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For 'Jaws' 50th anniversary take a tour of iconic locations on the Vineyard
The massive, ravenous shark in "Jaws" began chomping its way across movie screens — and into pop culture history — 50 years ago on June 20. It became the first summer blockbuster in 1975 and made Martha’s Vineyard, where it was filmed, a “Jaws” tourism destination.
The movie’s production left indelible bite marks on historian, film writer and super fan Bow Van Riper. He was just a kid when Steven Spielberg’s crew brought movie-making magic and mayhem to the Vineyard in the summer of 1974. Van Riper was delighted to take a drive down memory lane for the big anniversary.
“Going on this tour is a chance to remember what it was like 50 years ago,” he said as he buckled in. “Hollywood came to town and turned the island up upside down for the better part of a summer. You couldn't turn around without running into a blocked off street, or semi trucks parked along the beach, or people building or unbuilding some set related to the movie."
Van Riper had his own brush with Hollywood back then when he was 12 years old.
“My buddy and I were sitting on the beach watching them shoot the scene and the assistant director picked up a megaphone and said, 'OK, we need about 50 brave people to get in the water and pretend they're having fun — and when the yellow helicopter flies over, that's when you panic like somebody yelled ‘shark’ and start swimming for the shore.'”
"Panic Beach" — as Van Riper likes to call it — was on our agenda, but our first stop was Menemsha. The picturesque, historic harbor is where captain Quint — played by actor Robert Shaw — docked his boat the Orca and boiled shark jaws in his fishing shack.
“So when Spielberg and company were looking for a backdrop to shoot the scenes of Quint’s Shack, this was the natural place to do it,” Van Riper said.
Quint, Hooper the shark expert played by Richard Dreyfus, and Roy Scheider’s character Sheriff Brody butt heads in that shack over who should be involved in the hunt for the eating machine terrorizing the island. Spielberg’s crew constructed the structure on site, and when the shoot was over, “they packed up, took down the shack, and went elsewhere,” Van Riper said.
Elsewhere included Aquinnah, where Brody, Hooper and Mayor Vaughn argue in front of billboard that says, “Amity Island Welcomes You.” Some prankster had painted a giant shark fin lurking behind a girl frolicking in the water and the mayor was livid. He says, “Look, we depend on the summer people here for our very lives.” Brody responds, “we’re not only going to have to close the beach, we’re going to have to hire somebody to kill the shark!”
Like Quint’s shack, Van Riper said the billboard had to be dismantled after shooting.
“If they had left it up, people would've been taking their friends' photographs in front of it for the last 50 years or so. There are probably people who now see it as a lost opportunity.”
Van Riper said the idea of a monster decimating the tourism economy resonated on the Vineyard. “Had there been something like a marauding killer shark that had the potential to massively discouraged tourists, people would've been ringing their hands.”
Amity Island’s business owners and selectmen grapple with that conflict in a scene shot at Edgartown’s town hall. That’s where Quint gets their attention by scratching his nails down a blackboard and tells them he’ll kill the shark. “And we gotta do it quick, that’ll bring back the tourists and it’ll put all your businesses on a paying basis….”
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Van Riper said “Jaws” disrupted Edgartown more than any other part of the Vineyard in 1974. Its brick sidewalks and white clapboard houses stood in for Amity. Also its main street, marina and hardware store where Sheriff Brody buys supplies to make “beach closed” signs.
"Part of what Joe Alves, who was the production designer for "Jaws," saw in Edgartown was this beautiful, neat, tidy summer resort community," Van Riper said. "And he's on record as saying, 'I looked at it and I thought this would be such a great place for a shark to come in and mess up.'"
Van Riper was an extra on Joseph Sylvia State Beach where a few iconic shark attack scenes unfold. After getting out of the car we walked down the sand toward the water. “This is the beach where Alex Kintner gets killed on his rubber raft. This channel here flowing under the bridge is the channel that the shark swims through after the people guarding beach are distracted by the two kids with the cardboard fin.”
Then Van Riper pointed to “Jaws Bridge” — as locals and tourists have come to call it — and said it’s a top destination for fans of the film. Back in the car he said he totally gets why "fin-atics," as they're known, flock to the Vineyard.
“To see the places it was shot, to actually swim on the beach where the shark attacked Alex Kintner, to jump off the bridge that the shark swam under, is a huge draw.”
Van Riper predicted long lines at the bridge — and at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum where he works — for the island-wide celebration of “Jaws” 50th anniversary this weekend.
