Sharks have taken a giant bite out of Wendy Benchley’s life for over five decades… and she could not be happier. Gil Zeimer interviewed Wendy, the wife of Peter Benchley, who passed in 2006. They discussed what Peter’s novel Jaws, the movie and its longevity have meant to her, as well as her diving experiences and her current role as a global ambassador for shark advocacy.
Contributed by
From the success of her late husband Peter Benchley’s novel to the Steven Spielberg-directed summer blockbuster to the global hoopla surrounding its 50th anniversary, Wendy Benchley is now best known as an environmentalist, ocean conservationist and shark policy advocate.
Shifting perceptions
“Peter grew up in a literary family and wanted to be a novelist from a young age,” said Wendy. “His father, Nathaniel, encouraged him to write a thousand words daily to give his brain that mindset and avoid writer’s block. He had the genes and the absolute passion to write. After working as a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson, Peter started pursuing freelance opportunities.”
His experiences in Nantucket, including fishing with his father and observing the local economy, influenced his idea for two possible books about the sea. One was about modern-day pirates, and the other was about a great white shark that used a New England beachside town as its feeding grounds. She told him, “I didn’t think either one was good, and to think of something else!”
“Fortunately, Peter didn’t listen to me. He eventually secured a publishing deal with Doubleday for Jaws, which became a global phenomenon. No one had written a novel about sharks until then. At the time, most people thought that sharks like this great white were mindless killers. But, after the book was published, Peter received thousands of letters annually from readers who expressed interest in sharks, and their perceptions shifted from being afraid of them to wanting to save them from being killed unnecessarily.”
The hardbound book spent 44 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and the paperback edition sold nine million copies. After the movie was released in 1975, Jaws eventually sold more than 20 million copies, with renewed interest in it this year.
Frightening, then educating audiences
When the book was in galley form, Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan, showed it to her husband, David Brown. He and Richard Zanuck were so excited that they became the film’s producers.
They hired Steven Spielberg, a relatively unknown director at the time, after their first choice for director kept calling the shark “a whale” during their meetings. The script, co-written by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, showed how people react to public menaces that they cannot control, much like COVID-19 in recent years. Carl’s focus was cranking out the daily dialogue for the actors, and Wendy thought he was terrific.
“Peter worked closely with Steven to maintain a realistically sized shark in the film,” she said. “In the book, it was about five meters long (15 to 16ft), but Spielberg wanted it to be about seven meters long (20ft) for the shoot, so it was like a monster movie.”
“Peter had a cameo as a newscaster, a la Alfred Hitchcock,” she added. “Universal sent a helicopter to pick us up in Connecticut and fly us to Nantucket. We were only at the shoot for a few weeks.”
A few little-known facts about the movie
According to IMDb, when Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider’s character) was chumming the water and the shark popped up, he said, “We’re going to need a bigger boat!” This was an ad lib, as confirmed by Gottlieb, and Spielberg loved it.
There were so many problems with “Bruce”, the mechanical shark, named after Spielberg’s attorney, that it was only on screen for four minutes throughout the movie. But it seemed much longer due to the editing.
When composer John Williams first played the now-iconic score for the shark for Spielberg, he said, “That’s funny, John, really; but what did you really have in mind for the theme of Jaws?”
Global success
Wendy was astounded by the movie’s worldwide acclaim. She and Peter saw the premiere in New York City with Richard Dreyfuss, who played oceanographer Matt Hooper. The entire audience gave the film a standing ovation. “Richard was so excited that he kept jumping up and down, yelling, ‘We did it! It’s a f***ing success!’”
Then, the producers asked the Benchleys to gather their scuba friends for a private screening, including Peter Gimble from the documentary film Blue Water, White Death, as well as Stan Waterman and Rod and Valerie Taylor. Their positive feedback was very reassuring to Wendy and Peter.
More importantly, audiences worldwide loved the film. It garnered four Oscar nominations, took home three wins (Best Sound, Best Original Dramatic Score and Best Film Editing), and earned US$478 million worldwide, making it the top-grossing movie ever, at the time. Three sequels followed.
The success of Jaws led to an increased interest in sharks and environmental awareness, though it also sparked a rise in shark-hunting tournaments. Wendy noted that the experience helped educate the public about sharks and turned many into advocates for shark conservation.
Raising shark awareness
Gradually over the past 50 years, the general public has expressed growing admiration for sharks as intelligent, sentient beings that are vulnerable and essential to healthy marine ecosystems. Wendy reflected on the issues she has worked on for 40 to 50 years, such as shark awareness, protection, conservation and environmentalism, and how her dedication to these issues, along with the dedication of thousands of others, is making things happen.
“If you look at truly protected marine areas, the biomass is amazing,” she said. “It took until around the year 2000 for people to understand how important the ocean is for climate change, how much we all need to value sharks and other species, and how we can work collectively on these issues for healthy oceans.
“In fact, 80 to 85 percent of apex predators have been decimated in recent decades, so 15 to 20 percent of the biomass is left. But so many positive things are happening now, led by NGO groups like WildAid and its shark conservation program.”
Wendy told me that WildAid is small, agile and especially savvy. Its campaigns leverage US$200 million in pro bono media annually. For every US$100 donated, its marine partners turn that into US$10,000 in free TV time, outdoor boards and web banners donated by the Chinese government. Furthermore, to help educate the masses in China, WildAid features Asian celebrities like Yao Ming in informative public service announcements.
The audience is learning that up to 100 million sharks are killed each year for shark fin soup and that one-third of all shark species are now extinct. But this campaign has now helped to reduce the demand for shark fin soup in China by 85 percent.
“By 2030, scientists and governments worldwide hope to expand the ocean’s marine protected areas to 30 percent,” she said. “The United Nations has also been developing a treaty over the past 30 years to protect the high seas and only needs 11 more countries to ratify it.”
WildAid, along with Beneath The Waves, the Environmental Defense Fund and many other non-profits, like the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards, are all worthy environmental causes for your donations.
Dangerous diving with sharks
In 1974, before the movie premiered, The American Sportsman TV program on ABC-TV reached out to Peter and Wendy about going shark cage diving. They met with Rodney Fox in South Australia because he was a consultant on the film as a renowned shark expert who had survived an attack on his abdomen that required 462 stitches. When a rope from the cage got caught in a great white’s mouth and the cage above Peter began to collapse, Wendy removed the rope while the crew kept filming.
National Geographic documentary
National Geographic recently created the documentary film Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story, with Wendy as an executive producer, as a tribute to the original film and the ocean’s most misunderstood predator. In it, Spielberg admitted, “We were 100 days behind schedule, the mechanical shark didn’t work 80 percent of the time, and I thought I’d be fired. … I had PTSD for years after the struggles of filming this movie because I always thought I was failing.” Watch it on Disney+ and Hulu.
50th anniversary showings and exhibitions
Throughout the years, the movie’s appeal on TV, VCR, cable and streaming has never waned. Now, to celebrate its 50th anniversary, Universal Studios will re-release the movie with special screenings from August 29 to 4 September 4 worldwide, including showings in 4DX and IMAX formats, plus 4K UHD home video, special events at its theme parks and more events throughout October.
In addition, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles will open “Jaws: The Exhibition” in mid-September with the first-ever retrospective of this scale, focusing exclusively on a single film. It will feature the largest mounted presentation ever for Jaws, taking a deep dive into the film’s production history and exploring its enduring impact. Wendy is looking forward to seeing the updated film and exhibition with her adult children and grandchildren, ensuring that another generation carries on the legacy of living in the shadow of great white sharks.
Finally, as a global ambassador and ocean advocate, Wendy spends a great deal of her time working on issues with various NGO boards. She loves this nitty-gritty work because she can see its results in the heightened awareness of environmentalism and the growth of marine protected areas for sharks worldwide. ■
REFERENCES: IMDB, YOUTUBE
