‘Jaws’ Turns 50. Things You Didn’t Know About the Movie.

Author Peter Benchley said he was inspired by Frank Mundus, a Long Island fisherman who caught a 17-foot, 4,500-pound shark in 1964.

In his 1974 novel, “Jaws,” Benchley wrote the character of captain Quint using inspiration from Mundus’ shark hunting career.

The novel was a massive commercial success, spending months on bestseller lists, The New York Times reported.

Before the novel was released to the public, producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown got a copy of the manuscript.

After reading the novel, they bought the movie rights for $150,000 ($1.08 million in today’s money), per The New York Times.

Zanuck and Brown approached two directors before landing on the then-up-and-coming filmmaker. At the time, Spielberg was 26 and had only directed one feature-length film, the 1971 TV movie “Duel.”

“Jaws” was his second feature-length film.

The movie’s production took place in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, from May 2, 1974, until October 6, 1974.

“It was the only place on the East Coast where I could go 12 miles out to sea and avoid any sighting of land but still have a sandy ocean bottom only 30 feet below the surface, where we could install our shark sled,” Spielberg told Bouzereau. “I wanted the audience to think the boat couldn’t just simply turn around and go back to shore. I literally needed a 360-degree stage at sea.”

Spielberg insisted on filming in the ocean rather than pools or tanks, the alternatives proposed by the production team.

The film was the first major motion picture to be filmed in the ocean. It caused a long list of issues, from delayed production to sunken equipment.

Filming in a studio tank — an approach taken for other movies of the time — would’ve avoided issues related to the tides, waves, and wind of the open sea, but Spielberg didn’t like the unreal look it would’ve brought to “Jaws.”

“The audience would not have connected with the movie unless it looked real, and that’s why I insisted on shooting the picture on open sea in the Atlantic Ocean,” Spielberg told Bouzereau.

One of the many issues with filming on the water was the camera movement on the boat where the camera crew filmed. Cinematographer Bill Butler and camera operator Mike Chapman found it easier to hold the camera for some scenes, they told American Cinematographer in 1975.

For filming on the water, Butler built a raft that could hold the camera and move up and down in the water to shoot different angles of the boat scenes.

Spielberg called it “probably the most expensive handheld movie ever made,” in an interview with American Cinematographer.

Named after Spielberg’s close friend, lawyer Bruce Ramer, the shark animatronics cost the production $250,000 ($1.62 million in today’s money), reported American Cinematographer. Additionally, it reported, operating the animatronics cost around $500,000 (or $3.24 million in today’s money).

The set design team made three sharks for filming: one with the machinery visible on its left side, one with the machinery visible on its right side, and a third fully intact shark that was pulled by a boat.

Of the many issues to come with filming in the ocean, the maintenance of the mechanical shark was one of them.

Designed before the production moved into the water, the animatronics weren’t designed to withstand saltwater, resulting in its internal metal parts corroding during the production, as well as the sun bleaching the shark’s skin.

Bob Mattey, who created the animatronic, told American Cinematographer that the shark got a new skin every week while filming.

On one occasion, a speedboat pulling the iconic Orca where actors and crew were filming rushed at too high a speed, causing the boat and everything in it to sink in approximately two minutes.

In his interview with Bouzereau, Spielberg recalled sound mixer John Carter picking up the recording equipment over his head as the boat sank and yelling, “F—- the actors, save the sound department!”

The first of the mechanical sharks used in the production also sank during a different incident.

Butler told Spielberg that since the developing solution they used was saline, the film could be saved if it was kept in saltwater and rushed to the lab.

The team took the film inside buckets of saltwater to the developing lab in New York, where they managed to save the film, Spielberg told Bouzereau.

Due to the many production difficulties during the filming of the movie, Spielberg decided to focus more on the suspense and anticipation for the shark’s appearance, taking inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock’s films, rather than the gore of the attack scenes.

With the mechanical shark constantly breaking down, Spielberg reworked the script to show the shark in fewer scenes, building up the suspense of its absence.

“When I didn’t have control of my shark it made me kind of rewrite the whole script without the shark,” Spielberg said in a 2011 interview. “Therefore, in many people’s opinions the film was more effective than the way the script actually offered up the shark in at least a dozen more scenes that today is history.”

The iconic “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” said by police chief Brody, played by Roy Scheider, wasn’t in the original script.

Instead, it was improvised by Scheider while going over the script during the production, and Spielberg decided to keep it.

Needing a non-professional clarinet player for the soundtrack and a voice to play the island’s dispatcher, the director lent his voice to the audio department twice in the movie.

Spielberg’s own pets, cocker spaniels Elmer and Zalman, also appeared in the movie, playing police chief Brody’s dogs.

During the difficult production, the production team formed its own softball team to pass the time in between filming. On Sundays, they played against locals.

The movie’s poster, with the woman swimming and the shark underneath, wasn’t an original design for the film. Instead, it was taken from the original novel’s paperback cover.

As the production went on, with its many complications, the budget increased from the initial allocation by 300% and the filming timeline extended by over 100 days past the estimated 55 days.

Costing $9 million to make ($64.68 million in today’s money), the movie was nearly four times as expensive as the average film in 1975, which was $2.3 million, The New York Times reported.

“We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make this movie, sitting around for seven, eight hours, waiting for the shark to work, or waiting for the barrels to sink without coming right back up. I was getting one shot before lunch and one shot before five o’clock in the afternoon,” Spielberg told Bouzereau. “Whenever I talked about the possibility of me being fired or the show being shut down, most of the crew was happy about it—this wasn’t a labor of love for anybody. This was a physically impossible chore and people wanted to go home.”

During an early studio screening of the movie, one of the attendees got up from his seat, making Spielberg fear a negative audience reaction to the movie.

“I thought, Oh my God. Our first walkout. Then he began running and I went, Oh, no, he’s not walking out—he’s running out. I could tell he was headed for the bathrooms, but he didn’t make it and vomited all over the floor. And I just went, Oh my God, what have I done? What kind of a movie have I made? A man has just barfed because of my film. But the great news was, about five minutes later, he went right back to his seat,” the director told Bouzereau.

Part of the success of the film, according to the Library of Congress, was the huge marketing campaign that portrayed the movie version of the best-selling novel as “an event.” TV commercials for “Jaws” were also inescapable.

For its first release in 1975, the movie earned $260 million domestically, a number that has since ballooned to $477.92 million globally, thanks to additional releases, per Box Office Mojo data.

It was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2001.

“While ‘Jaws’ may have arrived with a significant marketing push, it has stuck around on its own merits,” radio host Nathan Wardinski wrote for the Library of Congress. “‘Jaws” craftsmanship has been a source of inspiration and obsession by later filmmakers and cinematic devotees.”

In 2019, a comedy play written by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon based on the stories from the production of “Jaws” premiered in Brighton, England.

“The Shark is Broken” follows actors playing the movie’s leads, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, and Roy Scheider, as the trio navigates the production difficulties, such as the broken mechanical shark, and the ensuing boredom.

The play debuted on Broadway in August 2023.