A LOCAL CONNECTION: The marquee of the Princeton Garden Theatre on Nassau Street when “Jaws,” based on the book by local luminary Peter Benchley, opened 50 years ago. The anniversary is being celebrated at the movie house starting August 29. (Photo by James Alan Coleman)
By Anne Levin
The Princeton connection to the blockbuster film Jaws is part of local legend. Bolstered by the success of his 1974 book of the same name, Peter Benchley moved with his family from Pennington Borough to a house on Boudinot Street a year later.
When the film opened at the Princeton Garden Theatre on Nassau Street in June 1975, Benchley and his wife Wendy, who served three terms of the former Princeton Borough Council, were on hand with family and friends. It has become a tradition for Renew Theaters, owner of the Garden since 2014, to screen the movie toward the end of summer.
This year — Jaws’ 50th anniversary — is especially noteworthy. To mark the milestone, the theater will hold a week of screenings following the Jaws Fest premiere on August 29 at 7 p.m. That night, a discussion with the audience will precede the showing.
“We’re trying to keep it pretty simple this year, focusing on the movie itself rather than the fanfare surrounding it,” said Kyle Stenger, the Garden’s director of outreach. “In the discussion we want to hear from people about their experiences with the movie. I like to hear about when people saw it for the first time in a theater. Did it make them scared to go into the water?”
The nonprofit theater is also launching a member drive in conjunction with the festival. Anyone who signs up during the month-and-a-half drive will receive an extra month of membership and a free popcorn. Those who sign up in the first two weeks can take advantage of a buy one, give one promotion to gift a membership to a friend.
Steven Spielberg was just 27 years old when he directed Jaws. A tale of the terrorizing of the townspeople of Amity Island by a great white shark, the film was shot on Martha’s Vineyard, which Wendy Benchley recalled in a talk at Princeton’s Present Day Club in May, 2022 (Peter Benchley died in 2006).
“It was great to be on Martha’s Vineyard, and we enjoyed it,” she said. “Richard Dreyfuss, especially, was a riot of a guy. We had fun with him.”
Spielberg decided to make the killer shark in the movie 25 feet long. “That just does not exist,” Benchley said. “A really big one is 15, maybe 16 feet long. So Peter tried to tame some of these exaggerations. But he knew, really, to count his blessings, sit back, and enjoy the ride.”
The demonization of sharks was an unfortunate result of the movie’s extraordinary success, and the Benchleys became involved in changing that image.
Jaws is one of those movies that has “a summer energy,” said Stenger. “It’s got the whole feeling of vacation. And there is politics, and murder. It’s kind of Hitchcockian in that way. It’s very primal. The opening scene is just crazy. You never see the shark, but its presence is so felt. It really digs into what humans fear and are drawn to at the same time.”
Visit princetongardentheatre.org for tickets and screening times.