna Fields, and the sound team of Robert Hoyt, Roger Heman, Earl Madery, and John Carter all went home with statuettes. But the big winner on the night was Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which matched the feat of Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934) in taking the Big Five Academy Awards.
In October 1975, Spielberg declared, 'making a sequel to anything is just a cheap carny trick'. Clearly he would come to change his mind when a follow-up was mooted to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). But Universal didn't need the director's approval to bankroll Jeannot Szwarc's Jaws 2 (1978). Scheider, Gary, and Hamilton reprised their roles, while rumours abounded that only a commitment to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) had prevented Spielberg from taking over after original director John D. Hancock had been fired a few days into the shoot. Joe Alves found himself at the helm for Jaws 3-D (1983), which saw Carl Gottlieb partner with Richard Matheson on the screenplay after he had joined with Howard Sackler on its predecessor. But Michael De Guzman wrote Joseph Sargent's critically mauled, Jaws: The Revenge (1987), which followed the widowed Ellen Brody to the Bahamas, where she encounters an amorous pilot named Hoagie (Michael Caine). Unfortunately, in her final role, Gary was nominated for a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actress, only to lose to Madonna in James Foley's Who's That Girl?
On 4 November 1979, Jaws aired on US television, with its 57% audience share making it the most-watched film on the small screen after Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind (1939). It also had to settle for being a runner-up in the UK, too, with its 23 million viewers falling behind Guy Hamilton's 007 classic, Live and Let Die (1973). The first LaserDisc released in North America was Jaws in 1978, with the 20th anniversary version being released with a 'making of' documentary by Laurent Bouzereau, who would revisit the picture in Jaws @ 50 (2025). In between Erik Hollander covered much the same ground in The Shark Is Still Working (2007), which also began as a home entertainment extra.
MCA Home Video released Jaws on VHS in 1980 and it went on to sell 800,000 copies, with a 25th anniversary pack including a documentary, deleted scenes, outtakes, and the trailer on a second tape. This had to compete with the first DVD release in 2000, which shifted a million copies in the first month. After a second DVD version was issued in 2005, the film came to Blu-ray in 2012 and sold 362,000 units. The 4K version helped mark the feature's 45th anniversary and all three formats are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso.
Having changed the game, Jaws quickly found itself being surpassed, as George Lucas's Star Wars (1977) broke many of its commercial records. Buf its place in the history books is assured. As Peter Biskind wrote, it 'diminished the importance of print reviews, making it virtually impossible for a film to build slowly, finding its audience by dint of mere quality...Moreover, Jaws whet corporate appetites for big profits quickly, which is to say, studios wanted every film to be Jaws.' There are those who blame the picture for Hollywood starting to pander to juvenile audiences. But its most damaging impact came from perpetuating negative stereotypes about sharks, with the so-called 'Jaws effect' leading to a huge drop in shark populations, as amateur hunters went in search of trophies.
Peter Benchley spent the remainder of his life as a conservationist and Spielberg has admitted his regret that the film took such a toll on the wild shark population. Yet thousands were inspired by the book and the movie to become oceanographers, who have subsequently increased our understanding of these unique creatures, as well as their behaviour and their value to marine eco systems.
Numerous film-makers have been inspired by the picture, with Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) being billed as 'Jaws in space'. Among those available from Cinema Paradiso are Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976), Orca: The Killer Whale (1977), Barracuda, Eaten Alive (both 1978), Alligator (1980), and The Last Shark (aka Great White, 1981). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Spielberg declared Joe Dante's Piranha (1978) to be 'the best of the Jaws ripoffs'. But we wish someone had released Brazilian Adriano Stuart's parody, Bacalhau (1976), if only for the fact that the killer fish are cod!
Among the film's biggest fans is director Kevin Smith, who revealed: 'In Mallrats, the main characters were called Brodie and TS Quint; in Chasing Amy, we had a character named Hooper; in Clerks, my first movie, one of the most memorable shots is the chip in the jar of salsa where Randall goes: "Salsa-shark!"' No doubt, Smith visited the theme park ride at Universal Studios Florida before it closed in 2012. He may even have played some of the many linked video games, seen RealD's 2002 3-D print, or patronised the stage musicals, JAWS: The Musical! (2002), Giant Killer Shark: The Musical 2006), and Bruce (2022), which was based on Carl Gottlieb's seminal book, The Jaws Log (1975). Robert Shaw's son, Ian, has also written about the shoot. Indeed, he got to play his own father when The Shark Is Broken transferred from the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe to London's West End in October 2021.
In 2010, Richard Dreyfuss cameo'd as fisherman Matt Boyd in Alexandre Aja's Piranha (2010). But he still refuses to go near the water. 'I have never done it, not since the film,' he explained, 'because you're totally aware of what you're not aware of and you're not aware of anything underneath.' Spielberg also suffered adverse effects from the production, enduring frequent nightmares that prompted him to sneak on to the 'Orca 2' (which had been brought to Universal Studios) in order to sit in the cabin and recompose himself. He could always console himself with the boost that Jaws gave to his career. No longer was he the 'poor director' who had to borrow an editor's pool in order to shoot a DIY scene. Adjusted for inflation, his sophomore feature has earned close to $2 billion, making it the 14th most successful film of all time. He also has E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) at No.7 and Jurassic Park (1993) at No.11. We bet he's glad he didn't make Lucky Lady now!
Man of Aran (1934)
There was much controversy when Robert Flaherty's documentary was released, as the Aran islanders had not hunted basking sharks using the techniques shown in half a century. Yet, this remains a valuable and compelling record of a disappearing way of life.
San Demetrio, London (1943)
Much was made of Jaws being the first major motion picture to be made at sea. But this Ealing nautical drama was not only made on the waves, but also in wartime conditions. Chief Engineer Charles Pollard (who had been aboard the stricken oil tanker) served as a special adviser to ensure total authenticity.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
This thrilling adaptation of Jules Verne's underwater adventure is chiefly remembered for the fight with the giant squid. The model was made by Robert A. Mattey, who came out of retirement to work on the three Bruce used in the shark attack scenes.
Moby Dick (1956)
Herman Melville's story about a skipper's obsession with a great white whale reverberates around Jaws. However, Steven Spielberg's plan to have Quint (Robert Shaw) laughing at a screening of John Huston's film came to nothing because he couldn't secure the rights.
Three Men in a Boat (1956)
Jerome K. Jerome's splendid parody of gentlemen at leisure couldn't be more different from Peter Benchley's tale. But Laurence Harvey, David Tomlinson, and Jimmy Edwards make engaging travelling companions, as they get into all manner of scrapes while rowing the length of the River Thames.
The Birds (1963)
Bodega Bay has much in common with Amity Island and it's clear that Spielberg made the first half of Jaws in imitation of Alfred Hitchcock's 'terror in the everyday' style, while the second resembles one of Howard Hawks's 'men at work' pictures.
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966)
Nathaniel Benchley's novel, The Off-Islanders, provides the inspiration for this witty Cold War satire, which sees a Soviet submarine run aground on a sandbar near Gloucester Island off the New England coast, just as the summer season is ending.
The Deep (1977)
Robert Shaw reunited with Peter Benchley for this adaptation of a novel about Romer Treece, a treasure hunter who is fascinated by the artefacts recovered from the ocean off the Bahamas by vacationing couple, Gail Berke (Jacqueline Bisset) and David Saunders (Nick Nolte).
Shark Tale (2004)
DreamWorks, the animation company co-founded by Steven Spielberg, made this lively story about a bluestreak cleaner wrasse named Oscar (Will Smith), who discovers the error of boasting that he had killed the son of Don Lino (Robert De Niro), the boss of Southside Reef.
USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (2016)
Meticulously made by Mario Van Peebles, this reconstruction outlines the facts behind Quint's story about the heavy cruiser that had delivered the Hiroshima bomb before being torpedoed in the Philippine Sea on 30 July 1945. Nicolas Cage is on restrained form as Captain Charles B. McVay III, who blamed himself for the horrific events that unfolded in the shark-infested waters.
