Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film Jaws celebrates its 50th birthday on Friday — but its success wouldn’t have been possible without Valerie Taylor and her husband Ron, trailblazing underwater filmmakers and conservationists who filmed all the real-life great white shark scenes to go with footage of mechanical shark “Bruce”.
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Da-dum… We baited the sharks and had three great whites swimming around. They were good performers, lifting their heads out of the water and rolling around in front of the camera. Bruce, the mechanical shark they used, was also very well done and looked good when cut into the real thing.
Carl didn’t know how to dive. Ron and I tried to teach him, but he wouldn’t let go of the rocks. He was very reluctant to even put on his wet suit. He was terrified. I felt a bit sorry for him. The hand that comes out of the cage and touches the shark is mine, because Carl wouldn’t do it. The idea was for Carl to go down about 30 feet in the cage, standing in for Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper. Ron was in the water filming, and he looked up and thought, “Why isn’t Carl getting in the cage?” Suddenly, a shark went over the top of the cage, broke the steel bridle and was thrashing around. The winch broke off and everything came tumbling down. If Carl had been in the cage, he’d have been killed — his reluctance saved his life.
The scene of the shark breaking up the cage was written into the film — it was better than anything they had in the script! Universal was so pleased with the footage that they flew us to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, for the rest of the shoot and we met everybody. Steven Spielberg was a very nice young man. Roy Scheider was the most curious — he never got tired of asking us about sharks.
When I first saw Jaws, it was better than I expected, but I was horrified how the people in the movie theatre screamed. It demonised sharks because people seemed to think it was real — the general public were a bit stupid! We did every talk show, trying to tell people sharks don’t really behave like that. It’s a movie! You don’t go to New York expecting to see King Kong on the Empire State Building!
Still, it was a good job and the film was very well received. I occasionally sign posters sent from overseas — it absolutely blows my mind that people even care. Filming sharks wasn’t new to us, but we were surprised by the praise and adulation. That’s just what we did for a living!
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