In the summer of 1975, Susan Backlinie, a former competitive age group swimmer from Southern California, found herself working on a movie under the direction of a 26-year-old Steven Spielberg.
Backlinie portrayed Chrissie Watkins, an ocean swimmer in the iconic scene in the movie Jaws. Reportedly, over 80 million Americans saw the film during 1975 and hundreds of millions of film-goers have seen her opening scene since.
Backlinie worked hard to create the initial death scene.
The scene of the shark attack was shot several times over the course of 3 days. After many takes, miscues, and experiments, the final shot was produced when Spielberg did not tell Backlinie when she would be attacked. When the diver below her grabbed onto, and then pulled her leg to pull her under, she gave an genuinely scared, iconic reaction that remained in the final movie edit.
In order to simulate her body being moved left and right in the water, two 300-pound weights were attached to Backlinie and were being tugged by two groups of crewmen on shore. One group would pull right, and the other would pull left in order to create the scene.
Later, when she was recording the screams to be dubbed over the film, Spielberg had her tilt her head back and poured water down her throat while she screamed.
On the beach when Chrissie’s remains are discovered in the movie, the prop arm that was originally used looked too fake in the scene. So Spielberg directed a female crew member to be buried in the sand with only her arm exposed.
Spielberg wrote about the scene with the then 28-year-old, “I needed someone who was comfortable in the water and would know how to survive what I imagined was a brutal tossing around in the water. So I looked for stuntwomen and Susan was up to the task. She was wearing a harness with ropes attached to it. Ten people were pulling on it on the shore. There was a ribbon attached to the ropes that showed when to stop pulling on one side and start pulling on the other.”
Backlinie told of her perspective of the scene, “I had fins because when I was pulled in one direction, I went under the water and I had to kick as hard as I could to stay above the water. It took a lot of energy.”
She famously said about her encounters with movie fans, “It’s fun to go out and meet all the fans. They all have the same thing to say and the main thing they say all the time is: ‘You’ve kept me out of the water.‘”
Jaws was a worldwide hit that won three Academy Awards and generated more than US$470 million in revenue. Jaws was also later selected by the American Library of Congress for preservation for being deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
The Impact of Jaws
The movie thriller also immediately and effectively drove millions of people away from the world’s oceans – some for a time, others for a lifetime. Its tagline – Don’t go in the water – was taken to heart by an entire generation.
For those who saw Jaws in the 1970’s, there was no greater incentive to fear sharks and stay away from the ocean. Jaws effectively paralyzed an entire generation of humanity from ever feeling comfortable about entering the open water whether it was oceans, seas, lakes, bays and rivers.
The fear Jaws created was profound and primal. For many who saw the film, it was the only reason why they never returned to the ocean to swim.
Spielberg’s film also drove many ocean swimmers to use shark cages on their long solo swims in the 1970’s – including from Cuba to Florida – and stamped on the public psyche the image of sharks as vicious man-eaters.
Backlinie’s Passing
She recently retired from stunt work after appearing in an episode of the television series The Fall Guy and died of a heart attack at her home in Ventura, California on May 11th.
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