Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this article:
- This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Jaws on June 20, 1975.
- The movie’s production was full of unexpected twists, including problems with the mechanical sharks.
- Jaws remains a classic film that has influenced movies like Finding Nemo and Back to the Future Part II.
Admit it. As soon as you saw the word, “Jaws,” you started to hear that theme music. Or maybe you pictured the giant fake shark popping out of the water behind star Roy Scheider, prompting him to improvise that famous line, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
Of course they needed a bigger boat! No one with common sense would search for a killer shark in a 42-foot long lobster boat named The Orca! Then again, common sense has no place in the movies, which is why we are able to celebrate that 50 years ago, in 1975, director Steven Spielberg managed to convince Roy Scheider (Brody), Robert Shaw (Quint), and Richard Dreyfuss (Hooper) to suffer through the filming of Jaws. Summer and movies have never been the same.
Jaws was an immediate blockbuster, in no small part because it fulfills what Alfred Hitchcock said about suspense: “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” Perhaps that’s why the shark is only on screen for four minutes, and yet you are afraid of it for the entire 120-plus-minute movie.
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Over the years, Jaws has become such a cultural touchstone that, in 2001, the Library of Congress added it to its National Film Registry of culturally and historically significant movies. Because of its importance to popular culture, and to celebrate the anniversary of its release, here are seven uncommon facts about the first-of-its-kind movie and its impact.
1. The book is more than just 3 men and a shark
Although the movie focuses most on whether the three entirely unprepared men will capture the shark terrorizing Amity, Long Island, the Peter Benchley novel upon which it’s based explores other themes, including an unhappy marriage and an affair (read the book, we won’t reveal who cheats on whom and where) and a mayor who owes money to the mob (maybe if he keeps the beach open, he can pay off the Mafia!).
One aspect of Jaws the novel that is somewhat communicated in Jaws the movie: You get to see the underwater world from a shark’s point of view. However, this is also misleading. Unlike in the book and film, sharks don’t seek revenge or experience anger.
Even so, the novel was so successful—it was on the New York Times bestseller list for 44 weeks—that readers began to believe that sharks ate humans on purpose. They don’t. In fact, over time, Benchley became an authority on and defender of the apex predator. Humans aren’t their first food choice—they do like seals, though.
2. The shark was named after a real lawyer and inspired another famous shark
You’ve heard the old jokes about lawyers being sharks, but did you know that the three mechanical sharks made for Jaws were all named Bruce after Steven Spielberg’s real-life lawyer? The crew made three 25-foot-long versions of Bruce out of polyurethane: one full-body version, one that would be shown from the right side, and one from the left. All of them operated pneumatically with parts that were easily broken by salt water. Bruce the shark wasn’t always ready for his close-up, which is one reason he was rarely seen in the movie.
The broken shark and the unexpected bad weather forced Spielberg to swim past the original budget of $3 million to $4 million. In the end, the film cost $8 million to produce. Don’t worry, though. Within 60 days, Jaws became the first film to gross over $100 million in North American box office sales. To date, according to Box Office Mojo, it has earned roughly $478 million.
Back to Bruce (the shark, not the lawyer). He was so infamous in the filmmaking community that when Pixar made a movie that took place in the ocean, another summer blockbuster you might have heard of called Finding Nemo, the shark’s name was, you guessed it, Bruce. That’s not the only Jaws reference in Finding Nemo, either. Dory and Marlin get stuck in a submarine torpedo tube, and when they release the torpedo, it gets stuck in Bruce’s mouth. If you haven’t seen the end of Jaws, we won’t make the connection for you, but the animated Bruce handles the torpedo differently than the Bruce in Jaws.
The mechanical Bruce became part of the Jaws ride at Universal Studios Florida in 1990. The simulated behind-the-scenes tour through Amity closed in 2012, but the ride is still popular at the Universal Studios Japan theme park.
3. A 2019 play explored the actors’ real-life relationships
Partly because Bruce’s unreliability on set became so well-known, Ian Shaw, Robert Shaw’s son, and Joseph Nixon cowrote a play about the making of the movie. The Shark is Broken—an understatement if there ever was one—features the three starring actors waiting for the crew to fix Bruce. They discuss acting, their previous roles, how annoyed they are at the shark, and how forgettable the movie will be because “it’s about a shark.” They also play British pub games for money. Dreyfuss is on cocaine and having panic attacks, while Shaw, though drunk, recites Shakespeare (Sonnet 29).
The kicker, though, and the other theme of the play, is listening to Robert Shaw improvise and rewrite Quint’s U.S.S. Indianapolis speech, which became the film’s most poignant and meaningful moment. One of the great movie monologues, the speech, delivered in Shaw’s sonorous voice, turns a B-horror movie into an exploration of survival and turns Quint from a drunk fisherman into a World War II hero.
4. Steven Spielberg wanted to make a Jaws prequel
Although there were three sequels to Jaws—each one worse than the last—Spielberg didn’t direct any of them (though he was asked to direct Jaws 2). However, there was a spinoff movie the famed director did want to make: a Jaws prequel that focused on the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
The Spielberg version of this shocking story has never been made, but there have been a number of movies about the ship, which carried highly-enriched uranium-235 for use in the first nuclear weapon used in war. The Indianapolis was hit by Japanese torpedoes on July 30, 1945, and sank in 12 minutes near shark-infested waters off the Philippines. The conditions and the slow rescue effort resulted in a high number of deaths and a court martial of its captain (he was later pardoned). None of the movies about the disaster have been as memorable (some might even say they are downright awful) as Shaw’s speech in Jaws.
5. The shark isn’t scary. A high-pitched tuba is
Composer John Williams has often been asked how he came up with Jaws’ unforgettable two-note theme song. Play those two notes (an E and an F) on a piano and you won’t hear anything that scary. Part of Williams’ genius is that he had a horn player use a high-pitched tuba to perform the music and instill a feeling of depth.
For his part, Spielberg thought Williams was joking when he first played the sequence. But the joke was on the director when Williams won an Academy Award for the movie’s original score. Jaws also won Oscars for Best Sound and Best Film Editing.
The collaboration between Williams and the sound design team was key to the movie’s success because the music is used ominously during some, but not all, of the underwater sequences. For example, drums and other theme music play during the beach scene, which makes the anticipation more terrifying because the audiences previously heard the tones before the shark struck. That editing sequence, which features yellow signals (beach cabanas, a towel, a raft, a shirt, and a hat), is particularly memorable. Everyone knows the shark is going to kill someone, but who? The dog? The little boy? The teenagers playing in the water?
6. Fidel Castro thought Jaws was a metaphor for capitalism
If a shark kills a girl in the middle of the night, you close the beach before it can strike again, right? Well, the mayor of Amity doesn’t close the beach because of economics, and eventually that decision becomes a big problem. From the safety of our seats, the audience can sit back and enjoy the thrills that ensue without thinking much about how politicians might have made better decisions. Everyone except for Cuban President Fidel Castro, who famously commented while reading Jaws that it was a “a marvelous metaphor about the corruption of capitalism.”
7. Jaws looms large in the cultural lexicon
Jaws 2 came out three years after the original and once again stars the Brody family. Even with the return of Roy Scheider, the sequel doesn’t succeed (no great music!). The third film, Jaws 3-D (1983), takes place at SeaWorld in Florida and stars Dennis Quaid playing a grown-up son of Brody’s, but it was even less successful than the first sequel. Finally, there is Jaws: The Revenge (1987), which goes back to Amity but pretends Jaws 3-D never happened.
Jaws has been referenced in Saturday Night Live (via several “Landshark” skits), The Simpsons, and many other TV shows and movies, including Back to the Future Part II, where a Jaws 19 poster is shown at a movie theater. That fake movie’s fake director? Max Spielberg, Steven Spielberg’s real-life son. In 2015, Universal made a poster and trailer for the fictional movie that came with the Back to the Future 30th anniversary box set.
Can’t get enough behind-the-scenes info about Jaws? Mark your calendar for July 10 at 9 p.m. ET when Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story airs on National Geographic. The documentary, which explores the making of the classic film and its legacy, will stream the next day on Disney+ and Hulu.
Since 2010, Donna Raskin, a longtime writer and editor, has taught history classes at the College of New Jersey. As a child, she read and re-read every book in the Childhood of Famous Americans series. As an adult, she collects fashion history books and has traveled to Paris on a fashion history tour. In addition to contributing to Biography.com, she is the senior health and fitness editor at Bicycling and Runner’s World.
