“Jaws” premiered 49 years ago – 10 fun facts about the film

Hollywood director Steven Spielberg was just at the beginning of his career when he began filming Jaws in 1974 on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the south coast of Cape Cod in the US state of Massachusetts. And it didn’t go as planned. The originally planned 55 days of shooting ended up being 159. The producers had to triple the original budget of four million US dollars. But the success proved them right. Just two weeks after the film hit US cinemas on June 20, 1975, it had recouped its costs.

But did you know that Richard Dreyfuss didn’t want to play the role of marine biologist Matt Hooper and that the shark dummies were all nicknamed Bruce and didn’t work most of the time? Here are ten bizarre facts about the blockbuster:

1. The novel included a love story

There was a love story in Peter Benchley’s novel. Ellen Brody, the wife of police chief Martin Brody, had a previous affair with Hooper’s older brother. Since Brody believed that Hooper himself was the lover, there were visible tensions and even physical altercations between the two in the novel. But producer Richard Zanuck did not want the love story in the film and told Benchley: “All the sex nonsense has to go, it has to be a pure adventure story.”

2. Spielberg initially took “Jaws” literally

The original title of the novel was “Jaws”, as was the later title of the film. Literally translated, it means “jaw” or “throat”, but in zoological terms the term is also used for “mouth”. When Steven Spielberg saw the script in the film production office, he didn’t initially understand the title. “I saw the stack of paper on the desk and just read ‘Jaws’. What is that supposed to be? Is it about a dentist?”

3. The shark dummies called them Bruce

The three different mechanical versions of the shark built for the film were nicknamed Bruce. They were named after Spielberg’s then-divorce lawyer Bruce Ramer.

4. Richard Dreyfuss didn’t want to play at all

When Spielberg told his friend When Richard Dreyfuss told him about the film and asked him if he wanted to take on the role of marine biologist Matt Hooper, he declined. “But then I saw a film I had made before and thought my performance in it was so bad that I called Steven and begged him to let me play the role,” he recalled in a TV documentary.

5. An ex-jockey as a stunt double

The first underwater shots of sharks were filmed in Australia. However, there were only smaller sharks there. To make them appear larger, Spielberg had a miniature shark cage built and hired the 1.45 meter tall ex-jockey and Hollywood stuntman Carl Rizzo as a diver double for Richard Dreyfuss. More than a week passed without any usable footage. Finally, during a break in filming, a shark became entangled in the chain that connected the cage to the boat. In a panic, the animal tried with all its might to free itself from the predicament. Cameras recorded the scene. Because the cage was pretty battered afterwards, a new one was built. But Rizzo refused to get back in. So the script was rewritten, because the cage was empty when the film was shot. In the film version, Hooper escapes from the cage during a shark attack and dives to the seabed, from where he watches the scene with the shark.

6. Spielberg played the shark himself

In the first few minutes of the film, a swimmer is pulled underwater in the dark ocean at night. A camera box was built specifically for this shot so that the viewer would feel like they were swimming in the water. Stuntwoman Susan Backlinie wore special shorts with ropes attached to them in the scene. Crew members stood on the beach on either side of her, pulling on the rope to make it look like she was being pulled back and forth by the shark. A rope was attached to her stomach and Spielberg himself pulled her underwater on it in the first scene.

7. Real slap in the face for Roy Scheider

When a boy dies in one scene, the grieving mother, played by Lee Fierro, blames Chief Brody for the death. In her anger, she gives him a good slap in the face. She hit him 17 times in total until she got the shot right. At one point, she hit the actor so hard that his glasses fell off.

8. Most of the time the shark was broken

Producer David Brown compared the creation of a mechanical shark in a documentary to America’s space program. Special effects designer Robert Mattey made a total of three versions of the shark. Most of the hydraulic valves were powered by electric solenoid valves, which stopped working as soon as the shark was launched into the water. Spielberg therefore had to start without filming the shark. In fact, there were repeated technical problems with the dummies, so the script had to be adjusted again and again and the camera angles were chosen so that the audience only guessed at the shark’s presence most of the time. Producer Richard Zanuck explained: “What you see in the final image is practically every usable frame of the shark.”

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9. Robert Shaw was once too drunk to film

The British actor Robert Shaw, who plays the shark fisherman Quint in the film, had an alcohol problem. He is said to have drunk bourbon neat early in the morning and his make-up artist mixed him martinis. Before his four-minute monologue in the scene about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, he wanted to have a few drinks and even asked Spielberg for permission. When he returned to the set, however, he had to be supported by two production workers. Because he was too drunk, Spielberg could not finish filming the scene that evening. Shaw called him that night and apologized. He asked him to shoot the part again the next day. He arrived on set sober at 7:30 a.m. sharp and finished the scene. He had actually written the text for the monologue himself.

10. The movie boat actually sank

There were two versions of the film boat “Orca”. One of them was designed to be sunk if necessary. The other was not. But it was the one that actually sank during filming. It had a bolt attached to it and a rope attached to it. The rope was pulled by a speedboat to make the “Orca” roll – so that it looked as if it had been rammed by a giant white shark. But suddenly a plank broke off and water poured in. The actors desperately called for another boat to come to their aid. But sound mixer John Carter held his equipment over his head and shouted: “Screw the actors, save the sound department!” Months later he received an Oscar for his work. In total, the film won three Oscars, a Golden Globe, a Bafta Award and a Grammy.

“Jaws” and its successors

Because the film was so successful, Spielberg made three sequels. Many other directors followed his example and tried to portray the predator of the sea, for example in “Open Water”, “The Meg”, “The Shallows” or in the famous trash series “Sharknado”. Netflix is ​​also currently in shark fever: The film “Under Paris” had more than 40 million viewers in the first week after its release.

Sources: Documentary: In the Teeth of Jaws, “The Washington Post”, Cheat sheet, The Daily Jaws