Call it fateful irony. In 1974, the Vorhees family had just moved to Martha’s Vineyard, and (by Island standards) weren’t even real Islanders, at least not yet.
Then, as fate would have it, the middle child, Jeffrey, 12, was chosen to be cast in a role that was, ironically, intended for a classic “Island kid.”
Now, 50 years later, it is Jeffrey Voorhees who is publicly, and indelibly identified with the Vineyard as Alex Kintner, the young boy who begs his Mom, despite the shark warnings, to go into the water with his yellow raft, becoming the second shark victim in “Jaws.”
Jeff says, “When we got here [to the Vineyard], there were so many families with 20 or 30 cousins, and then there was me and my brother and sister, who didn’t have any cousins.” They had moved here from Connecticut because their mother’s boyfriend had family on Chappaquiddick.
The Vineyard was very different then. “Most things closed for the season on Labor Day,” Jeff remembers. “The place became a ghost town. You knew everyone in the winter, and once the Dairy Queen closed, there was so little to do. There was no internet, of course, but sometimes you could hardly even get TV reception. It was fun growing up in that era because you had no choice: you had to go out and find something to do, so you really got to know your friends and neighbors. It was tighter, I think. We would do things, we’d offer to shuck scallops, or whenever it snowed, we’d go into town and ask people, ‘Want me to shovel your drive?’ Kids don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”
Into this quiet small-town scene came Stephen Spielberg and his Hollywood cast and crew to make what would become one of the biggest blockbusters in the history of cinema. “We lived on Upper Main Street in Edgartown,” Jeff recalls, “so it was an easy walk down to the Kelley House (where the production office was). The Island was buzzing with the news that locals could walk in, sign up, and get $40 a day to be an extra. When I showed up, they gave me some papers with lines to read, and then told me I had a speaking part, which meant I got $140 a day. I said yes, because that meant, hey, I could buy some new shoes.”
Alex Kintner is the boy whose mother reluctantly allows him into the water. He is paddling out in his raft as the ominous soundtrack of peril which is the queue of the shark begins a steady crescendo, and Alex Kitner ends up dying in an explosion of blood –– the first actual gore in the film. The scene of the attack required five days to film, because it took hours between each take for all the fake blood to be swept away by currents. Vineyard waters famously take until early July to warm up; this was happening in June.
Laughing about Spielberg’s direction, Jeff says, “Every time Stephen said I had to get back in I thought, ‘Oh, God, no!’”
This is a sentiment shared, over decades, by the many locals who were extras in the beach scene and remember how frigid the water was as they filmed take after take.
“Jaws” became a worldwide phenomenon the following summer. But that summer during the filming, most tourists were still most interested in a different and real-life scene of Vineyard tragedy: Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick. That is, of course, where the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy drove his car into the water after a late night of partying, killing Mary Jo Kopechne, a secretary for his brother Robert’s presidential campaign before he was assassinated in 1968. Jeff worked on the Chappy ferry as a kid, and recalls streams of visitors crossing over to the islet to see the bridge and to ponder the geography where on a July night in 1969 Sen. Ted Kennedy, then 38, famously drove his Oldsmobile 88 off the bridge and left the scene of the accident, eventually swimming about 150 yards across the harbor channel to his hotel.
But soon, tourists’ interest shifted away; and many came to the Vineyard to see where “Jaws” was filmed. Jeff, now 62, remained rooted here his whole life, working for decades (until retiring recently) as the manager of the Wharf, a restaurant on lower Main Street in Edgartown.
As curious visitors began to hear “Alex Kintner is alive and well and working in Edgartown,” people gravitated toward the Wharf to catch a glimpse of him, and sometimes to ask for autographs. Eventually, people mailed him photos or posters to sign, and included money for return postage. He was happy to do it.
This was just a glimmer of what became an explosion of “Jaws”-related fandom. As the movie attained its popular cult-favorite status, an entire industry developed around it. Its actors were invited to travel to events all over the planet, where they’d get paid to speak about the infamously challenging experience of filming “Jaws,” as well as sign autographs. Jeffrey avoided all the hoopla for a while — until, in the 1990s, the internet changed everything.
One of those mementos he’d signed and mailed back. He found it for sale online for $100. “Other people were making money off my signature!” So he signed on to the junkets, and found he enjoyed being flown, fed, and paid well (usually in cash) to sign his name beside Susan Backlinie (who played Chrissy Watkins), Richard Dreyfuss, and others.
Jeff is an entertaining and engaging raconteur. He has at least a dozen monologues, mostly about the trials and tribulations of the actual filming (although a fan favorite is his about his public reunion years later with Lee Fierro, who played his mother). But over the years he’s amassed anecdotes about these publicity events themselves. Until she passed away last year, he was usually placed next to Backlinie, whose autograph included “the first victim.” Jeff would then sign the same item, “the second victim.” He doesn’t do it only for the money. “It makes people so happy,” he says warmly. “Once there was an 11-year-old girl with a raft, crying because she didn’t care about meeting Richard Dreyfuss, she wanted to meet me. So she did, and I signed her raft, and she walked away with a big smile. That feels good.”
His identity as “the dead Alex Kintner” has benefitted Jeff in other ways as well. Potential Key West landlords balked at renting to a pet owner (Jeff has a 150-pound St. Bernard), but “it turned out they’re big ‘Jaws’ fans, and they said, ‘If you sign a photo you can stay, and we won’t charge extra for the dog.’” Once, returning from a signing event in Europe with “more cash than you’re supposed to travel with,” he was held up by a grumpy customs and immigration agent, who softened when he learned he was detaining Alex Kintner, because his wife was a “Jaws” fan. He asked Jeff for his autograph, and let him go.
As the 50th anniversary of the film’s release approaches, Jeff is preparing for a summer like no other. His schoolmate Dolores (DeeDee) Borza convinced him to ride along with the “Jaws”-themed tours for her company, Homegrown Tours. At first he did it about four times a week, and visitors loved his spiel. He pulled back to doing just one tour a week, but for the four-day anniversary extravaganza, he’ll be doing two tours a day. These are already sold out, but for those of you on the Island at other times this summer, you can book a tour right here: homegrowntoursllc.com.
Although Jeff spends his winters in Key West now, the Vineyard will always be home. “Yes, it’s become too expensive here,” he says, “and I feel for young families trying to buy houses. But this morning, I was running the dog down the beach where I got eaten — that’s a good life!”
Nicole Galland is a New York Times bestselling novelist, most recently of “BOY.” She grew up in West Tisbury, and has been known to direct and perform theater in sundry Island spots.
