‘Jaws’: 50 Amazing Facts About The Shark Film That Changed The World
With Jaws, the first summer blockbuster, turning 50, it’s time to look at 50 amazing facts about the movie and its cultural impact! And, since I, Pat Jankiewicz, wrote Just When You Thought It Was Safe: A Jaws Companion (the only book about all four Jaws films), it only makes sense that I compiled the best and most interesting facts for you to take a bite of.
50 Incredible Facts About Jaws
1. Based on the best-selling novel by Peter Benchley, Jaws was the movie that put director Steven Spielberg on the map.
2. JAWS was the first horror movie to become the highest-grossing film of all time. This led studios to roll the dice on the genre, leading to an explosion of late ’70s horror.
3. The Shark only appears onscreen for four minutes! While the fish’s presence is felt throughout the film, you only catch glimpses of him during the second and third attacks, before you see him in the climax.
4. Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Carl Gottlieb were inspired by Howard Hawks’ The Thing (1951), where you felt the monster’s presence through the film, but didn’t see It until the final reel.
5. In the film, The Shark has a scar across his right eye. “I gave him that scar because Quint calls him a ‘bad fish’, so I figure, he’s been in trouble before,” says shark designer Joe Alves.
6. The beautiful woman on the ‘Amity Island Welcomes You’ billboard was Brian DePalma’s girlfriend.
7. Opening victim Susan Backlinie (Chrissie) was a Weeki Wachee Mermaid as a teenager, which is how she is able to slide her leg seamlessly into the water without a ripple right before the shark attacks her.
8. The Shark surfacing behind Brody as he’s chumming the waters was a happy accident—The Shark surfaced too soon.
9. Composer John Williams felt the film’s primal creature deserved a primal score.
10. The first time Chrissie is pulled underwater is by Steven Spielberg himself. He operated the device to pull her for that first yank.
11. The title was an accident. Author Peter Benchley and editor Tom Congdon couldn’t agree on a title for the book. After batting around titles like Leviathan Rising, Jaws of Death, Jaws Rising, and A Stillness In The Water, they settled on Jaws, only because it was the one word they agreed on.
12. Jaws started modern movie merchandising, selling millions of soundtrack albums, toys, t-shirts, and, (of course) beach towels!
13. Alien sold to 20th Century Fox with the pitch ‘Jaws in Space’.
14. Steven Spielberg provides the voice of The Amity Point Life Station, who tries to put a call in from Ellen Brody to The Orca.
15. On its original run, the poster of Jaws had been parodied in so many political cartoons, Universal Studios ran a collection of the best cartoons as the ad.
16. For the death of Alex Kintner (the boy on the raft), Steven Spielberg wanted a nightmarish shot of the shark surfacing directly under the child. But, Jaws‘ Second Unit director Joe Alves could not get the shot, as the rising mechanical shark kept pushing the child mannequin on the raft out of the way.
17. When Jaws made its TV premiere in November 1979, it got blockbuster ratings on ABC TV. Many Jaws rip offs—including Pirahna, Alligator, and Tentacles—ran on rival network TV channels looking to cash in.
18. Cinematographer Bill Butler shot much of Jaws handheld.
19. By using a waterproof camera case, Butler said, “I could shoot from the shark’s perspective, with the swimmers dangling legs—it was very effective!”
20. Butler also shot the original Child’s Play and Anaconda. Child’s Play reminded him of Jaws “because we shot in a harsh environment—Chicago during an ice storm, with a mechanical creature that had problems.”
21. Jonathan Searle, the younger boy with the fake fin, is now Chief of Police in Martha’s Vineyard.
22. John Williams’ music for the arrival of the ferry boats and summer people is amusingly titled “Promenade (Tourists On The Menu)”.
23. The Brody Family dog is Steven Spielberg’s dog, Elmer. When you see the film in a theatre, Elmer appears more. You lose him in the pan-and-scan cable version on TNT and AMC.
24. The surprise reveal of Ben Gardner’s head was filmed in Jaws‘ editor Verna Fields’ swimming pool.
25. Jaws, the novel, written by Peter Benchley in New Jersey, is loosely based on the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916.
26. In those Jersey attacks, a shark attacked five people (and killed four), with the last 3 victims attacked 11 miles inland. This became known as ‘The 12 Days Of Terror’ and is recounted in Michael Capuzzo’s excellent book, Close To Shore. Later in life, Benchley claimed it wasn’t an influence, but the 1916 Jersey attacks are mentioned prominently in both his novel and film.
27. The 1916 shark, believed to be either a bull shark or a young great white, was dubbed ‘The Jersey Man-Eater’. The real-life Alex Kintner was an 11-year-old named Lester Stillwell, whose last words before the shark attacked him were “Hey fellas, watch me float!”
28. Quint’s backstory on the USS Indianapolis was invented for the film.
29. In the novel, Quint is listed in the Amity Island phone book simply as ‘Quint’.
30. Benchley’s Shark in the book is smaller and more voracious. He’s 20 feet long (not the film’s 25-foot fish) and a half hour after eating, The Kintner boy, he kills Morris Cater, a senior citizen swimming at another part of the island.
31. The end of the book has Brody clinging to the gin pole of the sinking Orca, as the shark comes in for the kill. As it charges him, Brody closes his eyes and screams. But then, the shark dies of its collective injuries.
32. Peter Benchley complained about the ending of the film, saying that shooting an air tank “wouldn’t make a shark explode like an oil refinery!”
33. Roger Kastel, who painted the iconic paperback cover of the shark under Chrissie, was hired to do the film’s poster with only one change requested from Universal: “Make The Shark bigger!”
34. Quentin Tarantino calls Jaws “The Greatest Movie Ever Made “. And he’s right.
35. While directing Friday the 13th, Sean Cunningham referred to the film’s killer as ‘our shark’, after Jaws. When he filmed Mrs. Voorhees’ death scene, “I wondered who would be our shark now, as Jason was still dead,” he laughs.
36. Michael Myers, in John Carpenter’s Halloween, has the exact same body count as the shark in Jaws—5 people and a dog.
37. Dick Warlock, Hooper’s stunt double in Jaws, played Michael Myers in Halloween II. (Jaws‘ actor Jeffrey Kramer is also in Halloween II)
38. The film is mentioned in Queen’s classic, “Bicycle Race”. (“Jaws was never my scene and I don’t like Star Wars“)
39. Jaws stretched the PG Rating. With its amount of blood and severed limbs, Jaws took the PG Rating to the limit. A year later, when Film Ventures’ Jaws-rip off Grizzly was given an R rating by the MPAA, they successfully appealed, arguing Jaws‘ got special treatment as a major studio movie.
40. The opening homages Universal Studios’ The Creature From The Black Lagoon. Chrissie’s lyrical opening swim (pre-attack), viewed from the sea floor, is a nod to Julie Adams’ Kay.
“I saw Jaws when it first came out, and I recognized it immediately! I’m just glad I didn’t have a shark under me in my movie, I would have been torn apart,” Julie Adams laughed.
41. That’s not the only The Creature From The Black Lagoon similarity in the Jaws franchise. Chrissie clings to the buoy just like Lori Nelson in Revenge of the Creature. Jaws 3-D even borrows the plot!
42. You can actually hear the roar of The Creature From The Black Lagoon, as the shark slides into the silt at the end of Jaws.
43. Fright Night, which turns 40 this summer, has a surprising connection to Jaws. Charlie’s Mom in the film, actress Dorothy Fielding, is the girl who screams “Oh…My…GOD!’ when she sees the fake dorsal fin (of the pranksters) coming towards her.
44. Fielding has a bigger part in the TV version of Jaws, where she works at a music store. She sells Quint piano wire to kill the shark with.
45. Joe Dante and James Cameron got their big break in the film industry, directing Jaws rip-offs Piranha and Piranha II: The Spawning.
46. Both of the film’s screenwriters appear in the film. Novelist Peter Benchley appears as a TV reporter (“A cloud in the shape of a killer shark”), and Carl Gottlieb plays Amity Island journalist Meadows (“We’ve never had that kind of trouble in these waters”).
47. Jaws was the first Spielberg movie to become an amusement park ride. When the shark started attacking trams on the Universal Studios Hollywood Tour in 1976, no one realized it would be joined by Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, and E.T. Rides.
48. There is now a Jaws-style shark mural under the train trestle that the shark swam under to attack Lester Stillwell and Stanley Fisher.
49. The Matawan Historical Society is planning a tour of attack sites on July 12, 2025.
50. By the end of the four film Jaws franchise, Chief Brody has killed two great white Sharks, son Michael Brody killed two great white Sharks (three, if you count the baby shark he tried to save), and Sean Brody, the shame of the family, is the only Brody eaten by one.
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