Peter Benchley Movies and Career Information

Peter Bradford Benchley (May 8, 1940 – February 11, 2006) 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. Several more of his works were also adapted for cinema, including The Deep and The Island. He was the son of author Nathaniel Benchley and grandson of Algonquin Round Table founder Robert Benchley. His younger brother, Nat Benchley, is a writer and actor. Peter Benchley was an alumnus of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University. After graduating from college, he worked for The Washington Post, then as an editor at Newsweek and a speechwriter in the White House for President Lyndon Johnson. He developed the idea of a man-eating shark terrorising a community after reading of a fisherman catching a 4,550 pound great white shark off the coast of Long Island in 1964. He also drew some material from the tragic Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916. Doubleday editor Tom Congdon saw some of Benchley's articles and invited Benchley to lunch to discuss some ideas for books. Congdon was not impressed by Benchley's proposals for non-fiction but was