Craig Kingsbury: The Jaws Star Who Was Ahead Of His Time
‘When we get them silly bastards down in the rock pile, it’ll be some fun, they’ll wish their fathers had never met their mothers.’
Craig Kingsbury could have simply played himself in Jaws - or maybe he did - but Spielberg decided to have him take the role of Ben Gardner and the most famous shot of the local fisherman was something of an afterthought by the director.
Ben Gardner’s head popping out through that hole in his boat and scaring the crap out of poor old Hooper was filmed in Verna Field’s swimming pool when Spielberg - by his own admission- ‘got greedy’ and decided (quite reasonably) that his movie needed one more jump scare.
It was a triumph onscreen for sure, but there was much more to Kingsbury - and his life away from ‘Jaws’ - than the unfortunate Ben Gardner.
Born in South Orange, New Jersey in 1912, Kingsbury made the fortuitous move to Martha’s Vineyard in 1973. Before Spielberg and his big rubber shark came to town, Kingsbury was known for having more than a few ‘eccentricities’.
Craig Kingsbury as Ben Gardner greeting Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) in Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975)
He owned a pair of cows, frequently turning them loose in town. This bovine invasion was too much for local law enforcement as they found the cows wouldn’t listen to it anyone but Craig - so he’d be summoned to come and get them.
Whether he turned up wearing anything on his feet was another peculiarity of the man. Craig was not often shod and happily sloughed round the island or rode a large tricycle along its quiet roads. But who’s really to say what is odd and what is ‘normal’? And where would Jaws have been - more precisely, where would Robert Shaw’s legendary portrayal of Quint have been - without Kingsbury’s inspired and crazed tutelage?
Craig seemed to enjoy the more ridiculous side of life - and again, why not?
Not many people would choose Robert Shaw - a revered and feared actor’s-actor who was a professional to his core - as a subject for mirth but Kingsbury didn’t worry about silly stuff like reputations. He was tasked with getting Shaw up to speed on island life and getting him to inhabit the role of salty sea dog. Craig took the production heads at their word - even if he did go a little bit overboard at times.
Kingsbury’s most famous practical joke was getting Shaw to vocalise his suspicions - to a TV crew - that many of the islanders enthusiastically and frequently indulged in incest.
He’d been goaded into it by some of the locals - presumably to see if those silly out-of-towners would believe it.
And they did!
The clip is online and Shaw looks like he’s cheekily telling the world the most marvellous bit of hidden history but, sadly for him, it was just an outrageous fib.
Before Jaws, Craig had had a varied employment history. He’d been a farmer, a fisherman, and an aquatic biologist. He had a cart pulled by oxen, bred exotic poultry, worked as a stonemason, a logger and woodcarver.
He was always drawn to the sea though - just like his most famous character.
As a teenager, he and a friend got hired as ship’s boys onboard the perfectly named ‘Buccaneer’.
They sailed up the Hudson River, then down to Florida and from there to Jamaica. Here, the ship picked up a mysterious cargo. It was labelled as ‘road oil’ but was in fact something called ‘Tafia’ - pure sugar cane alcohol.
Kingsbury recalls that this was smack in the middle of Prohibition so anyone dealing in booze was seen as something of a ne’er-do-well by the government (but maybe not by a large portion of United States citizens).
Even after supposedly settling down and getting married not long after, Kingsbury continued his marauding life on the high seas, searching for big fish while selling drink illegally on the side.
But all lucrative endeavours must come to an end and when Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Craig’s black market booze business went down the pan.
He married again in 1936 but the union only lasted until ‘39.
As a single man once more, Kingsbury raised livestock on his small farm, worked on fishing boats and did just about anything he could to keep going.
1941 came around and Craig felt the time was right to get married one more time. Resulting in four children.
He stayed married for a highly respectable 52 years.
Some people will tell you if you’ve done a lot of jobs in your life, it shows you can’t stick to one thing. Then again, to choose a profession and only change employer once or twice makes you dull, unimaginative and that you settle for the first thing you’re given.
Both viewpoints are valid, but both could be seen as wrong.
Kingsbury was what today we might call a ‘colourful character’. Perhaps if you met him he’d have been overbearing or dominating or you might see him as a larger than life, interesting, a rebel.
Steven Spielberg certainly did.
The director knew he needed locals to flesh out his story of blood and teeth. There had to be interesting people knocking about, to make Amity real.
So you get the actors in, you dress them up the way you feel a small town mayor or a newspaper man would dress and then just tell the extras to do their thing.
At its heart, ‘Jaws’ is, for me at least, not just about the attacks and the horror. It’s about authenticity.
You care about the characters and what might happen to them and Kingsbury was one of the main reasons the film worked so brilliantly.
He wasn’t constrained by the script - could anyone really constrain someone like him? He had a look at what was going on and went his own way.
Cast as a loudmouth know-it-all who happily put bets on who was going to live or die, Craig was perfect.
Ben Gardner watches and chuckles at the stupidity of the men in their little boats as they head off in their ramshackle armada.
We don’t see him again once the Tiger Shark is caught, perhaps the fisherman skulked off muttering about how the ‘silly bastards’ had caught a shark but not THE shark (just like Hooper says).
And here’s a final thought: was Ben Gardner in competition with Quint? They were both very sure of their abilities, macho, proud, arrogant and determined to proved that they were top dog on the island.
Could Quint have lured Gardner to his death?
It’s only supposition of course but Quint knew a thing or two about attracting sharks. He’d seen up close what they were capable of, after all.
He could’ve chummed the waters, got Gardner out there and then tipped poor old Ben overboard.
Bruce would’ve taken care of the rest.
And the way would’ve been clear for Quint’s to head to sea in the Orca, slay the beast and tow it back to shore (and give the taxidermy man a heart attack).
Whatever really happened to Gardner that night, Kingsbury thankfully had a much longer life. He lived out his days on Martha’s Vineyard, probably haranguing the locals, watching the place change and seeing the property prices rise ever higher until perhaps it became less of a place for him.
He ended his days at a nursing home in Massachusetts, he was 89.
Without the Craig Kingsburys of this world, it would be a far less interesting place. They give us an insight into how we can be if we just let go. We don’t have to follow the crowd, we can do what we want - if we really want to. If we have the nerve.
You don’t have to ‘go out with them nuts’ after all - we can sail off and find our own adventures.
Be More Craig.
Words by Tim Armitage
If you would like to write for The Daily Jaws, please visit our ‘work with us’ page
For all the latest Jaws, shark and shark movie news, follow The Daily Jaws on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.