The first victim of ‘Jaws’ was 77 years old

Susan Backlinie, the stuntwoman and actress who as a skinny young girl swam at night off Amity Island, became the shark’s first victim in Steven Spielberg’s film. Jaws, is dead. She was 77 years old.

Backlinie died Saturday at her home in Ventura, Calif., said her congressional agent, Matthew Templeton. Jaws of the day website.

Backlinie was a nationally known professional swimmer and diver who had starred as a mermaid and worked as an animal trainer when she was hired at age 28 to play a bathing Chrissie in Universal’s. Jaws (1975).

“I didn’t want an actor to do that. I wanted a stuntman because I needed someone who was good in the water, who knew water ballet and who could handle what I imagined would be violent jolts,” Spielberg said in Laurent Bouzereau’s book. from 2023: Spielberg: the first ten years. “So, I went and did some stunts to find her, and Susan was up to the challenge.”

“The first thing (Spielberg) said to me was, ‘When your scene is done, I want everyone under the seats with popcorn and bubblegum,'” Backlinie said. THE Palm Beach Post in a 2017 interview.

As the director describes it in Bouzereau’s book: “She wore a harness. There were two eye rings and wires that led to two stakes on the beach (about 50 yards away). Five crew members were on one side and five crew members were on the other, and they basically pulled Susan. There was a ribbon hanging from the wire, and when it got to one of the poles, they had to stop pulling and the other team took over and pulled in the other direction.

“What you didn’t want was for both teams to withdraw at the same time. For added safety, she had the ability to quickly release the wire in case of a problem. It had to be perfectly choreographed to make it look like the shark was pulling her violently to the right and then immediately violently to the left.

Backlinie worked on stage for three days at Martha’s Vineyard. “We were shooting from 6 or 7 a.m. until 9 a.m., because of the light,” she said in an interview last year. “I’ll tell you, I was exhausted by the end of the day.”

Thanks to her, people never went swimming in the ocean again.

Born September 1, 1946, Backlinie and her family moved from Washington to West Palm Beach, Florida, when she was 10 years old. She was a cheerleader and state champion swimmer at Forest Hill High School; After graduating in 1964, she attended nursing school for a year.

According to Jobshe swam like a mermaid at the Weeki Wachee Springs tourist attraction in Florida and worked with wild animals in Miami at Ivan Tors Studios, home of Pinball on NBC. During a national tour with Tors, she shared the stage with Gentle Ben, the bear who would star in the 1967-69 CBS series with Dennis Weaver and Clint Howard.

Backlinie was filming on location with a tiger in Canada when the Jaws the staff found it. She told Spielberg: “If you use me, you could do some close-ups during the stunt itself. If you use an actress, she will have to hide her face.

In the 2010 television documentary Jaws: The Inside Storyshe said that during her scene, “as I felt my hips going to one side, I would just throw my arms in the opposite direction as hard as I could.”

“I also had a pair of fins because when they pulled me to one side I would fall, so I had to kick with all my might to stay above the water. It took a lot of energy, but I was in pretty good shape at the time. Between takes, Spielberg was in an inner tube next to her.

Jaws would mark his first appearance in the cinema. Backlinie returned to the naked water and the dark for Spielberg in 1941 (1979) — there was that ominous music again — but this time she encountered a Japanese submarine.

Backlinie also appeared in Two minute warning (1976), A stranger in the forest (1976), Animal Day (1977) – she was also an animal trainer in this field – The big puppet hug (1981) and a 1982 episode of The guy who falls just in time before retiring from stunt work.

She and her husband, Harvey, lived on a houseboat in Ventura.