The Amity Island of 1974

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A version of this article was first published in Vineyard Visitor

It’s been 50 years since Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” took over Martha’s Vineyard and transformed it into Amity Island. June 20th is the official anniversary of the film that helped put the Vineyard on the map. But what would “Jaws” be without Islanders?

Back then, the summer before its 1975 Hollywood debut, the real Vineyard was much simpler, though similar. Summers were still a busy time but without the same frantic pace. Still, if a summer tourist season was a bust, it would be a long winter. The makers of “Jaws” got that tension between the summer tourist season and the year-round locals who need to sustain themselves long after the summer crowds have packed up and gone: a great white shark could indeed kill a summer.

But, just ahead of the 1974 season, 50 years ago in late April, Universal Studios, with a mechanized shark named Bruce, was pouring money into local coffers to make the movie. Universal spent  $700,000 (1975 dollars) for the marketing budget alone, for the nationwide release. “Jaws” opened in over 400 theaters, and its global receipts were over $2.8 billion in today’s dollars. Martha’s Vineyard, a real place with real people, was on the map, and Amity Island, a fictitious place named for a town on Long Island, was born.

Locals lucky enough to become extras were getting up to $150 dollars a day as cast members. The film’s casting crew set up shop in the Kelley House in March 1974 and offered Ozzie Fischer, a Chilmark farmer, a role that he would turn down in order to keep running his farm. But local photojournalist Jini Poole, wife of Menemsha fish retailer Everett Poole, was hired to assist Shari Rhodes, the “Jaws” casting director. 

Jini cast much of the movie. Local Peggy Scott was cast as Polly, Chief Brody’s office manager. The real-life Dr. Robert Nevin was cast as the medical examiner, and Hershel West, longtime fisherman and hand at Larsen’s in Menemsha, played Quint’s deckhand. Robert Carroll was the Amity town selectman. Poole also cast her father-in-law, Captain Donald L. Poole, and John Alley, of Alley’s General Store fame, as well as her own children, Katharine and Donald, for the movie. 

The first week of May 1974, “Jaws” was set for filming, and the Island caught glimpses. It was cold, while Spielberg and his team were trying to shoot scenes of hot summer days. For one scene, Chrissie Watkins’ arm and hand stuck up out of the sand, with seaweed and crabs crawling over it. Off screen, the owner of the arm lay on the sand, cold, in a sleeping bag.

Gerald Kelly wrote, “The prop man … poured warm coffee on the crabs … They wriggled … People joked … Can a severed arm have goose bumps?”

Those Technicolor summer scenes had locals shivering off set, and a bit steamed about the process. John Alley, playing an extra who walked ahead of Chief Brody on a dock, one day had had enough and quit.

When word went out for the need of a powerful female swimmer willing to swim nude as Crissin Watkins in the opening scene, larger than life local Susan Backlinie stepped up. The notorious shark attack scene starts with a classic Vineyard tradition of a nighttime fire on the beach, with long-haired teens, guitar playing, and Falstaff beer. Then it cuts into glances, flirtation, and Chrissie running easily across a dune, Tom Cassidy — played by seasonal resident Jonathan Filley — stumbling behind. Then to surprising nudity, Chrissie diving in and swimming, the water glistening in moonlight. 

And then it begins: the menacing music that would live forever in the minds of all of us who have seen “Jaws.” Then screams, Chrissie being dragged back and forth across the screen — and silent disappearance. The whole scene takes less than four minutes. Just four minutes to shock a nation and be seared in our memories. 

The shock recedes fast when you see how the filming is done, when you know the story behind the story. That’ll be part of National Geographic’s “Jaws @ 50” which premiers Friday on the Island, at MVRHS’s Performing Arts Center. 

Thanks in part to the ocean conservation and marine policy advocate work of Peter Benchley, the author of “Jaws,” and his wife Wendy Benchley, sharks, and great whites in particular, are now respected, even revered, instead of just feared. The documentary will feature footage and photography from the Benchley and Spielberg archives, as well as interviews from the worlds of film, literature, and popular culture. The event will wrap with an after-party at the Harbor View Hotel.

Then there’s poor Alex Kitner. He only asked his mom if he could go in the water one last time. He’s the second victim in “Jaws,” just after the black Lab Pippin disappears. Turns out, Alex Kitner is alive. In real life, he was played by Jeffery Vorhees. Vorhees is the long-serving and recently retired manager of the Wharf in Edgartown.

From June 20 through 22, the Wharf presents its “‘Jaws’ 50th Anniversary Celebration,” where you might have a “Kitner-sighting.” As part of this three-day event, a full-scale model of the Orca will be docked at Nancy’s in Oak Bluffs, with its lifesize model of a great white shark mounted outside. 

And again there is that music which lurks in the recesses of fear: Dun-dun, dun-dun … In Katama on June 21, “Jaws”’ musical score, by John Williams, will be played live under the stars by the Cape Symphony, accompanying an outdoor “Jaws” screening. It’s the kind of immersive cultural experience that might rekindle youthful beach fires of decades past, remind you of nighttime swims, and could knit new memories, very near to where Chrissie’s arm was found.

These words, the big celebration of a significant, and in some ways transformative, moment in Vineyard history, wouldn’t have happened without locals, without beaches, without the ocean around us, without sharks. It would all have been a passing summer, on a tranquil and beautiful Island off the coast of Massachusetts. But, it did happen because this Island was this Island, seven miles from the mainland dock in Woods Hole.