Since news broke that a film crew from Universal Studios would be making a movie on the Vineyard during the next two months, a subtle primping has been in the March wind. A few fishermen who are rarely seen in working togs have been hanging around Edgartown’s Main street with a cultivated crustiness. Waning Shakespeareans crib for an impromptu audition and casually mutter Falstaff speeches in grocery lines. Archtypal New Englanders develop brooding into a form of showmanship.

Peter Benchley, Author of Jaws, was in town this week. He came not to oversee the movie production of his book but to play a minor role in it. Richard D. Zantuck, one of the producers, called the tall, handsome former newscaster last Monday and asked him if he would like to make his debut as the newscaster on the beach in amity. Mr. Benchley — who fancies himself more like Hooper, the shark expert — was on the set two days later, collecting wages.

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.

Complete with a mechanical shark, underwater footage already shot in Australia and many dollars for the Island’s spring and summer economy, a film crew from Universal Studios will shoot a movie on the Island between late April and July. The story of a rampaging great white shark terrorizing a seaside resort, the film will be directed by Stephen Stielberg, whom producer William Gilmore calls “One of the most talented bright young (26) directors in America”.

It was a night for celebrating. The sky was clear, and the waxing moon was in competition with the stars of the sky, the stars of the screen, and the stars of the Island, and into this perfect setting (or set) went Islanders in best bib and tucker to see the premiere of their very own movie, Jaws.

It had to be a benefit, (these big things always turn into benefits) and it had to be for the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital because that needs more money than other Island organizations.

No matter what the calendar says about this, next week is the Fourth of July on the State Beach. All week, maybe even starting tomorrow if the weather is fine, Universal Studios will be filming the last sequences on land of Jaws — Monday the Fourth, Tuesday the Fourth, Wednesday...

The movie production of Jaws continues to roam the Island in much the same manner as a touring medicine show, playing in each of the Island’s towns.

One thing that a shark must do is to be constantly on the move, or else it is in trouble — and Jaws, the shark film in the making on the Vineyard, appears to have this characteristic in common with its subject.

In 1974, Susan Murphy and her husband Lynn towed the 25-foot-long mechanical shark for the filming of the movie Jaws.

Fifty years ago, when Wendy Benchley’s late husband Peter Benchley wrote a novel called Jaws, neither had any idea that it would become a phenomenon.