Obituary
Jaws author - Peter Benchley
Peter Benchley, author of the best selling novel Jaws, which was made into one of Hollywood 's most famous films, has died at his US home, aged 65.
Benchley, who was known for other water-based suspense fiction including The Deep and The Island, died of complications from pulmonary fibrosis. “It was peaceful”, son-in-law Chris Turner stated, adding that the writer's wife Wendy and other family members were by his side.
The Harvard graduate, who grew up in New York City and went to prep school in New Hampshire , was also the grandson of writer and humorist Robert Benchley, member of the renowned Algonquin Round Table that included personalities such as Dorothy Parker, George S Kaufman, Robert Sherwood and Alexander Wolcott.
Although Benchley is better known as a novelist, he had many strings to his writing bow. He was also a journalist for the Washington Post and Newsweek, and a speechwriter for President Lyndon B Johnson. But it wasn't until he published the novel Jaws in 1974, that Benchley won the kind of fame rarely accorded any writer of popular fiction.
Mr Benchley, who lived in Princeton, New Jersey , said he had been interested in sharks since his childhood days spent on the island of Nantucket off Massachusetts . In 1964 he'd read about a fisherman who caught a 2,064 kg Great White Shark off Long Island. “I thought to myself, 'What would happen if one of those came around and wouldn't go away?' That was the seed idea of Jaws,” he said in an interview. But he didn't pursue the idea until 1971.
Jaws – both as a novel and a film – terrified beachgoers and kept many of out of the water for years. (The only year that PADI's (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) entry level qualification levels fell was when Spielberg's film came out). Not surprising really as the book told a story about a series of gruesome shark attacks that caused panic in a placid beach resort. The story proved popular, selling more than 20 million copies, before Steven Spielberg produced the 1975 film, where Benchley had a cameo as a reporter.
Benchley continued his lifelong fascination with the sea and its potential terrors with The Deep, about divers looking for treasure, and The Island, in which sailors are terrorised by modern-day pirates. Both of these were subsequently turned into films. Among his latest books was Shark Life: True Stories About Sharks and the Sea, which was published only last year.
“Everything I've written is based on something that has happened to me or something that I know a great deal about,” Benchley said. “In Jaws I knew a great deal about sharks. In The Deep I had been lucky enough to learn about Bermuda and to meet Teddy Tucker, a great Bermudan treasure diver, while doing a story for the National Geographic, and I learned about shipwrecks in Bermuda,” he added. But, he noted, he was never injured by any sea creature other than jellyfish stings or sea urchin spines.
Perhaps surprisingly, considering what Jaws has done for Shark PR, Benchley was a committed environmentalist and diver, and spent much of his later life campaigning for the protection of sharks.
Benchley was survived by his wife and two grown up children. (Monday 13th's Front Row carried a tribute to Peter Benchley. See below for details).
