Susan Backlinie, stuntwoman and actress immortalised as the shark’s first victim in Jaws – obituary
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Susan Backlinie, who has died age 77, played the shark’s first victim in the unforgettable – and much parodied – opening sequence of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning blockbuster Jaws (1975).
The film begins with the camera prowling the seabed to the ominous opening notes of John Williams’s two-note score – Da-Dum... Da-Dum – before cutting to a group of young people around a campfire. Two break off and run towards the moonlit water’s edge where Susan Backlinie’s Chrissie Watkins swims naked out to sea. Suddenly, as the Da-Dum theme becomes more relentless, she is tugged sharply from below and, amid much screaming and thrashing about, succumbs to the unseen predator.
Susan Backlinie was an extra with the Central Casting agency in California when the request came for a young woman for a film being shot at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Though her scene lasted little more than a minute and required a minimum of acting ability, her agent recalled that it had not been an easy part to cast: “The girl had to be willing to work in the nude, had to be a good swimmer and able to swim in the ocean.”
With no real shark available that could be trusted not to devour her, Susan Backlinie was instead fastened to a series of cables, one group of men yanking her to the left and another yanking her to the right. “I had to kick with all my strength to stay above the water,” she recalled.
Spielberg insisted on the attack being shot six or seven times until he had the requisite level of writhing. Later he re-recorded the actress’s screams in the studio: “He sat me in a chair … and he poured water down my throat.”
(Susan Backlinie was not, however, the model for the famous poster in which an outsized shark with bared teeth looms up from the watery depths towards an unsuspecting skinny-dipper – that was Allison Maher.)
Susan Backlinie recalled Spielberg telling her that “when your scene is done, I want people under their seats on the floor with the popcorn and bubblegum”. Mark Kermode reported that when he first watched “poor Susan Backlinie being dragged violently back and forth by an unseen underwater assailant, screaming blue murder, I genuinely feared that I would lose control of my bodily functions.”
The actress herself was never afraid, however: “You’ve got to remember it’s just a movie,” she said.
Susan Jane Myers was born in Miami on September 1 1946 and educated at Forest Hill High School in West Palm Beach. As a child she was a cheerleader and a state swimming champion. In her teens she swam as a mermaid at Weeki Wachee, a local tourist attraction, and in 1966 she married Henry Backlinie, a ranch foreman.
A year at nursing school convinced her that she was cut out for the outdoors and she began to share a stage with Gentle Ben the bear, Judy the chimp and Clarence the cross-eyed lion. By the early 1970s she was working at a wildlife park in Redwood City, California, riding on the back of a 300 lb water-skiing lion named Zamba. In 1973 she appeared topless in Penthouse magazine as “The lady and the lion”; later she posed for Mayfair as “The nude from Jaws”.
As a stuntwoman, she appeared in several films and television shows. “I do animal attacks, high falls,” she explained. She played a dead prostitute floating down the river in The Blue Knight (1973) and was seen in a falling elevator in Towering Inferno (1974). When, while making another film, she was bitten by a lion, the producers were so impressed by her authentic scream that they included it in the final cut.
After Jaws she was clawed to death by crazed vultures in Day of the Animals (1977); danced a water ballet with Miss Piggy in The Great Muppet Caper (1981); and was reunited with Spielberg in the parody war film 1941 (1979), playing a spoof of her Jaws character who instead of being attacked by a shark is caught on the periscope of a Japanese submarine as the famous theme is heard.
Later she was a computer accountant and lived on a houseboat in California. She was a popular presence at “JawsFest” events and enjoyed scuba diving.
Susan Backlinie’s first marriage was dissolved and in 1996 she married Harvey Swindall. She had daughter, Dina.
Susan Backlinie, born on September 1 1946, died May 11 2024
