A pop culture phenomenon was born from the mind of Peter Benchley when “Jaws” — the 1974 bestseller about a shark that terrorized a fictional New England town — hit bookstores. The blockbuster classic directed by Steven Spielberg, filmed on Martha’s Vineyard, came out the next year.
It’s fair to say that since then, the “Jaws” franchise has had a complex impact on people’s relationship with the ocean. Shark trophy hunting swelled in the aftermath as did the fear over what lies beneath. But the tale also inspired younger minds who wanted to explore the ocean like Matt Hooper, the ichthyologist in the story.
So said the wife of the great writer, Wendy Benchley — a prolific ocean conservationist herself — during a 50th anniversary celebration of the book’s publication, in a dimly lit Katharine Cornell Theater in Tisbury Town Hall this week during an event hosted by the Vineyard Haven Public Library. Wendy Benchley’s talk was also filled with witty anecdotes about her former husband
As Wendy told it, Peter Benchley came from a family of writers. His father, Nathaniel Benchley, was an author and his grandfather, Robert Benchley, wrote essays in The New Yorker.
Wendy said when Peter was around 15 years old, while summering on Nantucket, he told his father he wanted to be a writer also. So, the senior Benchley agreed to pay his son to write for four hours every morning. And, he gave his son a facsimile of an executioner’s block with “writer’s block” written on it to be placed on his desk, a reminder to meet deadlines.
“His father had a great sense of humor,” Wendy said.
Pursuing his own writing career, Peter would work, as Wendy described it, a “soul-crushing” position writing obituaries for The Washington Post. He would move on to write for Newsweek and later became a speechwriter for former President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Wendy said Peter got the job thanks to a chance encounter at a White House Dinner, which they went to in the place of Newsweek editor Osbourne Elliott. At the 1966 dinner, Wendy met Robert Kitner, Johnson’s White House cabinet secretary, who recognized the surname Benchley as belonging to an East Coast writer. Apparently, Johnson was “furious” with the bad press he was getting and had told Kitner to hire “one of those East Coast, pinko, liberal, Harvard-educated writers” as an effort to boost positive press.
“That was the basis on which Peter was hired to write speeches,” Wendy said amidst the laughing audience.
Johnson’s decision to withdraw from the 1968 presidential race left Peter without a job. So he began freelance writing. But when freelancing wasn’t paying enough to support his family, Peter jumped into writing a novel. Wendy said he was contemplating between a story about modern-day pirates and a story about a great white shark terrorizing a New England town.
“I said, ‘honey, I don’t think either of those [will work] … think of something else,” she said. “Thank god he didn’t listen to me.”
Evidently, the shark story won out.
Wendy said Peter used what he knew about sharks, alongside research, in the early 1970s to write the book. He also used knowledge from friends living in a seasonal tourist economy.
The whirlwind success of the book and movie was staggering. Wendy referred to a six-page cover story run by The New York Times Magazine about the best-selling novel.
The success of “Jaws” launched Peter Benchley’s career as a novelist. Wendy said one of the favorite tales he wrote was the 1982 novel “The Girl of the Sea of Cortez.” She said the story was inspired by a time he rode on the back of a giant manta ray. A woman had unhooked and helped the fish earlier that day. The novel goes into the relationship between a teenage girl and a giant manta ray, alongside the at-times contentious relationship between humans and nature.
The relationship between humans and the sea would be a continuing presence in Peter and Wendy Benchley’s lives after the release of “Jaws.”
“[‘Jaws’] opened up the ocean to him,” Wendy said.
Wendy said they received thousands of positive letters from educators, scientists, and children regarding the book. She said it was particularly exciting to see how it inspired young people to want to explore the sea as scientists.
Contrastingly, though, the Benchleys were also distressed by how it seemed the book emboldened some people to hunt sharks for sport. She recalled when a reporter called about a man boasting at a bar about killing three sharks.
According to Wendy, Peter said he wouldn’t have written “Jaws” the same way had he known what he would later learn about sharks, including further scientific knowledge of the fish not known in the 1970s. And, it wasn’t just the book. Something that slipped into the film was talk about the “rogue shark theory,” which asserts that once a shark had a taste of human flesh it would actively hunt for them — a claim Wendy said was false.
To combat the overblown fear of sharks, the Bechleys were driven to educate people about the important role sharks play in the ocean’s ecosystem and that they were just animals, not ravenous monsters. Peter wrote several scientific articles in National Geographic, for example.
Although Peter passed away in 2006, Wendy continues her work as an ocean conservationist and advocate. She serves on the board of directors of WildAid, a San Francisco-based environmental organization that works to combat climate change and preserve marine protection areas.
Wendy continues to work on an educational campaign to end the demand for shark fin soup, a delicacy in some Asian countries like China. She said the delicacy was a leading cause of shark deaths. Ad campaigns, with collaboration from Chinese stars like Jackie Chan and Jet Li, advocated against the trade. She said that demand for shark fin soup has dropped by 80 percent the last 15 years in the country.
Conservation efforts overall have been helping the great white shark population make a comeback. Wendy pointed to how protection of seals led to a population boom for the mammals, particularly in the Cape and Islands. Additionally, she said although there may be some discomfort for beach goers with the increase of sharks, education can help humans coexist with sharks.
“I think we are making progress,” she said.
