‘Jaws’ turns 50: For West Palm Beachers who grew up with shark’s first victim, thriller classic left nostalgic bite mark
- Jun 8
- 7 min read
IN THE SUMMER OF 1975, Lana Watson and her husband, John, were among the millions packing cinemas around North America to see “Jaws,” a blockbuster about a killer shark that terrorizes a fictional seaside town.
Two minutes into the movie, Lana thought she recognized an old friend up on the big screen — the flirtatious hippie chick at the beach campfire who takes a fateful skinny dip in the ocean.
As the unseen great white closes in (dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun), something else about the scene startled Lana — the way the doomed swimmer casually cut through the water, the same distinctive strokes used a decade earlier by one of Lana’s fellow teenage Swimming Association of the Palm Beaches swimmers.
“I grabbed my husband’s arm and said, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s Susie!’’’
“Susie” — as in Susan Myers, Forest Hill High School Class of 1964, a nationally ranked swimmer who set records and qualified, friends say, for the Tokyo Olympics as an alternate (a spot she gave up after contracting mononucleosis).
In “Jaws,” she’s in the credits as Susan Backlinie, her name from her first marriage. She’s playing “Chrissie Watkins,” the killer shark’s first victim, a part she scored because director Steven Spielberg wanted to cast an attractive woman with swimming chops, boxes Susan checked.
Before Susan moved in 1971 to California, where she lived until her death in 2024 from a heart attack at 77, she swam competitively with Lana and other West Palm Beach-area swimmers under legendary Coach Buddy Baarcke.
Practicing together every day before and after school at Lido Pool on Palm Beach, competing together at Amateur Athletic Union meets around the United States, it was only natural for SAPB swimmers to become familiar with each others’ styles.
Susan’s style made a lasting impression.
“When ‘Jaws’ came out, nobody even knew she was in the movie or was an actress,’’ said Fred Jaudon, who swam with her at Forest Hill High.
“But the phones started ringing off the hook after somebody watched the movie and said, ‘Susan Myers is in a movie called ‘Jaws!’ How do you know? ‘Because she’s in the opening scene and she's swimming!’ This became something everybody was talking about.’’
Susan’s screen time was brief — her character is taken by the shark a little more than four minutes into the two-hour movie — but long enough for her SAPB friends to recognize her.
“When her hands came out of the water and she reached for her next stroke, she would lazily kind of drag her hand along the top of the water,’’ Jaudon said.
“It was a style everybody knew. The first time I saw the movie, I recognized the stroke and I said, ‘I agree 1,000 percent, that’s Susan Myers.’’’
Released on June 20, 1975, “Jaws” left an indelible bite-mark on pop culture. It grossed nearly $500 million over 50 years, inspired “Shark Week’’ and other television shark shows, and made beachgoers think twice before going into the water.
It’s ranked among the all-time movie classics. And it starts with that iconic opening scene — a scene that continues to terrify movie watchers around the world and provide a strange portal into the past for an exclusive group of West Palm Beachers who knew the actress playing the doomed “Chrissie.”
“She was our claim to fame,’’ said Bonnie Tuscani Bowman, a Forest Hill High classmate.
And it wasn’t Susan’s first brush with notoriety.
Two years earlier, she was the talk of her hometown friends for baring it all in a Penthouse magazine photo spread. Not long after “The Lady and the Lion” appeared in the January 1973 issue, “my mom saw her mom in the grocery store and her mother showed my mother the picture,’’ Lana recalled with a laugh. “My mother was shocked and appalled. Susie's mom was proud as punch.’’
Born in Washington, D.C., Susan moved to West Palm at the age of 10. She and a sister were raised by a single mom, who took them to church every Sunday, according to interviews with her friends. They lived in a modest Conniston Road duplex between the Florida East Coast Railway tracks and Dixie Highway.
In her seven years of middle and high school, Susan spent a lot of time with the family of fellow SAPB swimmer Richard Ahrens.
“Her mother wasn't making a lot of money. My dad and my mom kind of took her in,’’ recalled Ahrens, who grew up in Lake Clarke Shores and was a year behind Susan at Forest Hill High. Susie also hung out with his younger sister, Toi.
“I always called her my older sister. She was part of our family,’’ he said. “She used to come to our house and have dinner. We water skied behind the house, jumped on the trampoline. Wherever we went, she went.”
She often piled into the Ahrens family Cadillac for drives to swim meets around Florida and Georgia and to practice at Lido Pool near the east end of Worth Avenue on Palm Beach.
Not far from the pool, the Palm Beach Pier at Midtown Beach jutted about 1,000 feet into the ocean (until it was torn down in 1969). That’s where Susan probably first swam with sharks, even though she may not have known it.
“We would all swim out to the end of the pier and race back to shore while the fishermen were fishing for sharks,’’ recalled Lana.
Ahrens confessed having a brief crush on Susan, a green-eyed strawberry blond. “She was gorgeous,” he said. “I almost dated her one time but she became too good of a friend.”
Her senior prom date was David Graves. “We had a nice time. I took her home and gave her a kiss goodnight,” Graves recalled. They lost touch after high school. “I didn't see her again until ‘Jaws,’’’ he said.
“I don’t think I knew it was her when I saw the movie in the theater,” he said. “I did watch it again, and I had forgotten how beautiful she was. She was mellow. She was laid back.’’
After graduation, Susan went to Miami to study nursing but quit less than a year later to pursue a job that allowed her to work outdoors.
In September 1965, she scored a swimming gig as a mermaid at Weeki Wachee Springs State Park north of Tampa, where she met her first husband. (Her marriage didn't last long; friends recall news reports about her husband running afoul of the law.)
She also worked at Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. On a national tour with Miami-based Ivan Tors, she shared the stage with the TV bear Gentle Ben, Judy the chimp and Clarence the Crossed-Eye Lion.
By 1971, she’d headed west to California to work with elephants, rhinos and other animals at Africa U.S.A.’s wildlife parks. One was Zamba, the lion she cuddled in the Penthouse photo spread.
In 1974, working as a stuntwoman, she scored the role in “Jaws’’ and went off to Martha’s Vineyard. She wore a pair of cut-off jeans with harnesses around her legs. Cables attached to the harnesses were tugged left and right by crew members, thrashing her from side to side in a tug-of-war that simulated a violent attack from an unseen shark.
"As I would feel my hips go to one side, I would just throw my arms in the opposite direction as hard as I could," she told The Palm Beach Post. "I also had a pair of fins on because when they would pull me to one side, I would go under, so I had to kick with all my strength to stay above the water. It took a lot of energy, but I was in pretty good shape back then."
Shooting the scene took three days and multiple takes, and Susan told at least one friend it took a toll on her health.
“She told me that all the jerking back and forth really threw out her back and caused really bad back problems,’’ said Lana.
By the spring of 1975, weeks before “Jaws” was released, Susan was sharing news of her movie gig with select friends.
“She told me, ‘I’m gonna be in a movie that’s coming out,’’’ recalled Ahrens. “I said, ‘What is it?’ She said, ‘It’s called Jaws. Watch the movie.’’’
Ahrens saw “Jaws” one day that summer at the packed Carefree Theater in West Palm Beach, then rushed home to call his friend in California. He couldn't help teasing her.
“Was that you getting eaten by the shark?’’ he remembers asking her. “You know you were a great swimmer. How come you didn't swim away from that damn shark?”
“She laughed and said, 'It's a movie, Richard!’”
Her Forest Hill High friends were surprised and thrilled when they realized she was in “Jaws.”
“I was happy for her,’’ said Shelley Hill, a 1965 graduate. “She was a wonderful person who did not grow up with a whole lot of money. It was nice to see her breaking out.’’
After “Jaws,’’ she spent eight years sailing around the world before landing in Ventura, Calif., where she lived on a house boat with her second husband and worked on dive boats.
She retired from stunt work in the mid-1980s and made regular appearances at movie conventions around the United States and annual “Jaws” events around Martha’s Vineyard.
Although friends can’t recall if she ever attended class reunions, she did her best to stay in touch with her old gang.
Lana and John Watson had lunch with her about three years ago in Brooksville, Fla., where Susan was visiting her daughter.
“I talked to her about three weeks before she passed away. She didn't mention anything about being ill and she sounded fine,’’ Ahrens said.
“I miss her. Susan was an incredible young lady. I always call her a young lady.’’
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About the author
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, the birth of the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. View all posts by Joe Capozzi.