HOW REAL LIFE SHARK ATTACK SURVIVOR HELPED FILM JAWS
There’s a scene in Jaws where Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) is looking through a book of shark images and photos, one of those – which makes him audibly wince – is of Rodney Fox, a victim of a great white shark attack.
He’s the one holding up his torso that is full of teeth marks, as if body is butter that has had a hot knife repeatedly plunged into it. It’s one of the most famous shark attack images of all time.
His injuries included shattered ribs, a collapsed lung, a ruptured spleen and those teeth marks that stretched from his shoulders to his waist, meaning he needed over an incredible 460stitches. And he still has a great white’s tooth embedded in his wrist.
Fox – now in his 80s - survived his 1963 ordeal and would go on to help Ron and Valerie Taylor film the live great white shark footage for the Matt Hooper cage attack sequence towards the end of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
After his attack, Rodney still wanted to go back into the water, but was afraid, so designed the first underwater shark cage (not a portable shower or a monkey cage), which gives the filming of that sequence an even greater resonance.
Although initially Fox was a bit ashamed of his connection with Jaws and the raw nerve it seemed to hit with the public, he acknowledges that the film has also created fans of the shark, and that it helped kickstart their fascination. Many have even gone on to study sharks or become real life Matt Hoopers.
And despite his attack, Fox, who was somewhat ironically an insurance salesman at the time, has spent the rest of his life dedicated to studying sharks. It’s a passion that he has passed down to his son Andrew, who now runs Rodney Fox Expeditions, which is all about shark education through expeditions.
Words by Dean Newman
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