The JAWS extra who was Steven Spielberg's lunch pal... and didn't know it
We’re not going to waste our time arguing with an extra who's lining up to be a hot lunch pal.
Stories about the making-of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 shark thriller ‘Jaws’ have become movie industry folklore. Feuding actors. Sinking boats. Faulty effects. An ever increasing budget. Things got so bad that the crew took to nick-naming the production ‘Flaws’. All this pressure was resting on 26 year old Steven Spielberg’s shoulders.
With such a chaotic and ultimately traumatic shoot, (Spielberg had nightmares about Jaws for years afterwards), the cinematic prodigy had few chances to relax and enjoy the experience. However, he did find temporary solace with one Martha’s Vineyard local who he ended up casting in the movie.
Donald Poole, a veteran Menemsha lobsterman in his 70s, was co-erced into being an extra in Jaws by his daughter-in-law, Jini (who just happened to be the movie’s casting assistant). Donald featured as the instantly recognisable Amity Island harbormaster Frank Silva. Like many of the locals playing residents of Amity Island, Donald had no previous acting experience.
Donald beaming in his starring moment as Amity Island harbormaster Frank Silva
Donald appeared in a deleted, extended version of the Amity harbor sequence
“We couldn’t find actors anywhere to duplicate the people we found in Menemsha. Their skin was weather-beaten ... These were men who had worked so hard everyday of their lives in the elements. There’s just no way you can weather an actor like that.”
Donald Poole on his lobster fishing boat in the 1970s
Like another Martha’s Vineyard Hershel West (who was cast as Quint’s mate), while being a tough man of the sea, Donald was a gentle soul who kept himself to himself; a juxtaposition Steven Spielberg immediately gravitated toward.
“How come you’re so lucky and always get to talk to Steve?”
”Steve who?”
Donald (in checked shirt) playing harbor master Frank Silva during the Tiger shark scene
In an interview with the The Vineyard Gazette, ‘Jaws: Memories from Marthas Vineyard’ author Matt Taylor explained. “Spielberg just fell in love with him. He must have been well into his 70s when Jaws was filmed and Spielberg thought him to be so picturesque with his pipe and his old salty mannerisms that he cast him as the Amity harbormaster.
Donald Poole with his son Everett, in the 1960s. (COURTESY EVERETT POOLE)
“Each day during lunchtime after directing the shots with all these locals, Spielberg would go and sit in the truck with Donald Poole and eat lunch with him and ask him about the old days and what it was like to be a Menemsha fishermen. This went on day after day, and after the third or fourth day somebody came up to Donald Poole and said, ‘Why is it that you get to spend so much time with Steve Spielberg?’ Poole looked at him kind of blankly and replied, ‘Who the hell is Steve Spielberg?’”
Words by Ross Williams
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