50 YEARS OF JAWS
THE SOURCE
HOW A TINY NEWSPAPER STORY INSPIRED A CINEMATIC BEHEMOTH
DURING THE SUMMER of 1964, Long Island fisherman and Quint-a-like Frank Mundus harpooned a giant great white shark weighing an estimated 4,500 lbs. Having read about the catch in a small newspaper item in New York’s Daily News, writer Peter Benchley, who had enjoyed childhood shark-fishing expeditions in Nantucket with his father and brother, pondered on the story, imagining if such an apex predator preyed on a beach and just wouldn’t leave. By June ’71, Benchley, then an associate editor at Newsweek, had pitched the novel to publishers Doubleday, earning a $7,500 advance.