Tag:

actor

Charles Dana Gibson Finds the Perfect American Woman: The Gibson Girl

When Charles Dana Gibson sold his first drawing to Life magazine, a picture of a comical dog baying at the moon, he rushed across the street and celebrated with a 75-cent sandwich, bought from the proceeds of his $4 sale. Then he went on to create the perfect American woman: The Gibson Girl.

Charles Dana Gibson

Born in Roxbury, Mass., on Sept. 14, 1867, Gibson came from an old New England family. He was the great-grandson of James DeWolf, a wealthy slave trader and U.S. senator. He was the great-great-grandson of William Bradford, also a U.S. senator and the great-great-grandson of William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony.

Charles Dana Gibson had a talent for pen and ink spotted early by his parents. They entered his work in contests and paid for him to attend New York’s Art Students League for two years. That first commercial sale to Life happened in 1886, when he was 19.

It didn’t take long before his drawings were a mainstay of the magazine, appearing weekly. His style was gentle and humorous, poking fun at relationships, work, high society and leisure pursuits. And as Life magazine gained in popularity, so did Gibson. His work appeared in numerous magazines and his customary drink – a martini with an onion instead of an olive – was named for him, the ‘Gibson.’ But greater fame lay ahead. In the 1890s, he launched his Gibson Girl series, and the image became the ideal of American womanhood for women (and men).

Charles Dana Gibson at work.

Gibson Girl

Curvaceous, beautiful and sexy, but never bawdy or scantily clad, the Gibson Girl represented his ideal woman. She was depicted as a student, as a writer, as a working woman and as an athlete. Above all, she was depicted as the superior of the sexes. With her hair perched high atop her head and her full, stylish dresses, Gibson frequently posed her examining and toying with the clownish men who surrounded her.

Charles Dana Gibson never imagined the success the Gibson Girls would attain. They were just All-American women to him. But his drawings were so popular with women that when Gibson drew a girl with a new style of ribbon or new accessory, stores would immediately see demand for the item.

Irene Langhorne Gibson

There were many Gibson Girls over the next 20 years. The young women who served as their models would come to Gibson’s studio – always properly chaperoned – and pose for the artist. And he sold their likenesses on every imaginable product. Two of the most well-known models were the actress and model Evelyn Nesbit, whose image is captured in the drawing “Woman: the Eternal Question” and Irene Langhorne, who would become Irene Langhorne Gibson.

Irene

Irene was a Southern belle from a socially prominent Virginia family of five sisters, one of whom would become Lady Nancy Astor. Another sister, Nora Langhorne Flynn, married a movie actor; her friend F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a short story about her.

Irene received 59 marriage proposals before she said ‘yes’ to Charles Dana Gibson. Her father was initially stupefied by her choice of a ‘Yankee sign painter.’ But he relented. Perhaps it was Charles’ view of womanhood that carried the day.

The Gibson Girl was no statue-like beauty perched on a pedestal. She was active, outgoing and vibrant – like Irene, who was active in progressive political causes, particularly those that focused on improving the lives of children. Charles Dana Gibson would say that Irene and her sisters, and hundreds of girls like them, were the inspiration for the Gibson Girl.

“The ‘Gibson Girl’ does not exist. She has been as the grains of sand in number,” he would explain. Rather, he said, he simply recorded the beauty he found in the melting pot of America. “There isn’t any ‘Gibson Girl,’ but there are many thousands of American girls, and for that let us all thank God.”

Charles Dana Gibson Moves On

During the run-up to World War I, Charles Dana Gibson focused much of his attention on creating cartoons designed to build support for America joining the fight in Europe. But it was the Gibson Girls who made him famous, and rich.

Woman: The Eternal Question

In 1920, he and a group of artists and writers bought Life magazine and ran it until 1932 before selling it. Gibson had left his active role in the magazine long before that and retired to paint in oils. Gibson and his wife divided their time between New York City and Maine, where they owned an island off Islesboro and liked to entertain guests.

As fashions changed, the Gibson Girl gradually faded, too. Gibson’s sophisticated world view and subtle humor gave way to coarser jokes and fashions. The full dresses and corsets of the Gibson Girl gave way to practical clothing and the ideal American woman moved on, just as Gibson predicted she would.

“The eventual American woman will be even more beautiful than the woman of to-day,” he predicted in 1910. “Her claims to that distinction will result from a fine combination of the best points of all those many races which have helped to make our population.”

Charles Dana Gibson died on Dec. 23, 1944. Irene died in 1956. The Gibson Girl lives on to this day.

This story about Charles Dana Gibson was updated in 2023.

3 comments 2.6K views

The Mystery of the Hartford Circus Fire Still Lingers, 78 Years Later

Of all the mysteries that still surround the Hartford Circus Fire, the most compelling is the identity of a small blonde girl in a white dress. Though her body was curiously unmarked by the fire, the child dubbed ‘Little Miss 1565’ had never been identified with certainty.

Hartford Circus Fire

The Hartford Circus Fire was one of the worst fire tragedies in U.S. history, killing about 170 circus-goers and injuring more than 700. It happened 18 months after the Cocoanut Grove Fire killed 492 people in Boston.

The Hartford Circus Fire broke out during the Thursday afternoon performance of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus on July 6, 1944. About 7,000 people came to see the circus under the big top — a huge canvas weatherproofed with 1,800 pounds of paraffin wax dissolved in 6,000 gallons of either kerosene or gasoline.

Not only was the enormous canvas highly flammable, but some of the exits were blocked, contributing to the death toll. We will probably never know the exact number of victims will nor the cause of the Hartford Circus Fire. The identities of some of the victims, like Little Miss 1565, have never been established.

The Hartford Circus Fire

The Hartford Circus Fire began after the first act, the lion performance, and shortly into the second as The Great Wallendas performed their daredevil highwire stunts.

Bandleader Merle Evans probably spotted the flame first. He quickly instructed the band to play The Stars and Stripes Forever, the tune signaling distress to circus people. They played during the fire until a pole fell and forced them to quit.

The ringmaster, Fred Bradna, tried to tell the audience not to panic, but the power failed. People stampeded toward the exits, but animal cages blocked them.

World War II was still raging, and many adults were at work in war-production plants when the fire broke out. Sixty-eight of the approximately 170 who died in the Hartford Circus Fire were 15 or younger.

Spectators and circus workers sliced open the tent and pulled children out, or lifted them over the barriers that blocked their escape.

‘A big ball of fire’

Maureen Krekian was 11 years old and had gone to the circus by herself. Sixty-three years later she recalled the Hartford Circus Fire:

I remember somebody yelling and seeing a big ball of fire near the top of the tent. And this ball of fire just got bigger and bigger and bigger. By that time, everybody was panicking. The exit was blocked with the cages that the animals were brought in and out with. And there was a man taking kids and flinging them up and over that cage to get them out. I was sitting up in the bleachers and jumped down — I was three-quarters of the way up. You jump down and it was all straw underneath. There was a young man, a kid, and he had a pocketknife. And he slit the tent, took my arm and pulled me out.

Few who survived ever forgot it. The late actor Charles Nelson Reilly, then 13, made it out of the big top. Many years later he said he rarely attended the theater since the audience sounds reminded him of the crowd at the Hartford Circus Fire.

Little Miss 1565

About eight minutes after it first caught fire, the flaming big top collapsed. Victims were burned by melting paraffin, trampled to death in the panic or asphyxiated or burned when the canvas fell. Seven hundred people suffered injuries. The only animals in the tent at the time, the lions, survived with minor burns.

After the Hartford Circus Fire, officials sorted and laid out bodies on army cots in a nearby armory for the families to identify.

Little Miss 1565

No one came to identify a little blonde girl wearing a white dress died of asphyxiation. Her body was well preserved, with only a few burn marks on her face. Investigators named her Little Miss 1565 after the number given to her.

Hartford Police Sgt. Thomas Barber and Sgt. Edward Lowe grew obsessed with finding out who she was. Barber, a widower, had two children who planned to attend the circus but hadn’t arrived when the fire broke out.

Barber and Lowe took dental impressions, fingerprints, footprints and photographs. A Life magazine story in 1965 described their efforts:

They sent the dental charts to hundreds of dentists, questioned mailman, doctors, tradesmen, Sunday school teachers. They tried, futilely, to match her to adult victims of the fire.

Gravesite Visits

The police officers showed her photo to everyone who claimed a body on the night of the fire. They visited orphanages and welfare agencies, and they wrote to every primary school in Connecticut enclosing their little friend’s picture. During the futile search Barber often stopped by the grave to brood about the child at his feet.

Every year on Memorial Day, Christmas Day and July 6 the two police officers brought flowers to her grave in Northwood Cemetery in Windsor, Conn.

Barber spent the rest of his life trying to find her. Not once did he fail to place flowers on her grave on those three days. After Barber died in November 1977, local florists continued the tradition of laying flowers on Little Miss 1565’s grave.

Mystery Solved?

In 1981, Lowe’s widow told the press he had learned the little girl’s identity and told her family, who didn’t want any publicity. Six years later, someone left a note on her gravestone that read, “Sarah Graham is her Name! 7-6-38 DOB, 6 years, Twin.” Notes nearby said her twin and other relatives were buried nearby.

In 1991, Hartford arson investigator Rick Davey published a book claiming Little Miss 1565 was Eleanor Emily Cook. Eleanor’s brother Donald worked with Davey to establish Eleanor Cook’s identity. Authorities exhumed Little Miss 1565 and buried her in Southampton, Mass. She lay next to Eleanor Cook’s brother Edward, who also perished in the Hartford Circus Fire.

An American Tragedy

Ten years later, Stewart O’Nan published The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy. O’Nan argued Little Miss 1565 could not have been Eleanor Cook. Their dental records didn’t match and her mother insisted all of her life that the child was not Eleanor.

O’Nan believed another family misidentified Eleanor Emily Cook as their own, and other members of the Cook family began to question the identity of the girl buried next to Edward Cook.

At the conclusion of his book, O’Nan explains why the story of Thomas Barber and Little Miss 1565 is so compelling:

To be lost and forgotten–to be abandoned–is a shared and terrible fear, just as our fondest hope, as we grow older, is that we might leave some part of us behind in the hearts of those we love and in that way live on. Perhaps, in the end, we will not be lost. In that respect, she was received the only gift we can give her, a gift we wish desperately for our loved ones, a gift we all want, finally: to be remembered.

Watch newsreel footage of the Hartford Circus Fire investigation here.

With thanks to The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy. This story about the Hartford Circus Fire was updated in 2023.

17 comments 3.3K views

John L. Sullivan, America’s First Superstar Athlete

“My name’s John L. Sullivan and I can lick any son-of-a-bitch alive!” If you heard those words shouted out in the 1880s, the smartest course of action was to stay seated.

Sullivan, a.k.a. the Boston Strong Boy, would shout out this challenge dozens of times over the course of his life, and for the most part he was correct.

John L. Sullivan would claim to have fought more than 450 times in his career, some professionally in both exhibits and prize fights, and others the byproduct of barroom scuffles.

Like many of his stories, the truth isn’t always clear. Few people, however, attempted to correct his memory for it is safe to say that Sullivan fought a lot and was very good at it. In fact, he was what amounted to a boxing superstar in his day, harnessing his fame to earn (and spend) more than $1 million.

John L. Sullivan

John L. Sullivan was born Oct. 15, 1858 in Roxbury, Mass. His Irish immigrant parents wanted him to enter the priesthood, and he did well academically. He even attended Boston College for a few months, but dropped out to play professional baseball.

Sullivan’s career as a boxer officially began in 1878. He stepped on stage at the age of 19 to accept a challenge from a prize fighter who offered to take on any man from the audience. In such events, the fighting was typically staged with actors planted in the audience who stepped forward to take a convincing fall. Or else the actor entertained the crowd with his antics.

John L. Sullivan, however, stepped up for real and knocked the professional out. His career was under way.

Sullivan was not highly regarded for his boxing skills, but he was undoubtedly a very hard puncher. At 5’10”, his fighting weight was just under 200 pounds.

Paddy Ryan (left) and John L. Sullivan shake hands before their bout.

John L. Sullivan really made his name in 1882 with a fight against Paddy Ryan. Ryan claimed the world heavyweight championships. Any such claim to that title would raise the eyebrows of purists. In those days, most boxing in the United States involved bare knuckle fighting for as many rounds as it took for one man to get beaten until he couldn’t fight anymore.

The Paddy Ryan Fight

While the Marquess of Queensberry rules were starting to take hold, they hadn’t broadly caught on in the United States. Nor did strong organizations exist to regulate the sport. Nevertheless, Paddy Ryan was a big name and Sullivan chased him for a fight for years. In 1882, Ryan finally obliged.

The match moved several times. Its final location along the Gulf Coast in Mississippi was kept secret until shortly before it started to prevent police from intervening. In the end, it was not much of a contest. After nine rounds (some say eight), Ryan couldn’t continue and Sullivan had won.

The victory catapulted John L. Sullivan to broader fame, and in 1884 he set out to take on the world – literally. He went on a “grand tour” of 28 states in eight months. At each stop, his crew of ‘Sullivan’s Sluggers’ would warm up the crowd with a series of boxing exhibitions. Then the real action would begin.

Sullivan would enter the ring and put up a purse, usually $50 though he raised it as high as $1,000 at times He would give it to any man who would step forward and stay on his feet for three rounds with him in the ring.

He claimed no one ever made it. Every time John L. Sullivan rolled in to a new town, a newspaper man’s dream came true. The carousing Sullivan would be the talk of the town as he drank his way up to the fight, buying booze and raising a ruckus. Trips to the local magistrate to answer charges of drunkenness were not unheard of.

All of it served as great publicity to pack the house on the night of the fights. Returning to Boston, the John L. Sullivan legend grew. In total, more than 100,000 people had come to see Sullivan, and he said he took in more than $140,000 from the tour. He was the most famous person in America.

The Greatest Fight

In July of 1889, Sullivan fought probably his greatest fight, against a fighter named Jake Kilrain. Again, the two men met in Mississippi and 3,000 people went to watch the match. It was another bare-knuckle fight for the world championship. It lasted an amazing 75 rounds. Sullivan scored the first knockdown and Kilrain drew the first blood.

Poster promoting the Kilrain-Sullivan fight

The two were very evenly matched, but the reporters who wrote about the fight noted that about round 30, Sullivan began to get the upper hand, and Kilrain’s trainer took him out of the fight at 75.

John L. Sullivan would defend his title once more in 1892 against “Gentleman Jim” Corbett. Corbett was eight years younger than Sullivan, and much more of a boxer. He relied on footwork and speed and less on punching power. Sullivan, meanwhile, hadn’t trained as hard as he had for Kilrain. The bout was fought with gloves, and in 21 rounds Sullivan was out. It was his last significant fight, though he would manage exhibitions and a minor comeback or two. Corbett would later say that seeing how the crowd had cheered Sullivan at the start of the fight and then turned on him when he was down gave him a look into his own future, and the future of all fighters.

Career Continues

John L. Sullivan made his name as a fighter, but he made most of his money as a self-promoter. When he wasn’t fighting, he was coming up with new schemes to make money. His appearances were never ending. He pitched and umpired at minor league baseball games, appeared in plays, put on boxing exhibitions, s0ld whiskey. If there was money to be made, John L. would show up.

The scandals persisted, however. His wife had accused him of abusing her (which he probably did) when he was drunk. They split and eventually divorced. He was also a straight-out racist, refusing any offers to fight black boxers.

However, after his retirement, his fame seemed to grow. He worked the political campaign trail for his friend Teddy Roosevelt and later James Michael Curley. And his fame inspired the expression: “I’d like to shake the hand that shook the hand of John L. Sullivan.”

The phrase originated from the play The Rag Baby by New Hampshire playwright Charles Hoyt. The farcical play featured a sports fan so enamored of Sullivan that he was thrilled just to shake the hand of someone who had met the fighter. The phrase would later be turned into a song by Monroe Rosenfeld (lyrics) and Alfred Williams (music). People often used the expression for decades.

Finally, Temperance

John L. Sullivan worked steadily through the 1890s, most often entertaining crowds on the vaudeville circuit with a monologue of stories than delighted his fans. He also continued his drinking ways, appearing in court from time to time to face charges that he assaulted someone or was drunk and disorderly.

Still the crowds loved him. John L. Sullivan finally quit drinking around 1908 and went on to marry his second wife, Katherine – a girl he knew from childhood. The two settled on her farm in Abington, Mass.

John L. Sullivan with Jimmie Collins.

John L. Sullivan soon became a sought-after speaker in the temperance movement. He freely acknowledged how much alcohol had cost him, both financially and personally.

Gentleman Jim Corbett didn’t beat him for the title, he said, whiskey did. John L. Sullivan died in 1918, telling stories and entertaining his fans until the very end.

This story about John L. Sullivan was updated in 2023.

6 comments 9K views

George M. Cohan, Way More Than A Song-and-Dance Man

George M. Cohan at 22 years old produced a Broadway play that injected American theatre with something new: energy and speed. Called The Governor’s Son, it opened on Feb. 25, 1901 featuring exuberant characters who spoke like Americans. Unlike most theatrical productions of the time, it was not a rehash of European operettas.

George M. Cohan

It flopped.

Cohan kept trying. He finally had a hit – one of Broadway’s greatest — in 1904 with Little Johnny Jones, featuring the song, I’m a Yankee Doodle Boy. Over his lifetime, he wrote many more patriotic and show tunes, including Over There, You’re A Grand Old Flag and Give My Regards to Broadway. He was an actor, singer, producer, director, composer and lyricist, known as known as “the man who owned Broadway” and “the father of musical comedy.” New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia praised him for putting the symbols of American life into American music.

George M. Cohan

George M. Cohan was born in a small theatrical hotel on July 3, 1878 in Providence, R.I., a few hours before midnight. He always insisted his birthday was on the Fourth of July. As soon as he learned to talk and walk he was performing on the vaudeville circuit. Along with his parents, Jerry and Helen, and sister, Josie, they formed The Four Cohans.

The Four Cohans, 1915

As a child, Cohan spent summers with his relatives in Podunk, Mass., now part of East Brookfield. He was fond of Podunk and what he called its ‘hayseed hicks,’ making them famous in his shows. Other entertainers picked up the word Podunk to mean a small, dull town.

On stage, he had a swaggering, energetic persona, characterized by The New York Times as

An old trouper and hoofer, whose dapper costumes, derby or straw hat cocked jauntily over one eye, wisecracks from the corner of the mouth, and lively caper across the stage with his fast-swinging cane, were nationally known trademarks, he was regarded for years as just a Broadway vaudeville performer, but astonished the theatrical world by developing into a serious actor and dramatist whose work won praise even from the intellectuals who had previously ignored him.

‘Okay, Kid’

One of his favorite theatrical devices was to close a show with a flag-waving finale that usually brought down the house. For his inspirational patriotic songs – particularly You’re a Grand Old Flag and Over There – he received a gold medal under a special act of Congress. President Franklin Roosevelt, who Cohan had impersonated in the play I’d Rather Be Right, presented the award to him.

Josie and George M. Cohan

He became a very rich man, but he lived simply and gave away a great deal of money. Cohan was a soft touch who replied “Okay, kid,” to anyone who approached him for money. He gave allowances to many people he and his family knew in the theatre and had fallen on hard times. Cohan once loaned several hundred thousand dollars to a friend who lost money in the stock market.

He died in New York City on Nov. 5, 1942 at the age of 64, but not before Hollywood made a biopic about him. Yankee Doodle Dandy starred James Cagney, another Irish-American song-and-dance man. Cohan wasn’t impressed by the film, the biggest box office hit in Warner Brothers’ history and winner of several Academy Awards. It is preserved in the National Film Registry because of its significance.

A statue of Cohan stands in Times Square in New York City and Fox Point in Providence.

This story was updated in 2022.

24 comments 2.6K views

Lucy Lambert Hale Gets A Valentine From John Wilkes Booth

Lucy Lambert Hale cut a broad swath through the hearts of Washington’s young bachelors in the 1860s. Her suitors included future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., John Hay, secretary to President Lincoln, and the president’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln.

Photograph of Lucy Lambert Hale found on John Wilkes’ Booth’s body

But it was the anonymous Valentine’s Day card she received in 1862 from a secret admirer, and the romance it spawned, for which she will be forever remembered.

Lucy Lambert Hale

Born Jan. 1, 1842 in Dover, N.H., Lucy Lambert Hale was the daughter of John Parker Hale and Lucy Hill Lambert. As a teenager she liked to flirt with men. Her manner toward them was described as ‘rapt attention laced with a hint of indifference and occasionally a touch of cruelty.’

Her father, a staunch abolitionist, served as a U.S. senator from New Hampshire. In 1845, he barnstormed across the state for the cause of abolishing slavery. He participated in one famous debate with New Hampshire’s future president Franklin Pierce. He then went on to challenge Pierce, a Democrat, in the 1852 presidential election as the nominee of the Free Soil Party. But he was ahead of his time, and Pierce won the election.

After that election, Hale continued fighting slavery. As a lawyer, he led the successful defense of the Boston Vigilance Committee, prosecuted for rescuing and freeing a slave named Shadrach Minkins. He strongly supported Abraham Lincoln. By 1862, he served his second stint in the U.S. Senate as an outspoken critic of slavery.

Meanwhile, his daughter Lucy turned heads both in New England and Washington. Men considered her beautiful, with her dark hair, blue eyes, clear complexion and stunning figure.

Her father reportedly hoped Lucy would make a match with Robert Todd Lincoln.

Lucy Lambert Hale

Valentine

Then in 1862 she received an unusual Valentine:

“My dear Miss Hale, were it not for the License with a time-honored observance of this day allows, I had not written you this poor note. … You resemble in a most remarkable degree a lady, very dear to me, now dead and your close resemblance to her surprised me the first time I saw you. This must be my apology for any apparent rudeness noticeable. To see you has indeed afforded me a melancholy pleasure, if you can conceive of such, and should we never meet nor I see you again believe me, I shall always associate you in my memory, with her, who was very beautiful, and whose face, like your own I trust, was a faithful index of gentleness and amiability. With a Thousand kind wishes for your future happiness I am, to you,

A Stranger.”

Heartthrob

Valentine’s Day at the time provided an opportunity for people to announce their affection for someone of a higher social standing, someone to whom they might never be introduced. And that was very much the motive behind this note.

The anonymous letter captivated Lucy Lambert Hale. It intrigued her even more when she learned it came from the handsome actor and heartthrob John Wilkes Booth.

John Wilkes Booth

Lucy Lambert Hale and John Wilkes Booth went from flirting to courting to betrothed over the next three years.

Some evidence shows that Lucy’s father disapproved of Booth because of his social standing as an actor.

Whether the Hales knew about his views toward Lincoln isn’t known. He almost certainly told them nothing of his plans to kidnap the president, which later turned into the assassination plot.

Manhunt and Cover-up

By some accounts, Lucy dined with Booth on the night of April 14, 1865 just two hours before he murdered the president.

When federal troops hunted down and killed John Wilkes Booth, they found Lucy’s picture on his body. Some reports say she wept over his remains at the Washington Navy Yard when his body returned to the capital. However, she had probably already fled Washington.

Immediately after the assassination, Lucy’s father sprang in to action to his daughter. He had a notice published in the newspaper that she and Booth were not engaged, as reported. He also, perhaps, exerted influence behind the scenes to keep her free of the scandal.

After the assassination, investigators rounded up anyone remotely connected to it, even actors on stage at Ford’s Theater. But they never questioned Lucy in the investigation or trial of Booth’s co-conspirators. She quickly left the country with her father for Europe, where she spent five years fending off suitors.

Not until 1874 did she marry William Chandler, a New Hampshire lawyer elected to the U.S. Senate and appointed Secretary of the Navy. They had one child, and Lucy spent most of the rest of her life quietly dividing her time between Washington and Concord, N.H.

This story about John Wilkes Booth’s love interest was updated in 2023.

10 comments 2.8K views

Jaws, Or The Tale of an Unfairly Maligned Shark

The 1974 bestseller Jaws and the blockbuster movie that followed created such animosity toward sharks that the book’s author became an ardent shark advocate.

Twenty-five years after Jaws was published in early 1974, Peter Benchley said he couldn’t have written it again in good conscience. The tale of a great white shark that terrorized a town stoked unjustified fears of sharks and popularized shark hunting tournaments.

Peter Benchley

“[T]he shark in an updated Jaws could not be the villain,” Benchley said. “It would have to be written as the victim; for, worldwide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors.”

Peter Benchley

Benchley was the grandson of Algonquin Round Table wit Robert Benchley and the son of writer Nathaniel Benchley. He was not, however, a fiction writer by trade. To his editor, it showed.

Peter Benchley, born on May 8, 1940 in New York City, graduated from Harvard and worked as a reporter for The Washington Post , then Newsweek. He worked for a time as a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson. In 1971, an editor at Doubleday, Tom Congdon, saw some of Benchley’s work and invited him to lunch to talk about a book.

Benchley suggested a book about pirates. Congdon said no. Benchley then suggested a story about a great white shark menacing a resort community. Congdon liked the idea and offered him a $1,000 advance for the first 100 pages.

Benchley holed up in a room above the Pennington Furnace Co., in Pennington, N.J., to write the book during the winter. He found an old turkey coop in Stonington, Conn., to work in during the summer. He didn’t just write; he looked up everything he could find about sharks.

Benchley continued to research sharks after the book’s publication. He was disturbed to learn sharks only eat people by accident when they mistake them for their normal prey.

When Benchley submitted the first 100 pages of Jaws, Congdon liked the first five. He called them ‘wonderful.’

Those first five pages went into the final version unchanged. The next 95 pages, not so much. They were funny, and Congdon didn’t think funny worked for a thriller.

OK, Call It Jaws

Benchley revised and rewrote the book. For a year’s work, he received only $7,500 in sporadic payments. He had come up with titles for the book such as Leviathan Rising and The Jaws of Death, but rejected them.

Shortly before the book went to print, Benchley told Congdon he couldn’t come up with a title. “The only word that means anything is ‘jaws’,” Benchley said. It was short, he said, and it might work.

“Okay, we’ll call the thing Jaws,” Congdon said.

The book sold 9.5 million copies in the U.S. alone, a surprise bestseller for 44 weeks. It eventually sold 20 million copies.

Film producer David Brown saw Doubleday’s promotion for Jaws, which suggested, ‘it might make a good movie.’

The Film

Stephen Spielberg, then 26, directed Jaws, filming it on Martha’s Vineyard despite legendary production problems.

Actors joined the cast at the last minute and the script was rewritten just before shooting.

The mechanical shark, nicknamed Bruce for Spielberg’s lawyer, didn’t work in saltwater. The sound crew almost drowned. Lead actor Robert Shaw went on drinking binges and he and co-star Richard Dreyfuss developed a healthy hatred for each other.

In the end, Jaws took 159 days to shoot, three times as long as scheduled, and it cost $9 million, nearly three times as much as budgeted. Spielberg heard rumors he’d never direct another movie.

Jaws came out in June 1975 in 450 theaters, the first film so widely distributed. The strategy worked; Jaws became the highest grossing film in history until Star Wars. Some critics called it the greatest movie ever.

Jaws, filmed in Menemsha (pictured here), belongs to the pantheon of classic movies shot in New England.

Aftermath

Though the odds of being eaten by a shark are infinitesimally small, Jaws instilled a widespread fear of the ocean. After seeing the movie, beachgoers refused to go into the water and thousands of fishermen tried to catch trophy sharks. At least one shark biologist partly blames Jaws for a precipitous decline in the shark population.

Guadalupe Island Biosphere Reserve, Mexico

Benchley embarked on his own film career, accompanying scientists and film producers on expeditions to learn more about sharks. He became the spokesman for the Oceans program of the National Council of Environmental Defense.

In 2000, Benchley penned an op-ed in The Guardian in defense of sharks:

When I wrote the book and film a quarter of a century ago, knowledge of sharks was in its infancy,” he wrote. “We believed that sharks actually attacked boats; we believed that they actively sought out human prey…

“Over the years, we have come to know otherwise. Over those same years, unfortunately, the demand worldwide for shark products has soared, and improved technology has given man the tools to slaughter sharks wholesale to meet that demand.

“Around the world every year, approximately a dozen people are killed by sharks, while 100m sharks are killed by man.”

Peter Benchley died on Feb. 11, 2006, of pulmonary fibrosis.

This story was updated in 2023.

Images: Menemsha By User:Elkman – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Menemsha.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1350749. Scavenging shark By Fallows C, Gallagher AJ, Hammerschlag N (2013) – Fallows C, Gallagher AJ, Hammerschlag N (2013) White Sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) Scavenging on Whales and Its Potential Role in Further Shaping the Ecology of an Apex Predator. PLoS ONE 8(4): e60797. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0060797, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25544665

7 comments 4.6K views

Newer Posts

Older Posts