.com
Estd. 2020
Approved by the Shaw Family
"Very rewarding to work with, in fact I tried to model myself on him."
Jaws & Mrs. Shaw
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What really happened on the set of JAWS when the cameras were not rolling.
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In the summer of 1974, Robert Shaw was in trouble: his role as Quint was supposed to be his break into stardom, but the production was “going down with the ship.” Even worse, Shaw’s drinking had become so bad that it was ruining both the movie… and himself.
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Shaw asked his sister, Joanna, for help – when he learned their mother would have to join them on the set, he groaned: “Now I’ll really have to cut down on the drink!”
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True to form, Mrs. Shaw embarrassed her son in front of the cast and crew. When the cameras were not rolling, the skeletons in Shaw’s closet were exposed, dissected, and analyzed by three generations of women who knew him better than anyone.
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Despite the family turmoil – or perhaps because of it – Shaw pulled himself together and helped turn JAWS around: in addition to his brilliant performance, he also wrote the USS Indianapolis speech, now considered one of the greatest scenes in movie history.
Like millions of people around the world over the past fifty years, I have been fascinated by the movie JAWS and its star, Robert Shaw (my uncle). I grew up listening to the laugh-out-loud stories that Robert, my mother (Joanna Shaw), and my grandmother (Doreen Avery Shaw) would tell. Show Me The Way To Go Home is their story.
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More recently, I embarked on a journey with my mother: we spent hundreds of hours discussing Robert and the Shaw family, including their childhood in Orkney and Cornwall, their adult years in London and New York, and the ways in which they shaped each other’s lives. Joanna knew Robert better than any person, living or dead.
She is the reason Robert was nominated for a Tony Award, and he is the reason she went back to school for her PhD. They were as close as any brother and sister could be.
In telling this story, I have used the same techniques that I learned from them: rather than describe their entire life, I have focused on a few defining events.
Rather than gloss over those events, I have filled in details and crafted dialogue to capture how they talked, how they thought, and what they saw.
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I never heard anyone laugh as much as Robert and Joanna when they were together, especially when they were talking about their childhood homes. In telling this story, I have tried to find my own way home, and to capture some of the joy they felt in life.
