Per Page to Screen, Benchley was a freelancer at the time he first thought about writing Jaws, inspired by a great white ...

Benchley said "Jaws," his debut novel, was the offspring of childhood passion. Growing up on Nantucket in the 1940s and 1950s, he would see the dorsal and tail fins of sharks crisscrossing the oil ...

Speechwriter and future "Jaws" author Peter Benchley sat next to President Lyndon B. Johnson, his boss, in 1967. Courtesy of the White House Photo Office collection, LBJ Presidential Library.

Peter Benchley, whose novel “Jaws” terrorized millions of swimmers even as the author himself became an advocate for the conservation of sharks, has died Saturday at 65 at his home in Princeton, N.H.

Peter Benchley, whose novel "Jaws" terrorized millions of swimmers even as the author himself became an advocate for the conservation of sharks, has died at age 65, his widow said Sunday.

Peter Benchley’s ‘Jaws’ at 50 The novel, and the smash 1975 movie, was the first many Americans had heard of sharks. By Randy Maniloff Share ...

The writer Peter Benchley died on Saturday. He was 65 and, according to relatives quoted in published obituaries, he suffered from Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs.

Peter Benchley, whose 1974 novel “Jaws” turned shark attacks into a national obsession and who later used what he called his “fish story” to help promote oceanic conservation, died Sunday ...

Peter Benchley, who wrote the book "Jaws," points at a Scalloped Hammerhead shark as a Galapagos shark swims in background at the Monterey Bay Aquarium's new "Sharks: Myth and Mystery" exhibit in ...

Peter Benchley, whose novel “Jaws” terrorized millions of swimmers even as the author himself became an advocate for the conservation of sharks, died at home Saturday in Princeton, N.J., at ...

But many people have been aware of them only since 1974. That’s when Peter Benchley ’s novel “Jaws” arrived on bookshelves. Benchley died in 2006 at 65.