The lurking shark in “Jaws” has been stoking our primal fears for 50 years.
When the movie premiered on June 20, 1975 it became the first summer blockbuster. It also put Martha’s Vineyard on the pop culture map.
Director Steven Spielberg’s Hollywood film crew transformed the island into the fictional tourist town Amity, but an exhibition opening Memorial Day weekend is celebrating the locals who gave “Jaws” its salty, New England authenticity.
We got a peek as the show was coming together.
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The rain held off when a special delivery rolled into the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. Curators Kate Logue and Anna Barber got giddy — and grossed out — as they opened the boxes of borrowed objects.
“Oh, it’s glistening,” Barber gasped.
They held a gory reproduction of the one-eyed head that belonged to Ben Gardner, a shark victim in “Jaws.” The head provokes a jump scare when it pops out of his sunken vessel’s chewed up hull.
Gaige Tedder, an avid collector and “Jaws” super fan in Alabama, created the head as an homage to Ben Gardner’s character. Barber said he was played by a real fisherman named Craig Kingsbury, “and here on the island Craig was larger than life.”
Kingsbury was one of countless locals who jumped on board when Hollywood swarmed the Vineyard in 1973. Their stories fill the behind-the-scenes exhibition, “Jaws at 50: A Deeper Dive.”
“Every possible aspect of the movie was helped along or supported by island people,” Barber said, “whether production, building sets, as extras, to photographing behind the scenes, to acting in the movie, to the characters themselves being informed by Vineyarders.”
Props, oral histories, original art, memorabilia, garments and archival photographs explore the thrills and challenges that came with making “Jaws” — including the mechanical shark known as Bruce famously breaking down. Sadly he won’t be in the gallery, but the curators hunted down another iconic artifact from the film.
A local fisherman held on to one of the yellow barrels Captain Quint harpoons into the shark so he can track its location.
The barrels play a crucial role in the movie, according to Bow Van Riper, the museum’s research librarian and resident “Jaws” expert.
“They’re a kind of secret handshake for fans, both in terms of the drama itself, and in terms of the drama of producing the film,” he said.
Spielberg was in a bind when his expensive, animatronic shark kept malfunctioning. His creative solution was to use the barrels — along with John Williams’ iconic score — as stand-ins.
“Signifying the shark is out there about menace our heroes,” Van Riper said, “without actually being visible on screen.”
Van Riper was excited to meet the barrel’s owner because he was one of the many seafaring community members that helped the Universal Studios crew shoot in and on the water, “even though that’s incredibly difficult to do.”
On our drive to the waterfront, Van Riper remembered how the filming of “Jaws” turned the Vineyard upside down in 1974.
“I don’t think anybody on the island had a clue it was going to go on to become a monster hit, the first summer blockbuster, a movie that people were still talking about 50 years later.”
We arrived in Menemsha, where Quint’s shack was constructed for the film and his boat the Orca set out to sea. Van Riper said it looks like a New England fishing village in the film, “because that’s exactly what it is and has been for generations.”
Wayne Iacono, a lobsterman of 50 years, was busy repairing traps near his boat slip.
Iacono said he was nervous to lend his barrel to the museum because “Jaws” fanatics are obsessed. “I was offered $12,000 a few years ago,” he said, “since then I’ve locked it up in my house.”
Iacono was fresh out of the Coast Guard when he responded to a help wanted ad to work on “Jaws.” He got paid to be an extra, a stand-in for actor Roy Scheider (a.k.a. Sheriff Brody) and a helicopter pilot. But operating the equipment ferry became Iacono’s main responsibility.
“Mostly I would go to Edgartown,” he recalled. “I’d jump on the barge, start it up, pick up all the camera gear and cameramen, and go to wherever they were filming.”
Iacono remembers rough weather, time crunches and tiffs between grips, cameramen and their unions. Sometimes he pulled up lobsters for Spielberg.
After filming wrapped, a local legend involved in the production gave Iacono his precious barrel. Captain Roy Campbell’s tricked-out tugboat, the Whitefoot, supported the cast and crew. Iacono said actor Robert Shaw’s bar was on that boat, and the actor modeled Quint’s mannerisms on Captain Roy.
Iacono said the film, “may have turned out different if it wasn’t for Captain Roy, and he got along great with Robert Shaw.”
Filming “Jaws” took longer than planned in the summer of ’74, and the production threatened the Vineyard’s tourist season. Even so, Van Riper said Hollywood’s stint here became a defining moment for a lot of islanders. The classic movie inspired him to seriously pursue writing about pop culture and film.
He said “Jaws” retains a visceral authenticity because it was made in a real place with real people — including him. “They talk about walk-ons in the film business,” he joked. “I was kind of a swim on.”
We headed over to the famous state beach where young Alex Kitner (played by local Jeffrey Vorhees) was eaten on his raft. As a 12-year-old, Van Riper joined some 50 local extras who were directed to splash around in the water, then panic, for the cameras. Their shenanigans are part of the scene where two pranksters pretend to be the shark using snorkels and a cardboard fin.
“One of those two kids is now the chief of police in Oak Bluffs,” Van Riper said as the waves crashed in the distance.
Back at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, curator Anna Barber said “Jaws” is “a movie that’s forever tied to this island and its people.” And the fans — also known as “fin-atics” — love to see where the magic was made.
Barber and her colleagues might need a bigger museum for the crowds expected at 50th anniversary “Amity Homecoming Weekend” that kicks off on June 19.
“Jaws at 50: A Deeper Dive” opens at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum on May 24. The exhibition runs through Sept. 7.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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