A Paul Bacon First Edition Book Cover

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In 1971, Peter Benchley was a cliche.

He was a writer doing piecemeal work 

to support his wife and children.

And then he wrote a novel which was 
to resound from Hellenback to Hollywood 

and everywhere in between.

It was published by Doubleday.

Paul Bacon designed the cover of the book.                                   

AUTHOR'S NAME:  top billing 

BOOK TITLE: massive white 

with the words A Novel 

in blood red.

BACKGROUND: Murky black 

with small swimming figure 

in the center.

BOTTOM:  a shark head 

showing no teeth.

This hardcover edition of  the novel was on  the best-seller list
for an astounding forty-four weeks.

And then along came the paperback edition

It was published by Bantam Books.


Roger Kastel re-designed the cover.

Whereas the Paul Bacon design allowed 
the viewer's imagination to project fear into the image.

Mr. Kastel left not one iota of doubt as to 
what the fang-toothed shark was about to do.

 
 In 1975, a virtually 
unknown director, 
Steven Spielberg,
made a movie version 
of Jaws.

Mr. Kastel's cover image
was used to promote
the film.





The following is a direct quote from Wikipedia:

Jaws  became the highest grossing movie 
in history up to that point, becoming 
a watershed film in motion picture history 
and the father of the summer blockbuster film. 
Three sequels followed the film. 

Peter Benchley wrote the screenplay for Jaws
but refused to have anything to do with the sequels.

Formerly a struggling writer who did piecemeal work
to support his wife and childen, Benchley did 
absolutely nothing regarding the sequels 
except receive a $70,000 check 
for each of them. 

Meanwhile, Paul Bacon, with 2000 record albums 
and 6500 book covers–including the inspiration 
for the iconic film poster for Jaws–became a 
world-famous kazoo player.
I kid you not.  

However, when Paul Bacon's Altzheimer's disease
became advanced, he would only play
Jimi Hendrix songs on his kazoo.

That time, I was kidding. 
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