June 7, 2024
For a “summer town” that needs “summer dollars,” as the mayor of fictional Amity, USA, puts it in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, it may seem counterintuitive to forever yoke your destination in the national consciousness to the image of a homicidal great white shark.
But the association has worked out just fine for Martha’s Vineyard, the Massachusetts island that played Amity in the wildly successful 1975 film adaptation of Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel. In return for supplying the thriller’s scenic seaside setting, the island received a tourism boom with an impact lasting into the present day, nearly five decades after Jaws smashed box office records, becoming the prototypical summer blockbuster, redefining Hollywood’s business model, and sparking Lord-only-knows-how-many freakouts in the minds of ocean swimmers who felt seaweed brushing against a leg and thought they were about to become fish food.
Thanks to what the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce calls “the Jaws Effect,” the island became a “set-jetting” destination before that was a thing. Because the movie was filmed almost entirely on location, fans quickly figured out there was an easy way to feel like they were visiting the picturesque set of their favorite movie.
Of course, a lot of water has passed under the American Legion Memorial aka Jaws Bridge since the film’s famously fraught location shoot in 1974. But visitors to Martha’s Vineyard will discover much on the island remains recognizable from what they have seen onscreen (the parts they could bear to watch, anyway).
Even if you’re not a Jaws obsessive, the following self-guided driving tour of filming locations from Jaws will give you a nice overview of Martha’s Vineyard.
So cue up that unforgettable John Williams theme (duhh-dun . . . duhh-dun . . .), try to set aside momentarily whatever nonsense Richard Dreyfuss has spewed lately, and practice your best grizzled-New-England-fisherman accent. To paraphrase Robert Shaw’s Quint, We’re goin’ sharkin’!