The cast that Steven Spielberg brought together for his 1973 film Jaws was perfection. Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw were so great in that movie! Before they were cast though, there were other actors that Spielberg wanted to cast in the film.
For the role of Quint, Spielberg initially wanted to cast a big star in the role like Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden. But Shaw ended up in the role and during a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Spielberg explained how that casting happened. He said:
“I did go for a big star initially because my first choice for Quint was Lee Marvin, but he wasn’t interested. What I heard was that he wanted to go fishing for real! He took his fishing very seriously and didn’t want to do it from a “movie” boat. My second choice was Sterling Hayden, whom I thought would make an amazing Quint. He had an Ahab quality about him—he had done a film entitled Terror in a Texas Town in 1958, where he played an imposing whaler who walked around with a harpoon. I was a big fan of his, especially from the two films he had done with Stanley Kubrick, The Killing [1956] and Dr. Strangelove [1964]. I don’t remember why, but he wasn’t able to do the role.
“There were other actors who wanted to play Quint, and then Dick Zanuck and David Brown suggested Robert Shaw—they had just worked with him in The Sting [1973], which they produced, and loved him. I’d just screened two films with Shaw to refresh my memory, including A Man for All Seasons [1966], in which he was spectacular. Based on that, and of course on From Russia with Love [1963]—with that great fight on a train where he played the nemesis to 007—I said, ‘Wow . . . I wish I had thought of him! It’s a great idea!’ He fortunately said yes.”
Spielberg went on to talk about how Shaw challenged producer Dick Zanuck to a fistfight after a game of ping pong:
“I’ll never forget that one of the first things Shaw said to me was, “I haven’t had a drink in two months!” And Dick was always warning me when he sensed that Robert Shaw had been drinking, fearing it would delay filming—but it didn’t really matter because the shark wasn’t working anyway. Incidentally, during production, Dick Zanuck and Robert Shaw would play ping-pong together, and one day, when Dick won, Shaw challenged him to a fistfight which was quickly defused by others. If Shaw had gotten a black eye, that would definitely have put us further behind schedule!”
Shaw was awesome in the role of Quint and he gave such an incredible performance. I love the scene in the film where he tells the tragic story of the USS Indianapolis, the Navy vessel that was sunk by a Japanese submarine in 1945, and the immediate aftermath that left almost 900 people adrift in the ocean resulted in the greatest loss of life due to shark attacks in human history. The way he tells that story is mesmerizing. He pulls you right in!
What are your thoughts on Robert Shaw in the role of Quint?