Jaws, a film starring Martha’s Vineyard and a polyurethane shark named Bruce, will have its first showings tonight on the Island which was its birthplace.

Both screenings, in the Island Theatre, Oak Bluffs, at 7 and again at 9:30 p.m., have been sold out for a week to audiences that will total 1,000 and pay premium prices ($10 and $15) to have the wits scared out of them. The showings, sponsored as a benefit by the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital auxiliary, will net some $9,500 to the hospital’s support, said Curtis Collision Jr., director of its sustaining fund.

It is not a world premiere by a long shot — the film opened this week in 490 other theatres across the country — and as far as anyone knows none of its big names will be back to see what the natives make of the Island that emerged from the cutting room. “I shall not return!” cried director Steven Spielberg, leaving the Island at the end of the final long day’s shooting last fall.

Premiere or no, it will look like one. The hospital auxiliary wanted to roll out a red carpet at the entrance to the theatre on Circuit avenue, and decided to forget it when the selectmen insisted on accident insurance that didn’t seem cost-effective. But James Gibson is rigging a spotlight to focus on arriving benefactors; Jaws props have been lent as theatre decorations by Mrs. Robert W. Nevin, Joseph C. Hazen, and the Edgartown town hall; posters have been done by William Brown, Peter Ortiz, Charles Evans, and Arlene Sibley of the Art Workers Guild; the ushers will wear Jaws tee shirts donated by Paul Kuderaukos of Hyannis; William McConnell of Jubili Distributors will be selling soft drinks for the benefit’s benefit; and each performance will be preceded by music, also Island-made, by the Tashmoo Pond Pickers — David Heilbroner, Chad Crumm, Christopher Lyons, and Seth Baumrin. Mrs. Nevin was Universal Studios’ liaison between the Jaws company and Island governments and interests during the film’s often tormented production a summer ago.

Three television stations — Channels 6 of New Bedford, 10 of Providence, and 5 of Boston — have scheduled coverage of the opening-night gatherings, and for the enlightenment of anybody with a hankering to know what it looks like inside a man-eating monster Daniel Hull, executive officer of the Chamber of Commerce, is lending a cross-section of an Orca killer whale.

Mr. Collison and Mrs. John T. Pratt 3rd of the auxiliary’s supervising committee guessed that as many as 40 dinner or supper parties will precede or follow the shows, but the lists of prospective hostesses were not complete; and so to the last of the logistics:

Mrs. Pratt said Police Chief Peter M. Williamson has suggested that 7 o’clock ticket holders (those are the yellow and orange tickets) park at the Steamship Authority terminal parking slots and in the nearby vacant lot owned by the Martha’s Vineyard National Bank. For the 9:30 o’clock show there’ll be additional parking on the dock alongside the Island Queen’s mooring place.

“And 9:30 ticket holders are urged not to come too early,” Mrs. Pratt added. “They might have difficulty finding parking space until the 7 o’clock cars have pulled out.”

The film will be shown at $3.50 admittance prices in the Island Theatre twice each night Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and at the Capawock Theatre in Vineyard Haven Wednesday and Thursday. Parental guidance is recommended. So much for the mechanics. How the Island looks to itself remains to be seen.

How it looks to the Universal Studios people who swarmed over the Vineyard’s dunes and beaches and waters from April to October 1974 can be deduced from some breathless copy in the June 23 issues of Newsweek magazine and Time, on whose cover Bruce the Supershark bares its plastic teeth and slavering jaws. Whether or not the film is a masterpiece of terror, the build-up is a masterpiece press-agent promotion. Universal spent $700,000 on television time. The print media volunteered their raves.

Recognize anybody you know in the following passage from Time on the difficulties of the Island as location?

“At one time or another, the film makers did battle with a recalcitrant mechanical shark, intrepid sailors and high-living yachtsmen, larcenous townspeople, tourists who were both curious about the movie and miffed that their vacations were being disrupted, striking labor unions and, inevitably, the elements.”

Anybody you know?

“Pointedly suspicious of outsiders (roughly defined as anyone whose birth certificate is not on file at the local hospital), some Islanders suspected that Hollywood interlopers would wreck their tranquility, ruin the tourist season, and befoul the waters. Others pointed out that a film crew of 150 or so would pep up business considerably during a recession off-season. So the Islanders settled back to watch events with skepticism.”

Of the $8 million it cost Universal to produce the film, some $1 1/2 million was spent on the Island.

Anybody you know?

“The film company was also afflicted by theft. Scavengers kept stealing everything from nylon line to generators. The social life offered little relief. In the summer the Vineyard draws a large crowd of bankers, lawyers and literary figures; they felt free to ask endless questions, on the assumption that the movie people had a great deal to answer for. Investment bankers who earned $400,000 a year wanted to know how much they could make as extras.”

As for the effect of Jaws on another season’s Island economy, the question is whether the film’s depiction of attack by Great White Shark as a clear and present danger will frighten people off the beaches and perhaps the Vineyard. Steven Spielberg, the 27-year-old director who shaped the film as a counterattack against the terror he himself felt when he read Peter Benchley’s book, says no.

“Everybody likes to dice with death,” he told Arthur Cooper of Newsweek. “After Jaws, I think a lot of people will rush into the water, not out of it. It’s gambling with the unknown.”

We’ll see.