Peter Bradford Benchley (May 8, 1940 – February 11, 2006) was an American author. He is best known for his bestselling novel Jaws and helped write the movie version of Jaws with Carl Gottlieb. Many of his other books were also adapted into movies and television shows, including The Deep, The Island, Beast, and White Shark.

Later in life, Benchley felt sorry for writing about sharks, as he believed his work encouraged fear and false ideas about them. He worked to protect ocean life and promote marine conservation. Although many people thought his writings caused a drop in shark numbers, Benchley did not believe this was true. There is no evidence that Jaws or any of his other works caused this decline.

Early life, family and education

Peter Benchley was the son of author Nathaniel Benchley and Marjorie (née Bradford). He was also the grandson of Robert Benchley, who started the Algonquin Round Table. His younger brother, Nat Benchley, is a writer and actor. Peter Benchley attended the Allen-Stevenson School, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Harvard University.

After graduating from college in 1961, Benchley traveled around the world for one year. He wrote a book about his travels, titled Time and a Ticket, which was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1964.

Early career

After returning to the United States from travel, Benchley served six months of reserve duty in the Marine Corps. He then became a reporter for The Washington Post. At that time, Benchley was working in New York as a television editor for Newsweek. In 1967, he became a speechwriter in the White House for President Lyndon B. Johnson. He held this position until Johnson's term ended in 1969.

Jaws

By 1971, Benchley was working on different freelance jobs to support his family. During this time, when Benchley later said he was "trying one last time to stay alive as a writer," his literary agent helped arrange meetings with publishers. At these meetings, Benchley often shared two ideas: a non-fiction book about pirates and a novel about a man-eating shark that frightens a community. This idea came to Benchley after he read a news story about a fisherman catching a 4,550-pound (2,060 kg) great white shark near Long Island in 1964. The shark novel caught the attention of Doubleday editor Thomas Congdon, who offered Benchley $1,000 as an advance. Benchley then sent the first 100 pages of the book. The publisher did not like the original style, so much of the work was rewritten. Benchley wrote during the winter in his office in Pennington and during the summer in a converted chicken coop at his in-laws’ farm in Stonington. The idea was inspired by several great white sharks caught in the 1960s near Long Island and Block Island by Montauk charterboat captain Frank Mundus.

Jaws was published in 1974 and became very successful, staying on the bestseller list for 44 weeks. Steven Spielberg, who later directed the movie version of Jaws, said he initially found most characters unlikable and wanted the shark to win. Some book critics agreed, calling the characters uninteresting and the writing unpolished, but the book remained popular.

Although Benchley wrote early parts of the screenplay, Carl Gottlieb (along with Howard Sackler and John Milius, who were not credited) wrote most of the final script for Spielberg’s movie, released in June 1975. Benchley appeared briefly in the film as a news reporter on the beach. The movie, starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss, was released during the summer, a time usually not good for movies. However, Universal Pictures advertised the film heavily on television, and it earned more than $470 million worldwide. George Lucas used a similar advertising strategy in 1977 for Star Wars, which surpassed Jaws’s financial success, starting the tradition of summer "blockbuster" movies.

Benchley estimated that income from book sales, movie rights, and magazine/book club deals allowed him to work independently as a movie writer for ten years.

Subsequent career

Peter Benchley wrote his second novel, The Deep, which was published in 1976. He met a diver named Teddy Tucker in Bermuda while working on a story for National Geographic. Benchley visited the wreck of the Constellation, which he described as sinking on top of two other wrecks, the Montana and the Lartington. This inspired him to write a story about a newlywed couple who find two treasures on Bermuda’s reefs: 17th-century Spanish gold and a large amount of World War II-era morphine. Later, the couple is harmed by a drug group. Benchley co-wrote the screenplay for the 1977 movie version of The Deep with Tracy Keenan Wynn and Tom Mankiewicz, who was not credited. The film was directed by Peter Yates and starred Robert Shaw, Nick Nolte, and Jacqueline Bisset. The Deep was a financial success and ranked among the top 10 highest-grossing movies in the United States in 1977. However, it earned less money than Jaws. The movie introduced several technical firsts and was nominated for Best Sound at the 1978 Oscars.

In 1979, Benchley published The Island, a story about descendants of 17th-century pirates who scare travelers in the Caribbean, leading to the Bermuda Triangle mystery. He also wrote the screenplay for the movie version of The Island, which featured Michael Caine and David Warner. The film was released in 1980 but did not earn much money.

During the 1980s, Benchley wrote three novels that did not sell as well as his earlier works. One of these, Girl of the Sea of Cortez, was inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez. The book tells the story of a girl’s complex relationship with the ocean and received strong reviews. It has gained a loyal following since its publication. Sea of Cortez showed Benchley’s growing interest in environmental issues and hinted at his future work as an advocate for protecting marine life. Q Clearance, published in 1986, was based on Benchley’s experience working in President Johnson’s White House. Rummies (also called Lush), published in 1989, is a partly autobiographical novel inspired by the Benchley family’s history of alcohol abuse. The first part of the book describes a suburban man’s struggle with alcoholism, while the second part, set in a New Mexico clinic, is written as a thriller.

Benchley returned to nautical themes in 1991 with Beast, a story about a giant squid threatening Bermuda. The book was adapted into a made-for-television movie titled The Beast in 1996. His next novel, White Shark, published in 1994, was about a genetically engineered shark-human hybrid created by Nazis. The book and its made-for-television movie adaptation, Creature, did not achieve much success. A New York Times reviewer said the shark looked more like Arnold Schwarzenegger than a fish. In 1994, Benchley became the first person to host Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.

In 1999, a television show titled Peter Benchley’s Amazon was created. It followed a group of airplane crash survivors stranded in a large jungle.

In the final years of his career, Benchley wrote non-fiction books about the sea and sharks, supporting their conservation. One of these, Shark Trouble, explained how media hype and sensational news can mislead the public about marine ecosystems and harm human interactions with them. The book, published in 2001 and 2003, aimed to help people understand the ocean’s beauty, mystery, and power. It also described how humans have become more aggressive toward sharks, acting out of ignorance and greed as many species face threats from overfishing.

Benchley was a member of the National Council of Environmental Defense and a spokesperson for its Oceans Program. He said, “The shark in an updated Jaws could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim; for, worldwide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors.” He was also one of the founding board members of the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI).

Legacy

Because Peter Benchley worked hard to protect sharks and teach people about them, Wendy Benchley and David Helvarg created the Peter Benchley Ocean Awards to honor his memory.

In 2015, scientists discovered a new type of lanternshark near the Pacific coast of South America and named it Etmopterus benchleyi. The lead researcher, Vicki Vásquez, said that Benchley's efforts to protect the ocean, especially sharks, inspired the discovery.

Personal life and death

Benchley lived in New York City while working for Newsweek. In 1963, Benchley was eating at a hotel in Nantucket when he met Winifred "Wendy" Wesson. He began dating her and married her the following year, in 1964. The couple lived in the Washington, DC, area while Benchley worked at the White House. In 1967, their daughter, Tracy, was born. The Benchleys moved away from Washington and lived in several homes, including one in Stonington, Connecticut, where their son, Clayton, was born in 1969. Benchley wanted to be close to New York, so the family moved to a house in Pennington, New Jersey, in 1970. Because their home had no room for an office, Benchley rented a space above a furnace supply company.

In 2006, Benchley passed away from pulmonary fibrosis at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 65.