26 Intriguing Insights About ‘Jaws’

The iconic 'daah dun' soundtrack heralded the arrival of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws on June 20, 1975, marking the birth of the modern summer blockbuster and instilling a deep fear of the ocean in audiences. Discover 25 lesser-known facts about this Oscar-winning shark thriller.

1. The film is inspired by Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws, which almost had a completely different title.

Jaws is based on Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel, which drew inspiration from real-life shark attacks off New Jersey in 1916 and a 1964 incident involving fisherman Frank Mundus, who caught a massive 4500-pound shark near Montauk. Benchley considered alternative titles like “The Stillness in the Water,” “The Silence of the Deep,” “Leviathan Rising,” and “The Jaws of Death” before choosing Jaws.

2. Benchley appears in a brief role in the film.

In the movie, Benchley plays a news reporter speaking to the camera on the beach, drawing from his real-life experience as a journalist for The Washington Post before writing Jaws.

Steven Spielberg also has a cameo: his voice is heard as the Amity Island dispatcher contacting Quint’s boat, the Orca, to connect Sheriff Brody’s wife.

3. Steven Spielberg landed the director’s role for Jaws thanks to his work on Duel.

Producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown, who had previously collaborated with the 28-year-old Spielberg on The Sugarland Express (1974), selected him to direct Jaws due to his film Duel. The movie, about a deranged trucker pursuing a defenseless driver, shared thematic similarities with Jaws, making Spielberg the ideal choice.

4. Surprisingly, there aren’t many “jaws” shown in Jaws.

The enormous great white shark in Jaws doesn’t fully appear on screen until 1 hour and 21 minutes into the two-hour movie. This was due to the frequent malfunctions of the mechanical shark, forcing Spielberg to use creative solutions, such as Quint’s yellow barrels, to work around the issue.

5. The production of the film took an exceptionally long time.

Technical challenges, including the malfunctioning shark and filming in the Atlantic Ocean, extended the initial 65-day shooting schedule to 159 days, excluding post-production.

6. The fictional Amity Island in Jaws was filmed on Martha’s Vineyard.

The production team used Edgartown and Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, to depict Amity Island. Due to strict land regulations, Quint’s shack was the only set constructed, and the Amity Island billboard had to be assembled and dismantled within a single day.

7. The mechanical shark in Jaws weighed over a ton.

Designed by production designer Joe Alves, the pneumatically-operated shark tipped the scales at 1.2 tons and stretched 25 feet long. Martha’s Vineyard was selected as a filming location partly because its ocean floor, with a consistent depth of 35 feet for 12 miles offshore, provided the ideal conditions for resting the massive mechanical shark rig during shooting.

8. Spielberg drew inspiration for Jaws from his legal advisor.

Spielberg nicknamed the shark “Bruce” in honor of his attorney, Bruce Ramer, who has also represented stars such as George Clooney, Robert Zemeckis, and Clint Eastwood.

9. The iconic opening scene of Jaws was brought to life with some hands-on effort.

Filming the opening sequence took three days. To simulate the shark’s attack on the swimmer, a harness with cables was fastened to actress Susan Backlinie’s legs and manually pulled by crew members along the shore. Spielberg ensured Backlinie wasn’t warned about the timing of the pulls, capturing her authentic fear on camera.

Spielberg humorously referenced his own Jaws opening in his 1979 comedy 1941. In the scene, Backlinie reprises her role as a swimmer, but instead of a shark, she is lifted from the water by a Japanese submarine.

10. Roy Scheider secured the lead role in Jaws thanks to a bit of overheard conversation.

Scheider landed the role of Chief Martin Brody after overhearing Spielberg describe the scene where the shark jumps onto Quint’s boat at a Hollywood party. Intrigued, Scheider approached Spielberg and expressed his interest in joining the film. Impressed by Scheider’s performance in The French Connection, Spielberg eventually offered him the part.

11. Richard Dreyfuss wasn’t the original pick for the role of Hooper in Jaws...

Spielberg initially considered Jon Voight, Timothy Bottoms, and Jeff Bridges for the role of oceanographer Matt Hooper. When none were available, George Lucas, who had directed Dreyfuss in American Graffiti, recommended him. Dreyfuss accepted the role, partly due to his dissatisfaction with his performance in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz the previous year.

12. ... And Robert Shaw wasn’t the initial choice for the role of Quint.

After Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden, the top picks for Quint, declined the role, producers Zanuck and Brown suggested Robert Shaw, who had collaborated with them on 1973’s The Sting.

13. The character Quint was inspired by a real-life Martha’s Vineyard fisherman.

Shaw modeled his portrayal of Quint after Craig Kingsbury, a local fisherman from Martha’s Vineyard who also played Ben Gardner in the film. Kingsbury assisted Shaw with the accent and shared sea tales that Shaw later wove into Quint’s improvised lines.

14. Gregory Peck’s intervention led to a scene being removed from Jaws.

An early script draft included a scene where Quint disrupts a movie theater screening of John Huston’s 1958 adaptation of Moby Dick. Although filmed, Gregory Peck, who starred as Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, held the rights to the film and refused permission for its use, resulting in the scene’s deletion.

15. The novel version of Jaws differed significantly from the film.

Initial screenplay drafts included a subplot involving Hooper’s affair with Chief Brody’s wife, taken directly from the book. Additionally, the book revealed that Mayor Vaughn was pressured by the mafia, not local businesses, to keep Amity’s beaches open due to their real estate stakes on the island.

16. Spielberg incorporated an unscripted moment into Jaws.

The dinner table scene where Sean mimics Brody’s actions was inspired by a real-life interaction between Scheider and Jay Mello during breaks. Spielberg found the moment so endearing that he recreated it for the film.

Another memorable line, Brody’s “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” was entirely improvised by Scheider during filming and stemmed from an inside joke among the crew.

17. Shaw personally reworked the U.S.S. Indianapolis monologue.

Quint’s U.S.S. Indianapolis speech wasn’t in the original novel and was introduced in an uncredited script revision by Howard Sackler. John Milius later expanded it into a lengthy monologue, which Shaw, a playwright himself, refined and condensed on the day of filming.

18. Some scenes in Jaws feature authentic shark footage.

At Zanuck’s insistence, Spielberg incorporated real shark footage into the film. He enlisted Ron and Valerie Taylor to capture underwater shots of 14-foot sharks near Australia. To enhance the scale, they used Carl Rizzo, a 4-foot-11 actor, as a stand-in for Hooper in the shark cage. As TIME magazine noted, Rizzo’s smaller stature made the real sharks appear larger compared to the fictional 24-foot great white in the movie.

After days of unsuccessful attempts to capture the desired shot, the sharks merely circled the cage. However, during a take without Rizzo, a shark got caught in the cage’s bridle, thrashing violently. This unplanned footage was used in the final cut.

19. Despite its graphic shark attacks, Jaws holds a PG rating.

Initially rated R by the MPAA, Jaws was reclassified as PG after toning down some of the more graphic scenes, such as the severed leg in the estuary. The PG-13 rating didn’t exist until 1984, following Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The film’s poster still warns that it “MAY BE TOO INTENSE FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN.”

20. The original ending of Jaws paid tribute to Moby-Dick.

The script’s initial ending mirrored Moby-Dick, with the shark succumbing to harpoon wounds from Quint and Brody. However, Spielberg opted for a more explosive finale, introducing the tank scene. Dialogue and hints about the tank were added during filming.

21. Spielberg wasn’t behind the camera for some of Jaws’s concluding scenes.

Spielberg wasn’t present for the shark explosion scene. Exhausted from the demanding shoot, he had already returned to Los Angeles for post-production, leaving the task to the second unit.

22. The iconic Jaws poster was a stroke of luck.

Artist Roger Kastel created the famous poster for the paperback version of Benchley’s novel. Inspired by a great white shark diorama at the American Museum of Natural History, Kastel added a swimmer at the top, a model he was sketching for a Good Housekeeping ad. He asked her to pose on a stool, mimicking a swimming motion, to complete the image.

23. Jaws became Hollywood’s biggest blockbuster.

Jaws broke records as the first film to premiere in over 400 U.S. theaters and the first to earn more than $100 million at the box office. It remained the highest-grossing film until Star Wars surpassed it two years later.

24. Spielberg subtly referenced his earlier film in Jaws.

The faint roar heard after the shark’s explosion was also used in Duel, when the antagonist’s truck plunges off a cliff.

25. The main theme of Jaws is surprisingly simple to play.

John Williams’s iconic Jaws theme uses only two notes: E and F. This collaboration marked Williams’s second project with Spielberg after The Sugarland Express, and he has scored every Spielberg film since, except for 1985’s The Color Purple and 2015’s Bridge of Spies.

26. Spielberg regrets the fear of sharks Jaws instilled in audiences.

While Jaws brought immense success to Universal and Spielberg, it had unintended consequences for real sharks. Many argue the film sparked a surge in shark fishing, contributing to their declining numbers. Though no direct evidence links Jaws to this impact, Spielberg has expressed regret over potentially tarnishing sharks’ reputation.

“One of my lingering fears isn’t being attacked by a shark, but that sharks might resent me for the frenzy of sport fishing that followed the film’s release in 1975,” Spielberg shared on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs in 2022. “I deeply regret the decline in shark populations that may have been influenced by the book and movie.”

Additional Sources: Blu-ray special features

This article was first published in 2018 and has been revised for 2023.