The Jaws poster was originally created for the book, not the Spielberg film
Two years before Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hopeby Steven Spielberg Jaws broke box office records around the world and launched the blockbuster era. The story of a great white shark terrorizing a seaside resort town became a phenomenon and topped the box office charts for a brief period until A new hope dethroned two years later. It did so after a difficult development process that became Hollywood legend.
Jaws‘Magic relied on several fortuitous circumstances. This included things like the film’s mechanical shark breakdown – forcing Spielberg to rely on a much more effective Hitchcockian suggestion – and, of course, John Williams’ score. This also included the movie poster, which was so iconic on its own that it never needed to be updated. Turns out he wasn’t made for the movie. Spielberg inherited it from the source material.
Bantam Publishing published Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws in 1974, and it became an instant hit, prompting Hollywood to grab the rights. The book differs from the film in many ways – containing several continental subplots involving the town’s corrupt mayor and a love triangle between Matt Hooper and the Brodys – none of which were the story’s main selling point. The cover promised a killer shark, and the visual it used was impossible to resist.
The hardcover copy of the book featured a protean version of the iconic image, with artist Paul Bacon using gray images on a black background to frame the scene. But it’s the paperback cover that really struck a chord, shifting from black to white and hinting at some terrifying detail. Artist Roger Kastel was commissioned to create the image, according to a 2015 New York Post article.
Kastel leafed through the first pages of the novel and quickly found her scene: the shark attack on swimmer Christine Watkins that opens the story. He used model Allison Maher to serve as Watkins, swimming happily along the surface of the ocean as an impossibly large shark rises unseen from the depths toward her. It was a terrifying image that, among other things, helped the novel overcome its usual lack of focus.
Spielberg and Universal Pictures recognized the true selling point of the story and stripped the novel of superfluous subplots. With the shark now in the foreground, the novel’s cover became all the more compelling. Bantam let Universal use the image for the poster, rightly considering it free publicity. It became an instant hook for Spielberg’s blockbuster, and it remains one of the greatest promotional artworks of all time.
Unfortunately, Kastel’s original painting has been lost to time, with the artist unaware of its exact location and the Post article reporting its whereabouts unknown. This is shocking given his heritage and instantly recognizable status. Much like Williams’ score, the poster came to sum up the film. The Library of Congress has selected Jaws for the National Film Registry in 2001. We hope the poster was there.
