The first victim of Jaws was 77 years old

Susan Baking Line

Bobby Bank/Getty Images

Susan Backlinie, the stuntwoman and actress who went swimming at night off the coast of Amity Island as a young nude swimmer, became the shark’s first victim in Steven Spielberg’s film Jaw, has died. She was 77.

Backlinie died Saturday at her home in Ventura, California, said her congressional agent Matthew Templeton The Daily Jaws Website.

Backlinie was a nationally recognized swimmer and professional diver who had performed as a mermaid and worked as an animal trainer when she was hired at age 28 to play the nude-swimming Chrissie on Universal’s Jaw (1975).

“I didn’t want an actor to do that. “I wanted a stunt person because I needed someone who was great in the water, who knew water ballet and knew how to endure what I thought would be a whole lot of violent shaking,” Spielberg said in Laurent Bouzereau’s book from 2023: Spielberg: The first ten years. “So I went to Stunts to find her, and Susan was up to the challenge.”

“The first thing (Spielberg) said to me was, ‘When your scene is done, I want everyone under the seats with popcorn and gum,'” Backlinie said The Palm Beach Post in a 2017 interview.

As the director described it in Bouzereau’s book: “She had a harness on. Inside were two eye rings and wires leading to two posts on the beach (about 50 meters away). There were five crew members on one side and five crew members on the other side, and they were basically pulling Susan. There was a string hanging from the wire and when it reached one of the poles they had to stop pulling and the other team took over and pulled in the other direction.

“What you didn’t want was for both teams to pull at the same time. For added safety, she had the ability to quickly disconnect the wire if something went wrong. It had to be perfectly choreographed to give the impression that the shark was pulling her violently to the right and then immediately violently to the left.”

Backlinie worked on location in Martha’s Vineyard for three days. “Because of the light, we filmed from 6 or 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.,” she said in an interview last year. “I’m telling you, at the end of the day I was exhausted.”

Because of her, people never went swimming in the sea again.

Backlinie was born on September 1, 1946 and moved with her family from Washington to West Palm Beach, Florida when she was ten years old. She was a cheerleader and state swimming champion at Forest Hill High School; After graduating in 1964, she attended nursing school for a year.

According to the postShe swam as a mermaid at the Weeki Wachee Springs tourist attraction in Florida and worked with wild animals in Miami at Ivan Tors Studios, home of Pinball on NBC. On a national tour with Tors, she shared the stage with Gentle Ben, the bear who would star in the 1967-69 CBS series with Dennis Weaver and Clint Howard.

Backline was filming on location with a tiger in Canada when the Jaw Employees found them. She told Spielberg: “If you use me, you could do close-ups yourself during the stunt. If you use an actress, she has to hide her face.’”

In the TV documentary 2010 Jaws: The Inside StoryDuring her scene, she said, “While I felt my hips going to the side, I just threw my arms in the opposite direction as hard as I could.

“I also had a pair of fins on because when they pulled me to the side I would sink and I had to kick with all my might to stay above the water. It took a lot of energy, but I was in pretty good shape at the time.” Between takes, Spielberg lay in an inner tube next to her.

Jaw would mark her first film appearance. Backlinie went back into the water naked and in the dark for Spielberg 1941 (1979) – there was that menacing music again – only this time it encountered a Japanese submarine.

Baking line also appeared in Two minute warning (1976), A stranger in the forest (1976), Animal Day (1977) – she also worked as an animal trainer there – The big Muppet caper (1981) and a 1982 episode The Guy case before retiring from stunt work.

She and her husband Harvey lived on a houseboat in Ventura.