Bad Hat Harry's Scrapbook - Up For Auction!
Hooper (with stills camera): Will you go to the end of the pulpit please? Please just go to the end of the pulpit!
Brody: What for?
Hooper (with stills camera): I need something in the foreground to give it some scale!
Brody: Foreground my ass!
It turns out that Matt Hooper wasn’t the only taking one photographs on Jaws, so was actor Alfred Wilde, behind the scenes on the film that is just as famous for its making of as it is for being one of the greatest films of all time.
Alfred, who played Harry Wiseman in Jaws, is perhaps best known as the man that Chief Brody says “that’s some bad hat Harry!” to in reference to his swimming cap (momentarily) being spotted as similar to a shark’s fin on Amity beach. It all happens just prior to the attack on poor Alex Kintner and that signature Jaws shot, the reverse zoom and simultaneous dolly shot.
Much was the same reaction when in turns out a ‘one of a kind’ scrap book of the shooting of Jaws, created by Wilde was coming up for auction.
Not only is it an amazingly unique record of the filming of a modern classic, complete with 100 unpublished pictures taken during shooting, featuring both main and supporting cast and crew. Alfred Wilde also reprised his role in Jaws 2 and was one of the people at the table when Brody got the film from the camera retrieved from the site of the missing scuba divers. You’d have thought that after taking all of the photos on the set of the first film, Harry might have spotted the close up of a shark’s eye when he saw it!
There are also several pages of dedications at the end with signatures and personal comments from a whole host of talent from the film, including Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Peter Benchley and one Steven Spielberg. Whatever happened to him?
Lucky for us then that he added next to his name, director of Jaws. That clears that up then. The pictures have never been seen before and paint an intimate portrait of not just one of the most famous films of all times but one of the most (in)famous filming schedules ever.
Added to this already amazing collection are tickets from the Amity Island premiere, it really is a very special piece of film history that has never been seen before and probably won’t be seen ever again. Well, there was of course Jaws 2, and Wilde did the same thing again. The Jaws 2 scrapbook is also going under the hammer at the same auction – that is accepting bids over $500.
Jaws 2 movie scrapbook: https://youtu.be/Tyq1zxap0AI
Also included in the Jaws scrapbook are an original shooting call page, original script pages, tickets from the premiere showing in Martha’s Vineyard and more.
This unique treasure goes up for auction on March 18 at Blackwell Auctions of Clearwater, Florida, but before you go raising your Jaws piggy banks a figure has been set on where starting bids will begin, $25,0000. Late last year a Jaws clapperboard went under the auctioneers hammer at the BFI in September 2016 for, well you can view the video in our previous ‘How much did the original Jaws clapper sell for?’
So where this one will end is anyone’s guess. Who knows perhaps it may be a superrich Jaws fan, Spielberg himself – after all we know he has several items of memorabilia from the film, or maybe even Director of The Usual Suspects, X-Men and Superman Returns, Bryan Singer. It would be extremely fitting as his production company is called Bad Hat Harry Productions after that very moment between Brody and a very wet Harry Wiseman. Unless I can win the National Lottery before auction date that is!
Whoever wins it on the day one thing is for sure, $25,000 buys an awful lot of roast.
By Dean Newman
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