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.
Jaws
June 14, 1974
Tom Lee
Edgartown at any price is a bargain compared to friendly Amity.
July 2, 1974
Tom Lee
The rumors about Jaws suddenly turned ugly three weeks ago.
July 12, 1974
Edith Blake
“We’ll go again,” said the assistant director, Tom Joyner, and into the valley of death waded The 400 with cameras to the right of them, and cameras to the left of them.
2006
July 10, 2006
The ominous, quickening strains that can mean only one thing -
the shark is near and getting nearer - are slated to fill Ocean
Park in Oak Bluffs at an August 5 open-air screening of Jaws.
Netflix, a company that operates a DVD mail rental service, has
applied to the Oak Bluffs Park Commission to show the movie at the park
off Seaview avenue. Admission would be free. The commission was
scheduled to vote on the application last night.
2005
June 6, 2005
As the small island of Amity - er, Martha's Vineyard
- found out this weekend, when it comes to the movie Jaws, there
are fanatics, and then there are fin-atics.
"There is no other movie I would fly hundreds of miles to go
celebrate," a giddy Yvette Pryor of Augusta, Ga., said on Sunday.
"It's the ultimate movie."
June 2, 2005
When Paul Garcia looks back at that hectic summer 31 years ago, he mostly remembers a lot of standing around, talking baseball with the lead actor and waiting to be called to the set. For Lynn Murphy, that summer meant time in the Valerie N. towing boats, barges and shark cages across Island waters. And for Hershel West it was the summer his dog Chipper won him a speaking role in one of the biggest films of all time.
2000
August 4, 2000
In 1974, Universal Studios sent a new young director to the Island to make a movie about a big shark terrorizing a little town. The plan was to spend five weeks and 3.5 million dollars. The reality was a film shoot that stretched to over five months and a cost overrun to more than 8 million dollars.
The director was Steven Spielberg, the movie was Jaws, and the bottom line was history. Three Academy Awards. The first movie to earn $100 million from American audiences. The first to be released on more than 450 screens at once.
1995
September 5, 1995
It was the movie Jaws which brought downtown Edgartown, State Beach and the Vineyard’s breathtaking South Shore to audiences nationwide for the first time.
But Island newcomers be warned -- Amity Island isn’t any more realistic than the great white shark that terrorized it.
1988
July 15, 1988
Before Monday, Erik Hollander, Chuck Gramling and Mark Burton had never stepped foot on Martha’s Vineyard, but they knew parts of the Island very well.
The trio of college-age Floridians recognized the storefronts of Edgartown, the Chappaquiddick ferry landing and the lighthouse off Starbuck’s Neck.
Upon arrival they scanned the Vineyard phone book looking for familiar names.
The came on a pilgrimage.
They came to visit the New England resort village of Amity; the birthplace and home territory of the Academy Award-winning movie Jaws.
