Fifty years ago, Jaws—produced by Richard Zanuck, ’56, and David Brown, ’36, and often considered the first summer blockbuster—sparked fright and fascination with Bruce, its 25-foot, man-eating, animatronic great white shark. In the closing credits is a note: “The producers gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the National Geographic Society and Mr. L.J.V. Compagno of the Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University.” That’s Leonard Compagno, PhD ’79. And according to Joe Alves, production designer for the film and steward of the shark, Compagno held the key to making it look so real.
Put aside Bruce’s famously flawed mechanics. In 1973, Alves was tasked with creating a leviathan. So off he went to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. “I went to La Jolla,” he says. “And they said, ‘You need to talk to this ichthyologist.’ ”
They meant Compagno, then a Stanford grad student and already the world expert on sharks. Earlier that year, he’d published a landmark paper on their taxonomy. “It changed the whole landscape,” says David Ebert, program director at the Pacific Shark Research Center and Compagno’s colleague. “I can’t overstate it—almost nothing was known about sharks at that time.”
In 1973, Alves was tasked with creating a leviathan.
Compagno went to Southern California to help Alves create a four-foot model of Bruce, noting physical features of the great white, such as how its teeth correlate with its body size. “It was incredible,” Alves says. “It was so specific.”
Today, genetic research supports Compagno’s shark taxonomy. “He was working strictly morphology at the time,” says Ebert. “That is amazing.” Compagno, who died last September, authored more than 200 publications, including early editions of the field guide Sharks of the World. He spent most of his career in South Africa, where his and Ebert’s work supported the first white shark conservation efforts.
Photo: Courtesy David Ebert
Many who worked on Jaws—including Compagno at times, Ebert says—grew to regret the film for its contributions to the human fear of sharks and an increase in trophy hunting. But Ebert sees it differently. “What I think people miss is that after Jaws came out, people started asking a lot of questions and doing basic research,” he says. “I refer to the people in my cohort as the Jaws generation. Contemporary shark research started because of Jaws.”
Summer Moore Batte, ’99, is the editor of Stanfordmag.org. Email her at summerm@stanford.edu.
