Peter Bradford Benchley

 

was an American author, best known for his novel Jaws and its subsequent film adaptation, the latter co-written by Benchley (with Carl Gottlieb) and directed by Steven Spielberg. Two more of his works, The Deep and The Island, were also adapted for cinema. Peter was the son of author Algonquin Round Table founder Robert Benchley nd his younger brother, Nat Benchley, is a writer and actor. Peter was an alumnus of Exeter Academy and Harvard Univerity. After college gradutaion he worked for the Washington Post, then as an editor of Newsweek and a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson. He developed the idea of a man-eating shark terrorizig a community after reading of a fisherman catching a 4,450 pound great white off the coast of Long Island n 1964. He also drew some material from the tragic Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916. When Jaws was made into a movie it eventually grossed over $450 million worldwide. He was hailed as the heir apparent to the "Master of Suspense", Alfred Hitchcock. He also wrote The Deep, Beast, White Shark an Peter Benchley's Amazon, about a group of plane crash survivors in the middle of a vast jungle. Peter died of pulmonary fibrosis and his legacy is being carried on by his wife, Wendy.