The final performances of Jaws actors
Roy Scheider is back on cinema screens! And we don’t just mean in the IMAX or Real D 3D versions of Jaws, he is back in his final ever film performance, in Beautiful Blue Eyes.
The film, which is being released across 400 Regal Cinemas in the US, is set in Germany with flashbacks to Nazi-occupied Poland.
It follows the story of Joseph (Scheider), a retired NYPD cop who visits his estranged son Ronnie and is convinced that his neighbour is the SS Commander, who slaughtered his entire family in 1941. Scheider’s character convinces his son to help him kidnap the neighbour.
Scheider passed away in 2008 before the film was finished, but it has now been able to be completed thanks to advances in CGI and AI technology, giving us a film closer to its original vision and a reinstated Roy Scheider in his final ever film role.
We look back at some of the other final film performances of other actors who have appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
Robert Shaw
The Quint actor died little more than three years after the release of Jaws at the age of just 51. Already a prolific actor he certainly filled that short period of time with numerous films that all had something great to offer, from Robin and Marian (1976), Swashbuckler (1976), Black Sunday (1977), The Deep (1977) and Force 10 From Navarone (1978).
His final film was Avalanche Express, which was released in 1979. Shaw had died the previous August, passing away before his dialogue could be looped and synched, so he was dubbed by a soundalike.
That task fell to Robert Rietty, who was perhaps best known for dubbing duties on numerous James Bond films. For was also some minor dubbing by Rich Little as well.
Shaw’s wasn’t the only key death to befall the disaster movie, its director Mark Robson – who had previously helmed 1974’s Earthquake – died on June 20, 1978.
Murray Hamilton
Prior to Jaws Hamilton had appeared in everything from Anatomy of a Murder (1959), The Hustler (1961) to The Graduate (1967), but it is the role of Mayor Vaughn and those sharp suits for which he shall forever be associated.
One of his final roles was in the TV movie, The Last Days of Patton (1986), a role he was given by his friend George C. Scott. Hamilton’s final credit would be as Jack 'Kill the Commies' Preston (former President) in Whoops Apocalypse, which was released the same year.
Hamilton, who had cancer, passed away on September 1, 1986. He was 63 years old.
Lorraine Gary
Gary, like Scheider returned to the Jaws franchise with 1978’s Jaws 2 and then was back being directed by Steven Spielberg in the zany World War 2 comedy 1941. This saw her in the same film as other Jaws alumnus such as Susan Backlinie and Murray Hamilton.
The wife of the head of Universal Studios, Sid Sheinberg, took a hiatus until the character of Ellen Brody developed ESP and got the holiday love bug in the Bahamas with Michael Caine in Jaws the Revenge (1987). Like Bruce the shark, Gary has not surfaced on our screens in an acting role ever since.
Jeffrey Kramer
Like Gary, Kramer is still very much with us – The Daily Jaws even had the pleasure of his company – and his printing isn’t really all that bad.
On the big screen his final bow – for now at least – has been the Chuck Norris action thriller Hero and the Terror (1988), whilst on the small screen it was as a pedestrian in the pilot episode of Ally McBeal (1997). This was also a show he co-executive produced and had same duties on The Practice.
Susan Backlinie
The Chrissie Watkins actress didn’t have much luck with creatures, suffering a similar fate in Day of the Animals (1977), before she went on to spoof her Jaws shark attack in Spielberg’s 1941 (1979).
Her last big screen credit was in The Great Muppet Caper (1982) and her last screen credit to date – rather fittingly being a trained stunt woman – was in The Fall Guy, also in 1982.
Ted Grossman
Like Backlinie, Grossman, who played the unfortunate Estuary victim in Jaws, was predominantly a stunt performer, whilst also scoring some acting roles. His most notable acting parts – besides Jaws - are as the FBI stiff in the freezer in The Goonies (1985) and as a Deputy Sheriff in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). His final credit in stunts and in acting were for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).
He also worked on the stunt side of things in Temple of Doom (1984), dove out of the way of Richard Dreyfuss in his plane in Always (1989), The Island (1980), Roy Scheider’s Last Embrace (1979), Jaws 2 (1978), Robert Shaw’s Swashbuckler (1976), and also doubled for Roy Scheider in Jaws (1975) and worked on Spielberg’s first feature, The Sugarland Express (1974).
Words by Dean Newman
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