10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About 'Jaws'

10. Crusty Quint (Robert Shaw) was a composite of two real people. The first was a sport fisherman named Frank Mundus, who still holds the record for the largest fish ever caught by rod and reel (a great white that weighed more than 3,000 pounds) and who provided inspiration for "Jaws" author Peter Benchley. The second was a colorful Martha’s Vineyard local named Craig Kingsbury whom Spielberg met during filming. He not only inspired some of Quint’s lines (“Not like going down the pond chasin' bluegills and tommycods” came from Kingsbury) but he also played the ill-fated Ben Gardner in the film (the guy whose severed head famously pops out of the sunken boat).

9. Although the term “blockbuster” was coined by the entertainment press in the 1940s (it came from the nickname of a WWII-era bomb capable of destroying a city block), "Jaws" redefined it and morphed it into is modern incarnation. No longer just used to describe a hit movie, post-"Jaws," it meant a cultural phenomenon that people went to see again and again.

8. Spielberg was so convinced that the crew was going to hurl him into the sea after the final shot was complete, he skipped the filming of the last shot and bolted off set. It later became a tradition/superstition that he leaves set before the final shot.

7. "Jaws" opened in 465 theaters and stole the title of all-time box-office champ from "The Godfather" (1972) in just 78 days. By comparison, "Gone with the Wind" held the top spot for a good 25 years before being dethroned by "The Sound of Music."

6. The introduction of Quint interrupting the town-hall meeting by scraping his nails along the chalkboard is iconic, but originally Spielberg planned to have him in a movie theater watching "Moby Dick" and laughing so hard he drives out all the other audience members. Spielberg was unable to attain the rights to the movie, however, because star Gregory Peck didn’t want it to be the butt of a joke.

5. Director Bryan Singer ("X-Men," "Superman Returns") is such a huge fan of the movie, he named his production company Bad Hat Harry, in honor of this scene: 

4. Yes, it’s true that when Spielberg was capturing footage of real sharks for use in the film, he hired a dwarf actor named Carl Rizzo to be submerged in a shark cage in order to make the measly 14-foot real sharks look more like the 25-foot monster the shark in the movie is supposed to be. 

3. The Martha’s Vineyard locals were paid $64 a day to meander on the beach and occasionally run screaming.

2. The shark’s final death “cry” was a sample of a noise made by the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Spielberg used the same sound four years earlier as the death squeal of the killer truck in his debut film, "Duel."