Is 'Jaws' Based on a True Story? All About the Thriller's Inspiration in Honor of Its 50th Anniversary

Jaws was released in theaters on June 20, 1975
The thriller was based on the best-selling book by Peter Benchley
There are similarities between the events in Jaws and a series of shark attacks in 1916Just when it looked safe to go back in the water, Jaws is circling back toward the shore for its 50th anniversary on June 20.
In the half-century since its release, few movies have had more impact than Jaws. It birthed the summer blockbuster, cemented director Steven Spielberg as one of Hollywood's great talents, and it made beachgoers everywhere afraid to frolic in the ocean.
The memorable production of Jaws has become infamous over the decades, with it being recounted in books and even adapted into a stage play.
"Jaws was a fun movie to watch but not a fun movie to make. It was made under the worst of conditions," Spielberg said in the book, Spielberg: The First Ten Years, per Vanity Fair. "People versus the eternal sea. The sea won the battle — but where we won was with audiences in every country."
Fifty years later, Jaws is a cinematic classic, but is the terrifying shark tale true? Here's what to know about the inspiration behind the monster movie that unlocked a new fear of the mysterious oceans.
No, the movie Jaws is not a true story, and neither is Benchley's novel, which was the basis of the film.
The writer was fascinated with sharks after spotting them during childhood fishing trips with his father on Nantucket. While working on the book, Benchley cited a 1964 article he read about Frank Mundus, a fisherman who caught a great white shark off the coast of Montauk, N.Y. Though, according to The New York Times, Benchley denied that Mundus was the inspiration for the character, Quint.
"I had been thinking for years about a story about a shark that attacks people and what would happen if it came in and wouldn't go away," the author recalled in the 1995 documentary about the making of Jaws.
According to Audible, Benchley was a freelance journalist who was commissioned to write Jaws in 1971. The book was released about three years later and became a literary sensation, spending 44 weeks on the bestseller list.
No specific event inspired Jaws, but there are similarities to a series of shark attacks on the Jersey Shore in 1916.
Between July 1 and July 12 of that year, five people were attacked by a shark, with one surviving. The incidents occurred in the resort towns of Beach Haven and Spring Lake. It also happened in Matawan Creek, 30 miles north of Spring Lake.
During a 2012 interview with the Smithsonian Magazine, ichthyologist George Burgess said it was the 'most unique set of shark attacks that ever have occurred.'
Although there are coincidences between the New Jersey attacks and the ones in Jaws, Benchley stated that his work was not inspired by the events in 1916, per The New York Times.
No, Amity Island, where Jaws takes place, is not real.
While the fictional Amity Island is located off Long Island in New York in the Jaws novel, it was actually inspired by Martha's Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts, where the movie was filmed.
Jaws was shot in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard, and the town is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the movie this summer with various events, including an outdoor film screening, with the movie's iconic score performed by the Cape Symphony.
Yes, Quint's harrowing speech recounting the sinking of the USS Indianapolis was based on an actual event, one that has been called "the worst shark attack in history."
On July 30, 1945, in the final weeks of World War II, a Japanese submarine torpedoed the USS Indianapolis in the Philippine Sea. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, the ship sank in 12 minutes, and out of the 1,196 men aboard, about 900 survived and were thrown into the water.
As the sailors floated in the ocean waiting to be rescued, sharks were attracted by the explosions and blood in the water.
Loel Dean Cox, who survived the disaster, told BBC News in 2013, 'Every now and then, like lightning, [a shark] would come straight up and take a sailor and take him straight down. One came up and took the sailor next to me. It was just somebody screaming, yelling or getting bit."
On August 3, the USS Cecil J. Doyle rescued the remaining survivors from the water. Ultimately, only 316 men out of the ship's original 1,196-man crew remained alive. The number of sailors who died from shark attacks ranges from "a few dozen to more than 150."
Despite the events depicted in Jaws — and its sequels — great white shark attacks are rare.
According to Outdoor Life, per findings from the Florida Museum of Natural History's International Shark Attack File, since 1580, "there have been 949 unprovoked shark attacks documented around the world."
Out of those attacks, 351 involved great white sharks, with 59 being fatal.
In February 2025, the International Shark Attack File reported that shark attacks decreased in 2024. "Worldwide, there were only 47 unprovoked attacks, down 22 from the previous year and well below the 10-year average of 70."
Read the original article on People

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Washington Post

35 minutes ago

• Washington Post

‘The Berlin Diaries' is a twisting and resonant search for lost family

Playwright Andrea Stolowitz is a central character in her own 'The Berlin Diaries.' She is played by Dina Thomas in a delicately moving production at D.C.'s Theater J — except when she's played by actor Lawrence Redmond, who also inhabits the long-dead grandfather whose inherited journals set the show's affairs in motion. Except when Redmond is stepping into the role of the playwright's Uncle David. Or one of a dozen other characters, based everywhere from Brazil to South Africa to New York to the Pacific Northwest. With me? Fret not: If the play's structural quirkiness initially feels adventurous to the point of mild madness, it quickly reveals a method, even as its novelty settles into something like normalcy. In fact the dialogue-juggling — in which the two actors often divide a thought mid-phrase while inhabiting the same character — deftly suggests the sort of wait-who-was-that? conundrums that any genealogist grappling with a knotty ancestral puzzle might get tangled in. For instance, I bear the same name as both my father and my grandfather, and there's another handful perched a few generations back in the family tree. This means that 'No, the Thomas who was killed when a branch fell on him in 1762 was a farmer; his son Thomas was the Presbyterian minister,' is the kind of thing I find myself clarifying mid-story, as if anyone other than a desperate family-history nerd could possibly follow. One intriguing dynamic with 'Berlin Diaries' is precisely that Andrea Stolowitz, or at least the character with her name, doesn't seem that sort of nerd at all. She's a mildly jaded playwright and teaching artist whose family isn't all that large or all that close, and who's not particularly interested in the diary her mother has been saving all this time. Yes, they're Jewish, and yes, they emigrated from Germany — but as Uncle David shrugs, 'Everyone made it here alive. … There's nothing to find out.' Unconvinced, but also under-inspired, and entirely uncertain what she's actually looking for, Andrea does what teaching artists do when confronted with things like old diaries: She writes a grant proposal and takes off for Europe. Unsurprisingly, she'll uncover rather more than Uncle David's shrug suggests, and in its clean 90 minutes 'Berlin Diaries' chronicles developments as concrete as confusion about a street address and as esoteric as the singular frisson that comes with stumbling across a headstone and knowing that a faded name on a dusty page really lived and died in this actual place, at that actual time. And its protagonist will confront the reality that even now, even after decades of diligent documentation, even given the famously meticulous recordkeeping that accompanied the Holocaust, it's possible for people — for whole swaths of whole families — simply to be verschollen, lost. Theater J's handsome production, steered with a light touch and admirable clarity by director Elizabeth Dinkova, deploys warm woods (in a set by Sarah Beth Hall) and plenty of papers (props are from Pamela Weiner), along with one of the most quietly lyrical visual vocabularies I've seen in a theater lately. (Colin K. Bills is responsible for the lighting, and Deja Collins the subtle and exquisite suite of projections.) Redmond and Thomas navigate a tricky script with the ease of veterans and a wry, low-key charm that helps find an appropriate unifying tone for a narrative that involves the soberest of considerations — but also at least one anatomical joke and (rather boldly) the employment of mild sarcasm in the vicinity of the words 'never forget.' And Stolowitz manages, without belaboring or dwelling on grim specifics, to convey the quiet horror of discovering the name of a lost relative in the same moment you realizing that that person's story is largely and irremediably lost. 'He who forgets what he cannot change is happy,' muses Andrea at one point, echoing a line from her grandfather's journal, though it's not clear she can bring herself to agree. 'The Berlin Diaries' will resonate, and vividly, with audiences who caught Tom Stoppard's similarly aching family chronicle 'Leopoldstadt' at the Shakespeare Theatre Company late last year – and I should imagine with any member of a Jewish American generation whose parents and grandparents simply couldn't bear to pass on the stories of the lost. The Berlin Diaries, through June 29 at Theater J. About 90 minutes without intermission.

Yahoo

an hour ago

• Yahoo

Were Arachnophobes Bugged by Criminal Minds? Is Resident Alien's Joseph Gone for Good? Did Steamy Adults Kiss Launch ‘Ship? More Qs!

We've got questions, and you've (maybe) got answers! With another week of TV gone by, we're lobbing queries left and right about Criminal Minds: Evolution, Adults, Nine Perfect Strangers, Destination X and more! 1 | On last week's , was Joseph's gory, torn-up face (and missing arm!) more disgusting or hysterical? And do you think this will be the last time we ever see Enver Gjokaj? More from TVLine Did John Wick Flick Do TWD Vet Dirty? Did The Chi Devastate? Will Glee 4-Peat at Tonys? Who Has Never Heard of Sabrina Carpenter?! More TV Qs! Is Doctor Who Reunion Inevitable? Did Cleaning Lady Kiss Leave You Cold? How Would SNL Have Handled Trump/ Musk Break-Up? More TV Qs! Glad The Last of Us Spared Dog? Did Rehearsal Give You High Anxiety? Did Survivor 50 Need Fan Input? Vexing Organized Crime Absences? More Qs! 2 | How did The Walking Dead: Dead City's Negan manage to haul a ventilator out of Bellevue and back to the church? 3 | Bravo fans, were you surprised to see that the only match that managed to stick was Luann and James? And would you watch another season of Housewives selecting from a bevy of men in a tropical locale? 4 | Watching The Last Supper get underway on , was anyone else distracted by the fact that the disciples' candles were (and remained) the exact same height and clearly weren't melting? 5 | The Pitt's Dr. Shen appears to 'run on Dunkin',' so we have to ask: What do you think his go-to order is? Is it just a classic iced coffee with cream and sugar? Or do we think he's more of a frozen coffee or iced latte-kinda guy? 6 | On Fox's , should shamelessly manipulative Kethryn's on-screen ID be changed from 'Tech Manager' to 'People Manager'? Also, could the gameplay on this show possibly be any more simplistic? 1) Compete in gross-out challenge to become Snake! 2) Scheme! 3) Vote someone out! 7 | Were you surprised by how easily 's Shayne chose his bro Biggy over his love interest Ally in that vase-shattering challenge? And was that big elimination twist a little underwhelming considering how easily Tai believed Biggy's lie right off the bat? 8 | Should the Ted Lasso writers be compensated every time the new Goldfish crackers commercial — featuring another familiar face from Saturday Night Live, Please Don't Destroy's Ben Marshall — airs on television? 9 | Are you officially 'shipping Adults' Anton and Paul Baker after that steamy kiss in the season finale? And how badly do we need to see a Season 2 to find out how this whole mess turns out? 10 | No shade to ' Nancy, but did you have a certain sense about Hamish's sexual preferences from literally the first moment he was on screen at the pool? 11 | Although it made complete sense, weren't you still a little disappointed with how little we got to see of Guy in The Buccaneers Season 2 premiere? And didn't Nelle and Nan look more like sisters than mother and daughter? 12 | Be honest, Nine Perfect Strangers viewers: How many of you were already suspecting that Helena twist might be a thing? 13 | On , were you definitely expecting something terrible to happen when Carrie drove off on an ATV unsupervised, and then shocked when she somehow arrived unscathed? And was Harry's elderly father surprisingly cool with it when Lily's dancer boyfriend announced he's poly? 14 | What was with Rebecca's sudden glam-up this week on Criminal Minds: Evolution? What was the point of giving Voit a new, better lawyer… if the guy didn't get to be? Also, how are the arachnophobics out there among you faring? Hit the comments with your answers and any TV Qs of your own! Best of TVLine 20+ Age-Defying Parent-Child Castings From Blue Bloods, ER, Ginny & Georgia, Golden Girls, Supernatural and More Young Sheldon Easter Eggs: Every Nod to The Big Bang Theory (and Every Future Reveal) Across 7 Seasons Weirdest TV Crossovers: Always Sunny Meets Abbott, Family Guy vs. Simpsons, Nine-Nine Recruits New Girl and More

Vogue

an hour ago

• Vogue

Haim Isn't Answering to Anyone

Danielle Haim is in the middle of explaining her songwriting process when she's interrupted by a call on her hotel phone. 'One second,' she says. Luckily, her siblings Alana and Este, who round out the band Haim, are there to fill the void, performing a rapid-fire riff—a sister act, if you will. 'You have a caller! Who is it?' Alana asks. 'Is it mom?' Este wonders. 'It's probably mom,' Alana concludes. Photo: Heidi Stanton The trio have always been close, but their synchronicity has never been more apparent than on their fourth studio album, I Quit, out today. On its face, the record—co-produced by Danielle and Rostam Batmanglij, formerly of Vampire Weekend—is a breakup album, largely inspired by Danielle's split from Ariel Rechtshaid, who produced the band's previous three records. Over its 15 tracks, the record travels from the lusty beginnings of a romance to the grief of its dissolution and the catharsis of finding closure. But present throughout is a sense of ecstasy: in album opener 'Gone'—with its sample from George Michael's 'Freedom! '90'—and the jubilant, Alana-led 'Spinning,' all the way through to the percussive closer, 'Now It's Time.' 'I wish I could tell you there was some huge blowup with my past relationship. The real story is just two people that lost each other,' Danielle says. 'There's a lot of love there. I think we made really great music with my ex, and he's such a genius producer, but I think I really found so much strength in producing this with Rostam. I really feel like it's our best work.'