From the beginning, one of the purposes of this website has been to serve as a sort of online extension of the documentary … a place where ongoing Jaws discoveries can find a venue to be shared and enjoyed. To that end, we are thrilled to have our first opportunity to do just that. Dick Butler, who was Robert Shaw’s stunt double in the film, joins us in an exclusive interview, along with stunt double Dick Warlock, who “took the teeth” for Richard Dreyfuss in Hooper’s cage sequence.

Sadly, Mr. Butler doesn’t appear in TSISW, since we didn’t know his whereabouts until now, but we are glad to be able to share his recollections about sharing Quint’s gruesome fate with Shaw. Warlock, (who does appear in the documentary) also shares with us his extraordinary experience in the “anti-shark cage” with Bruce …
(Special Thanks, Dick Warlock for getting us in touch with Butler.)

TSISW: Welcome Mr. Butler, Mr. Warlock, Thanks for sharing your time with us. Mr. Butler, lets begin with you; how did you get involved in stunt work?

Butler: Well, I first started out, while at UCLA as a football player. I had a wife and a couple of kids and I really needed a job, so I sign up to be an extra on a film called Spartacus, and I had an interview and they made me a gladiator. That’s how I started in the stunt business. It was a hard time for me in my last semester, and it was either go back to playing football for $7,500 a year orSpartacus which was about $1,500 a week, so I chose the movie business.

Warlock: And I must tell you, I’m glad he did because I’m now retired and living fairly comfortably, and it goes to guys like Dick (Butler). Dick hired me on Adam 12 and Police Story, and who knows what else … so I owe a debt of gratitude to him.

Butler: Thanks Dick, that’s a nice thing to say.

Warlock: Well, it’s true (laughs).

Butler: Now that Dick brings it up, I did work on almost every police show in town. That was my bread and butter for a long time.

Warlock: When I was a kid I wanted to be a stunt guy. I moved to California and around 1957, I got a job at a movie ranch, where I entertained people every weekend doing cowboy stunts. I did that for a couple years, and through that I met a guy named Marty Robbins who produced and directed a movie called Ballad of a Gunfighter. That led to getting into the screen actors guild in 1960. Things were pretty lean until I met Walt Disney sometime later and through that met Kurt Russell. I doubled for him some and I got into the stuntman’s association in 1970. That’s when Butler and I met.

Butler: Yeah, that was when many of us got in. You have to remember that prior to that time, stuntmen weren’t really well organized. Stunt work was more or less controlled by regular casting offices. We were really the first generation of stuntmen who had to know how to do everything. Until then, many were specialized in certain areas, like horseback riding or high falling, or driving, etc. But afterward, if you got called for a film, you better be able to do it all. And that really opened a whole new field for stuntmen. Things further developed when stunt coordinators were assigned and actually helped design action scenes, and were really part of the creative process.

TSISW: How did you join the production of Jaws?

Butler: Well, I was going on hiatus on my police shows, and my old friend Teddy Grossman, who I knew for many years prior to Jaws, called me and said he was in Martha’s Vineyard on a shoot and he said “I don’t know if you could double this guy, but I really could use your help.” He said, “Would you be interested in coming up here to the Vineyard and helping on this picture I’m on called Jaws?” I enthusiastically said “Jaws?” … Because at that time, that was the hot book — Peter Benchley’s book. So I said, “Yeah that’s great!” and that’s how it happened. I got the part doubling for Robert Shaw for his death scene. I remember Del Armstrong put these mutton chops on my face and cut my hair so I would look like I had a bald spot when my hair was wet. I dressed in the wardrobe with the sideburns and bandana and all, and when I appeared on set, Shaw and I were a perfect pair. Spielberg actually applauded, he couldn’t believe it.

Shaw was a rugby player and he had a similar frame and we fit in the same size outfit perfectly. I know at that time they were very pressed to get him off the island, because of tax reasons, so they needed me to fill in after he left. So they shot all his scenes and off he went then I came and did my thing.

TSISW: Tell us about the shots you participated in.

Butler: The scene of the shark coming up and smashing down on the transom. That was Ted and me. Ted doubled for Roy and I for Robert. I remember a problem they had with the balsa wood stern … in order to secure the fake stern; they had to use real nails, because water pressure kept the light wood from submerging. Usually for breakaways like that you use just toothpicks or wooden dowels to hold it together, but we couldn’t use that in water. So that was a problem because we had these nails sticking out all over the place, which could have damaged the mechanical shark or injure us as we filmed on the boat. So we had to be sure to remove all the nails before shooting the scene of me in the mouth.

TSISW: There have been conflicting reports about how many times that shot had to be done, how many times do you remember it being?

Butler: Well, it took several tries to get the shark to come up like they wanted, but once they got that worked out, we got it in one take. After the crash was when we removed all the nails. Then we did the scene where Quint begins to slide down into the shark, and most of that was me. Unless you could clearly see Shaw’s face, it was me.

TSISW: What was it like to get “eaten” by Bruce?

Butler: Of course, the teeth were made of flexible rubber, so they didn’t cut into me. The shark really couldn’t bite you. It had so many mechanisms just inside the gullet that you couldn’t really fit in there. I had to double my knees up. I could barely get in and so I was cramped inside of it. Then the jaws wouldn’t close because my knees were pushing its mouth open. So we had to use bunji cords inside to keep the jaws closed against me. The way we did the effects for the bite was the makeup guy put a bag of fake blood in the mouth behind the teeth and I just arched my back and made the blood come out so it looked like the shark bit me. They cut in a shot of Shaw spitting up blood and it looked great! Then they cut to me getting dragged under. Actually that shot wasn’t in the original script. If I remember the storyboard right, you were going to see the bite and the struggle and then it stops and tilts up to the shark’s eye as it rolls over. You know, like Quint says earlier in the film,” … and you see those black eyes roll over white, and so on) and that was going to be the end of the sequence. You were never going to see him being dragged under by the shark. But as it happened, I was already in the mouth and I suggested to Steven, “Why don’t we drag him off?” I remembered the way they had Captain Ahab dragged away in Moby Dick and said we could do something like that here. The danger we faced there was that we had to make sure the boat was sinking fast enough to be at the proper angle for when I go underwater, so I didn’t get caught between the shark and the frame of the boat. So we did the scene, I had my blood packet in my mouth and the shark went down with my legs crouched inside its mouth … and of course, when I was under, I had a diver give me his air while I extricated myself from the shark. And we got it all in one take. Spielberg was happy with it.

TSISW: Was there ever a point during shooting where something went wrong or put you in any kind of danger?

Butler: Well, we really prepared for any possible thing that could go wrong. The only thing that ever happened wrong was the shark would sometimes freeze up. There was a lot of waiting.

TSISW: Before I forget, have you seen the McFarlane replica of the Quint attack? There’s a toy Orca with a Quint figure that you can pull apart, complete with machete …

Butler: (laughing) No, you’re kidding! I gotta write this down, that’s interesting … You know, so much has happened with that film since it came out. I have to tell you, when I left Martha’s Vineyard, they were in something like their 100th day or thereabouts, and they were only supposed to shoot about 60. Ted Grossman and I said “This thing’s never gonna make it.” It’s funny, they had made Jaws tee shirts for us and the crew, and I took one and said, “oh, yeah, thank you,” thinking it’s never going to mean anything because the picture’s never going to be released. Nobody really thought this film would amount to anything but giant write-off for Universal. You’d never know that now. (laughs)

TSISW: How many stunt people were on the picture total?

Butler: Well, there was Susan (Backlinie) of course, Ted (Grossman) and myself, and then Dick Warlock over at the MGM tank later. It’s funny, like I said, Ted was a good friend of mine, and when I got to the island, he was shaking his head saying that they had made a sled that they could drag through the water with the shark tail and when they experimented with Susan, it looked like crap. So they ended up putting weights on her and dragging her along the beach using cables. It was much more effective obviously, cause they did it all with POVs and stuff. Of course, they later used the rig with Ted when he gets eaten in the canal but they didn’t use it in the final cut. Ted also doubled Roy and then there was myself. I think that was about all of us, at least on the island.

TSISW: That’s great. It looks like the four of you each got play a very significant scene in the movie. How about you Dick (Warlock)? What are your recollections on the shoot?

Warlock: Well, fellow stuntman Jesse Wayne was called in because of the Carl Rizzo episode where he couldn’t fulfill his obligation. Tom Joyner, who was production manager, was told by Jesse that he was busy and couldn’t take the gig. Actually, he had never scuba dived so he played it smart and said he just wasn’t available, but he suggested me to do it since I was a certified diver. So Tom called me in and I met with Steven (Spielberg) and I got the job. Of course, they had to do my hair because mine was straight and they needed it to be curly to match Dreyfuss. They first tried curling it, but that didn’t work because it just straightened out again in the water, so Del Armstrong had to give me a permanent. And there I was in the Esther Williams tank at MGM for about a week … with the shark. I never was on the Vineyard.

TSISW: Were there any tense moments for you while filming?

Warlock: Well, there was one time that Whitey Crumb, who was operating the shark, slammed it into the cage so violently that it knocked my regulator out of my mouth and I’m searching around trying to find that thing. Freddy Zendar didn’t have a clue what was going on, and there I am trying to communicate to him that I had no air. You know, I’m moving my hand back and forth across my throat trying to let them know I need some air here. Meanwhile on the outside Spielberg is yelling to Whitey to make the shark push in harder, and no one knew I was gasping for air. So I finally reached behind me and fumbled around until I got a hold of the air hose and put the regulator back in my mouth. Nobody ever knew that I was in a little bit of trouble there (laughs). It was tense. I mean, we spent a week doing that scene every day. There was lot of violence done to that poor aluminum cage … more so than actually appears on screen.

TSISW: Was the experience in the cage even half as frightening as it comes across in the movie?

Warlock: Well, we were dealing with a huge, heavy mechanism that happened to look like a shark. When that sucker hit me for the first time, it was like a freight train hitting me in the stomach. And you talk about helpless … I’d have felt safer facing a real Great White to be honest. If I tried to push back on the head, it wouldn’t budge a centimeter. It went wherever it wanted, and I had to move out of its way, ’cause it wasn’t giving any ground.

TSISW: What failsafe measures were there to protect you in the event that something worse happened?

Warlock: Well, aside from Zendar in scuba gear supervising the scene (which is why I was kinda surprised that he never saw me motioning that I needed assistance), that was about it. Of course, Steven Spielberg was watching from the little porthole, but he was to my back. He had a radio and was able to communicate with Whitey, but there was nothing he really could have done from where he was. I just had to be prepared to get out of there through the top of the cage, if something happened. You know, that’s just part of the job…the dangerous stuff. That’s why we’re hired.

TSISW: Wow. Great stuff.

Warlock: Like I’ve said before, my part was so small in the Jaws film, compared to work I did for so many other movies…most people don’t even know that was me in that cage. I remember for a long while after the movie had been out, Richard Dreyfuss wasn’t particularly keen on folks knowing that wasn’t him in the scene. And of course, back in those days you didn’t see stunt men in the credits of films. So I never really got recognized for it until much later with Laurent’s documentary which was on the laser disc. Personally, however, Jaws has always been one of the highlights of my career.

TSISW: Well, that is certainly understandable. Speaking of which, what other films have you guys worked on since Jaws?

Butler: Gosh, where to start – I guess some highlights might be the Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, where I doubled for Sean Connery, I worked on Back to the Future, Superman the Movie,E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Tron, Independence Day, Casino, The Rock, lots of films.

TSISW: Very impressive resume. And Mr. Warlock?

Warlock: Of course, my most famous role was Michael Myers in Halloween II, but let’s see …Escape from New York, Fletch, The Abyss, Spaceballs, Midnight Run, Ed Wood, The Relic, Spider-Man … to name a few.

TSISW: Well, you have certainly done some amazing work in your careers. I’m sure our fellowJaws fans will be delighted to hear these amazing accounts, guys. You are both truly part of a cinematic masterpiece. We thank you so much for taking the time to visit with us.